The Christmas break always gives me a chance to take a step back and look at my business, also to try to anticipate opportunities that may open up in the year ahead. The troubled economic situation in the UK, and the Eurozone uncertainty affecting the Baltic made that a fairly challenging activity this year.
However there is one area that I believe could offer truly spectacular opportunities for UK and Baltic institutions working together. Education partnerships do not sound particularly exciting or profitable, but in this case, I really think they could be.
I have been working in and around the education sector in both the UK and Baltic for the past six or seven years. During that time our aim has always been to look at commercial opportunities for the universities and colleges we work with. We have been fairly successful, but it has not been easy work.
Almost by definition universities in both the UK and Baltic are conservative places, run by groups of elderly academics (usually men) who have no understanding of – or interest in – the commercial world. The leadership of universities in the Baltic has been particularly poor in this regard, believing that their only role is to dole out public money for the purposes of education and research.
But things are changing, and that change has the potential to create a substantial opportunity for both Baltic and UK universities to earn much-needed revenue, and to educate an increasing number of students.
Firstly the management of the key Baltic Universities is moving on to a younger generation who have a much better grasp of the commercial realities of running a major institution in the modern world.
Secondly the current economic situation is certainly focusing minds in the UK, where universities understand as never before, that they need to generate substantial earnings through commercial activity. International students are a key part of this drive for cash, with many UK universities setting up branch campuses across the Middle East, India and East Asia.
Thirdly the demand for a UK University or college qualification is as high as ever in Eastern Europe, where people understand that a qualification is one of the truly portable things you can invest in, and which will allow you potentially to develop a career in any part of the world
Finally some politicians in the Baltic have realised that there could be a massive opportunity to marry the academic heritage in the Baltic, with the demand for UK qualifications, by creating an environment which encourages Baltic and British universities to come together to create partnerships which will then look east to target international students from Russia and the CIS markets.This partnership has a number of advantages for the potential students. Firstly it means that they can study the course and secure the UK degree they wanted without having to negotiate the increasingly byzantine British VISA system. The costs of studying within a UK faculty in the Baltic will also be considerably cheaper than in the UK, where the cost of living is so much higher.
The students will also be closer to home, and living in an environment which is much more culturally attuned to their homeland, and where they will also be able to speak to many people in their native language. All of this is backed up by the quality of the Baltic academics.
The Lithuanian Ministry of Education has already recognised this opportunity, indeed you could say that it was the Minister’s brainchild. They are pushing on with the brokering of potential partnerships, and the political will to make this happen is important especially when local universities see this as a threat rather than an opportunity.
Other Ministries are also beginning to wake up, and the size of the Russian and CIS markets, and the demand for a UK degree leads me to believe that the potential opportunity to make the Baltic the “Western” education destination for these countries is massive.
In a difficult time, I believe that academic partnerships offer a substantial opportunity to create a new business, which will not only benefit the academic institutions involved, but also the wider Baltic economy.