international education
campusreview.com.au
Making the grade
From high school dropout to
international higher ed leader.
By Loren Smith
A
small farm on the outskirts of
Bacchus Marsh, about halfway
between Melbourne and Ballarat, is
the birthplace of a self-described “unlikely
entrepreneur”. But it took decades for Alan
Manly to get to that point.
The managing director of Sydney-based
private tertiary organisation Group Colleges
Australia (GCA) grew up in poverty.
After dropping out of school in
Year 9, which he says was the “done
thing”, he found solid employment
unexpectedly quickly.
“[My mum] thought all her Christmases
had come at once when I got a job as a
postman,” he says.
Despite the fact that, after being given
uniforms, he’d “never seen so much
clothing”, mail delivery life wasn’t for him.
So, to his mother’s disappointment, he
embarked on vocational study.
“She thought it was frivolous to give up a
good government job to be an apprentice
in electronics.”
By the time he graduated, it was the
mid ’70s, and the computer boom had
begun. He chanced upon a job automating
gambling tickets. From there, he moved to
a role at a startup software company. That’s
when things went legally sour.
With a plot reminiscent of cult Australian
comedy film, The Castle, a dispute over
a fraudulent $115 invoice led to 10 years
8
of legal battles, including 250 court
appearances. Almost bankrupt, Manly
ended up representing himself at Australia’s
highest court, and won.
Concurrently, he did – and didn’t do –
many things. There were four years of
unemployment. But he also worked for an
American computer company which had
been “desperate” for employees.
“You had the company car … and you
travelled business class,” he says.
That’s why, after being inspired by a ‘self-
awareness’ talk at his company, he called
his decision to become an entrepreneur
around three years later “heroic”.
Like many first ventures, his didn’t work
out. Fortunately, though, a computer
programming school was looking for a
new director.
“They asked a couple of underemployed
entrepreneurs to take it over, and I was one
of them.
“From there, vocational education
became regulated, and then a thing called
Tiananmen Square occurred. Lots of
Chinese students.
“We saw an opportunity, because
Chinese students liked to learn to
program.”
Thus began his role recruiting Chinese
students, as founding and managing
director of then vocational-only, IT
programming school Group Colleges
Australia. In this respect, he felt he had an
advantage: his Chinese godson helped him
understand Chinese cultural mores.
“He used silence as a statement.
“He would say, ‘Use the silence.’
“And off I went to Asia, and I learned that
was the core of their negotiation style.”
All was going smoothly. But then, his
wife whispered in his ear.
“She thought we should be a higher
education provider. And she thought
that the real opportunity wasn’t in IT
particularly, it was in accounting.
“I told her she was wasting her time …
She totally ignored me. That’s why we’re
successful.”
Today, GCA runs three businesses:
Central College, offering VET
qualifications in business, accounting
and tourism; Universal Business School
Sydney, offering ‘entrepreneurial’ MBAs
and business degrees; and Metro English
College, an ESL education provider.
By “successful”, Manly means this: “If you
look at learner engagement, which is one
of the measures in QILT, [and] if you then
look at postgraduate results in Australia,
we were best.
“Now, if you were going to say that’s
possibly an aberration, you’re not going to
get much fight from me, but it means we’re
up there, doesn’t it?”
He credits this to that fact that he treats
students as customers. Indeed, they are.
For instance, a one-year Certificate IV in
Accounting at Central College costs $5560,
exclusive of additional fees.
His greatest competitors, he says, are
not sandstone universities. Rather, they’re
satellite campuses of small universities
that vie for the same kinds of students.
But he isn’t bothered by it, as he thinks
potential students are put off by their
marketing tactics.
“So, they get their brochure and it’s
got a mock Tudor building of some sort,
or the university, and then they find that
they’re going to the Sydney campus of,
for instance, a university in the middle of
Queensland.”
Essentially, all of GCA’s 1500 students
are international. They mostly come
from India, Pakistan and Vietnam.
“It’s not hard to get up in front of a bunch
of parents in either China or India and say,
‘Would you like to be an entrepreneur?’
They don’t find it offensive at all,” he says.
“You’re talking about entrepreneurs,
you’re talking about opportunity, you’re
talking about the next generation
in your family. So, that is a powerful
sales pitch.”
Manly says, contrary to perceptions that
international students are isolated, the ones