However, in 1986, the forward-thinking Hawke government saw a new source of potential revenue for universities in educating the children of middle-class families in South-East Asia.
IDP – or the International Development Program – already had an office in Jakarta and in 1986 it introduced a counselling service to recruit students to Australian universities.
Over the next few years, it opened new offices and by 1997 had a presence in the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, India, Vietnam and Mauritius.
As numbers increased, it became evident that a test was required to determine and verify the English-language skills of prospective students. In 1989, the groundbreaking IELTS – International English Language Testing System – was launched in partnership with the British Council and Cambridge University.
By 1996, the Hawke government passed ownership of IDP to Australia’s 38 universities and a corporate structure was created.
Australia was the world leader in commercialising education to international students. While wealthy families had for centuries sent their children across the globe to be educated at the world’s finest institutions – think Oxford, Cambridge, the Ivy League – Australia was the first country to see the economic possibilities of a university degree from an English-speaking country.
By 2006, numbers were booming and the 38 university shareholders came to the realisation that they did not have the necessary skill sets to run it efficiently and profitably.
So in 2005 it went looking for a corporate partner that could take it to the next level.
Brothers Andrew and Paul Bassat were riding high with their online jobs board seek.com and were on the lookout for adjacencies to their core product. Universities, they figured, was a way of connecting education and employment and improving the value chain of seek.
In 2006, they paid $36 million for its 50 per cent stake in IDP with the 38 universities retaining the other 50 per cent.
In 2007, Peter Polson was named chairman of the board, a position he still holds.
Two years later, IDP embarked on what, at the time, was a controversial and counterintuitive strategy – to recruit students to universities in countries that were competitor nations to Australia. It started with the US and now includes New Zealand, UK, Ireland and Canada. It now has more than 190 offices in 35 countries.
The next step in the company’s evolution was to list on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2015, which saw the end of seek’s involvement and the recruitment of a new chief executive, Andrew Barkla.
Barkla pushed a diversity agenda, with the company extending IELTS operations to new markets, oversaw the acquisition of aligned companies and the development of a new and sophisticated online platform.
IDP is now the world’s largest student recruitment company, which has in the past few years fortified its capabilities by developing sophisticated digital platforms. It has a 600-strong campus near Chennai in India that is dedicated to building IDP’s technical and digital innovations.
Its newest offering is called FastLane, which promises to get students an offer from an institution in seconds.
“We are focused on reducing the time in bringing offers to students earlier on in the process,” says O’Shannessy.
“The decision to study overseas and embark on an international education and possible migration is an incredibly high stakes decision for students. There is a lot of uncertainty in the process. With FastLane we aim to bring certainty more quickly around the offer process.”
In Australia alone, IDP recruits about 30 per cent of the half million or more students who come here each year.
It’s a company that has, in its many guises, been characterised by big bold visionary moves.
And yet, says O’Shannessy, it never lost sight of the need to be “deeply connected to our customer needs”.
