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The Brief delivers sharp, five-minute updates on the policies, numbers, and market shifts shaping international students, education agents, and colleges. Each episode offers practical takeaways to help your business strategy, student advice, strengthen applications, and make smarter decisions. Fast, fact-driven, and built for busy professionals — this is the podcast to stay in the loop and stay competitive in international education.
This weekend, EC English, one of the biggest names in language teaching, told agents something no agent wants to hear: Tell your students not to get on the plane.
Speaker 2:Founded in Malta in 1991, around 40,000 students a year from more than 140 countries, and for the weekend of September 12, zero new arrivals worldwide.
Speaker 1:EC's reason? Unforeseen operational circumstances. No planned courses, no accommodation, schools in The US, The UK, Canada, Ireland, Malta, South Africa, and Dubai all stopped at once.
Speaker 2:Students already had flights booked, EC's own words to agents. We appreciate that this is extremely short notice, and so far, not a word on refunds.
Speaker 1:What's behind it?
Speaker 2:We don't know yet, and we're not gonna guess. What we do know, in April, EC announced it was closing Bristol and Montreal after a strategic review of global operations. Languages Canada says it's in touch with EC's management. In Malta, the Schools Federation, Feltom, says it's working to protect students.
Speaker 1:And agents are now being told other schools will take EC students. We've seen the email.
Speaker 2:Which is how the last big one played out. December 2024, International House Sydney shut seven campuses in one day. Greenwich College took the students and honored the fees they'd already paid.
Speaker 1:IH blamed the ESOS bill, Ministerial Direction 107, and rising visa fees. Then this year, Kaplan sold its language schools to private equity. They're being renamed Positively Languages.
Speaker 2:So the big brands are closing, selling, or shrinking.
Speaker 1:And the market underneath them is shrinking too. Bonnard's global numbers for 2025: student weeks down 23%, students down 10.
Speaker 2:Stays are getting shorter, six and a half weeks on average, lowest in a decade. Students aren't just buying less, they're buying different.
Speaker 1:Australia, student weeks down 35%, US language students down 58% of US providers blame visa denials. Canada's language sector is roughly half its pre pandemic size.
Speaker 2:In January, we said demand doesn't disappear, it moves. For English schools, it seems that it's not moving. It's actually shrinking.
Speaker 1:Now, small schools die too. In Ireland, student campus Limerick closed and left hundreds of students in limbo. Sure.
Speaker 2:But nobody picked Limerick because it felt safe. People pick the big names because they feel safe. That's the whole deal with a brand. It says, we've got too much to lose to let you down.
Speaker 1:And that's what EC kinda broke this weekend. Not just its own schedule, the shortcut, go with the big name was how parents and agents skipped the homework.
Speaker 2:Now everyone has to do the homework for every school. That makes the whole industry more expensive to sell.
Speaker 1:So here's our take. The safe choice used to be the big logo. The safe choice now is knowing where the money sits.
Speaker 2:Because students with flights booked aren't worried about the average, they're worried about the worst case: losing the fees, losing the visa.
Speaker 1:Geta gets this. It's making universities and agents sign contracts that include a tuition refund if the visa is denied. That doesn't make the school better. It takes the worst case off the table.
Speaker 2:So three things. One, before the deposit, ask where the money sets and who pays it back if the school stops, not after.
Speaker 1:Two, the big name still matters. It's just not the guarantee anymore. Check the protection, not the logo.
Speaker 2:Three, spread your partners. One school, one point of failure.
Speaker 1:And don't only ask who's next, ask who's buying. When IH Sydney went down, Greenwich took the students and taught them on its own cost.
Speaker 2:Why eat that cost? Because in a shrinking market, a student who's already in the country is the cheapest customer you'll ever get. If other schools pick up EC students, watch who moves first. We're tracking EC as it develops. And the one bright spot?
Speaker 2:New Zealand. Language students and student weeks both up 11% in 2025. That was the brief International Education Edition.
Speaker 1:Stop, stop, stop. What about the commission?
Speaker 2:If a school stops, what happens to the commission it owes you?
Speaker 1:Take Australia. Commission usually isn't paid when the student pays. It's paid after census date, often in two halves across the year.
Speaker 2:So at any moment, a school is sitting on months of commission agents have already earned.
Speaker 1:And if that school goes under, the agent is just another unsecured creditor. The tuition protection service is there for the students. Nobody's there for the agent.
Speaker 2:Which is why plenty of agents pay net. Keep your commission. Send the school the rest.
Speaker 1:That protects your commission. It doesn't protect your student. If the school folds, the student wants a refund, and the school only ever received the net.
Speaker 2:Net or gross, somebody's holding somebody else's money. And the industry doesn't have a perfect response to this problem.
Speaker 1:Education agents are deeply affected when a school stops operating, and there's not much they can do. Hundreds of thousands in commissions has just evaporated. Now that's the brief.