Education group Laureate Education Asia Ltd expects to grow its Malaysian business by offering world-class hospitality courses over the next two years.
The US group is banking on strong demand for jobs in the Malaysian hospitality sector. For instance, there were 39,000 jobs in the industry in 2008 alone.Malaysia will be seeing the entry of major hotels like the Four Seasons and Hyatt in central Kuala Lumpur, while the six-star St Regis is being built at Kuala Lumpur Sentral.
"We see huge demand and decided to bring in the programmes to Malaysia," Laureate chief executive officer Graham Doxey told Business Times in an interview in Subang Jaya, Selangor.
Laureate, which owns Inti Education Group, plans to introduce three world-renowned hospitality programmes by the year-end and early next year.
It is constructing a building next to the existing campus in Subang Jaya to accommodate the new programmes.
"The new programmes will be among the factors that will help contribute to the (business) growth," Doxey said, without disclosing specific figures.
Two of the programmes are from the Switzerland-based Les Roches Bluche International School of Hotel Management and Glion Institute of Higher Education.
"Another is from Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School of Australia."
The Swiss-based courses are expected to start next January, while the Australian programme will begin this July once the college receives approval from the Malaysian Qualification Agency.
“Although the Swiss programme will only start in January, we will open it for intakes from July this year,” Doxey said.
The new programmes, which will be useful for those seeking to be hotel managers and food and beverage managers, are expected to attract a large number of foreign students from Southeast Asian countries and the Middle East.
“We expect to enrol up to 3,000 new students, from the existing 14,000 students we have now,” Doxey said, adding that all nine Inti campuses offer close to 100-odd courses in total.
Laureate Education, based in Baltimore in the US, has a presence in 20 countries and serves more than 500,000 students worldwide.
Its network includes 45 accredited institutions in North and Latin America, Europe and Asia.
Together, these independently branded universities offer more than 130 career-focused, multi-year undergraduate, master’s and doctorate degree programmes in a number of fields, including engineering, education, business, healthcare, hospitality, architecture and information technology.
The company moved its regional headquarters to Kuala Lumpur from Hong Kong last December as the former is closer to other educational hubs like Singapore and Australia.
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