Navitas reports 21% rise in enrolments

Global education services provider, Navitas today announced a 21 per cent increase in student enrolments for the third semester of 2009.

Equivalent full time student unit enrolments at the University Programs colleges and managed campuses increased to a third semester record of 14,529, up from 12,025 in the previous corresponding period. The comparative data has been adjusted to include 357 Curtin Singapore EFTSUs which had been excluded in November 2008 as the data was not available at that time.

The result is the third consecutive year of at least 20% growth in third semester student enrolments.

Navitas Chief Executive Officer Rod Jones said the latest figures reflected continued strong demand for Navitas programs and recognition of the underlying quality of the education offered through those programs.

"Our business model is founded on driving revenue through offering high quality education programs, partnering with leading universities in markets where we operate," said Mr Jones.

"These latest enrolment figures underline the success of that strategy - the ability to offer a very high quality education service and at the same time generate satisfactory returns for our investors."

Mr Jones said the continued growth also demonstrated the ability of Navitas to implement its education model in new markets with consistently short start-up to profitability periods.

"Navitas now operates 22 colleges in 7 countries, and we consistently move new colleges into profitability within two years of start-up."

Looking forward, Mr Jones said Navitas was budgeting for further enrolment growth in 2010.

"We confidently expect to see strong double digit enrolment growth in 2010," he said.

"In particular, we are expecting strong enrolments from the two new colleges opened in the UK this year.

"We also expect to launch additional colleges through 2010, including our first in the highly prospective American market."

"With a number of new colleges agreements expected to be completed in the near term, and the continued development of new markets and recently opened colleges, we expect to see continued solid growth across our University Programs portfolio into the future," said Mr Jones.