Will education as an industry, be transformed or roll over into 3 or 4 massive groups worldwide?
This question is something that 5 years back probably wouldn't have been brought up. However, today there are some views that might think different.
To set a context lets see other industries that might have gone through similar process. For example, Beer. The beer industry was scattered in many companies and many brands in each country. If you look at it from a growth perspective this creates a lot of challenges. In fact, distribution challenges, operational and organizational, innovative and competitive advantage creation, cost savings, among others. 2 big players worldwide had taken the initiative and bought or merged with the mayor beer owners or companies in the biggest volume countries creating massive corporations. Today, you have small players and crafted beer owners battling with massive worldwide budgets.
How this might seem similar to Education?. Today we have only in Mexico more that 2,000 private universities, most of them family owned and independently managed. What are the challenges for them? high competition, low budgets, different systems and complexity, private equity firms looking at the industry. Meanwhile, Brazil 15 years back was in the same position, now education in Brazil is mainly managed by 4 groups that are publicly traded and manage most of the private education in Brazil. Would this will start happening in mayor countries? something to think about.