Cintana seeks million-strong global student network

A US education company involving Arizona State University aims to create a global network of private universities with 1 million students, bringing the possibility to collect data on students’ learning on a mass scale, after partnering with an initial 12 institutions.

Cintana Education was set up by Douglas Becker, founder of for-profit university company Laureate Education, in collaboration with ASU – a public university known as a giant of online education – and its president, Michael Crow.

Cintana fully launched in 2021 after being held up by the pandemic and has grown to have 12 partner universities in its first year.

Among those partners are two new “start-up” institutions – the American University Kyiv and the Egyptian government-founded Galala University, one of a new model of national universities – and 10 “accelerator” institutions aiming to significantly grow their scale.

The latter group includes Istanbul Bilgi University, Almaty Management University in Kazakhstan and NorthCap University in India.

Mr Becker, who left Laureate in 2018, said the aim was to “build a global network of universities”, mainly private institutions that “benefit from the support and resources Cintana could bring and ASU could bring”, with partnerships involving a “big commitment” of typical 20-year contracts.

An aim to grow to 50 or 100 partner universities “means we should be able to pass a million students in this network”, said Mr Becker.

Cintana partners have access to ASU curricula and content, and to dual degrees with the US institution.

The creation of such a large network will bring the possibility of “collecting data on how a million students are learning and what techniques are working or not working”, Mr Becker also said.

ASU was “very comfortable with scale”, he added. “If I say we want a million students, Michael Crow will say, ‘Why stop there?’”

At the American University Kyiv, aimed at building “workforce capabilities” sought by business leaders in Ukraine, plans to open the institution stalled amid the Russian invasion, but it will welcome its first cohort of 160 students, initially taught online, in early September. The institution would be “uniquely positioned to contribute to the rebuilding of Ukraine”, said Mr Becker.

With the “accelerator” institutions, the aim is supporting private universities that are often the first such institutions in their nations, countries with “no source of income other than tuition” fees and little tradition of philanthropy, he continued.

Asked about Cintana’s business model, Mr Becker said: “Our model is to share a small piece of the incremental revenues these partners can generate from our impact.

“They all do the same math in their head, which is: ‘How fast are we growing on our own; how much faster do we need to grow with the support of Cintana and ASU to warrant a [revenue] sharing of some modest level?’”

Cintana, he said, assists the universities with advice on strategic questions, such as “should they open a new campus, should they open a medical school, should and how should they go online, are they charging the right amount of fees for their market, do they have the right organisational structure and team, do they have the right financing structure for their university”.

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com