Ibat, the Temple Bar-based independent third-level college, has reached a student recruitment agreement with Global University Systems, one of the biggest private education providers in the world.

Shane Ormsby, director of Ibat and its majority shareholder, said: “I am happy to confirm an international student recruitment relationship between Ibat and Interactive, a GUS company.

“This will provide Ibat with the opportunity to significantly widen the market reach of its existing programmes, tapping into GUS’s international education network across more than 60 countries,” he added.

Ibat has about 1,200 full and part-time students primarily in its Temple Bar headquarters but also in a smaller facility in Swords, North Dublin.

Founded by Russian Aaron Etingen, GUS employs 1,500 people and has 40,000 full and part-time students. Mr Etingen is one of the wealthiest private sector education providers in the UK. He founded the London School of Business and Finance in 2003, which has campuses in five cities teaching subjects like accountancy and law. He also owns a number of other education businesses.

Stake

Mr Ormsby said there had been no discussions with GUS at this stage about it taking a stake in his business or even acquiring it.

GUS is known to have looked at acquiring Irish private education providers in recent times and it has also looked at establishing a green-field campus in Dublin. At one stage, it was linked with setting up in the Elm Park campus in Dublin which was originally developed by Bernard McNamara.

Mr Ormsby said that talks with GUS about developing a relationship had been taking place of several months. “There are a number of strands to the relationship – for example Interactive, which probably hosts the best educational digital platform in the world, is digitising our ACCA [accountancy] materials with the goal of making our ACCA learning experience more attractive to prospective students,” he said.

Trading floor

“GUS also hase a relationship with London Academy of Trading. We are looking to create a live trading floor at our Temple Bar campus and offer their trading programmes as an optional add-on to our MBA students,” Mr Ormsby said, “the result being that our MBA students will have experience of operating on a real life trading floor making them more marketable to a wide range of financial institutions.

“There is no sharing of programme IP, all programmes continue to be offered exclusively from our Temple Bar campus and there is no change to our Quality Assurance or programme entry requirements etc,” he added.