STADIO HOLDINGS: Education Central to the Future of the Nation

For Stadio Holdings, everything is centred around facilitating access to higher education, through a quality teaching and learning ethos where student success is the top priority. “The time to do something great for South Africa is now,” begins CEO Chris Vorster. “That’s why we’ve united our collective experience with one goal: to empower the nation by widening access to higher education.”

It is no secret that South Africa’s universities are among some of the best in the world. The QS World University Rankings 2019 featured nine South African universities, with the highest international ranking position claimed by the University of Cape Town, at joint 200th. The University of the Witwatersrand, or Wits, came next at joint 381st, followed by Stellenbosch University just outside of the top 400.

Three more South African universities make it into the world’s top 800, namely the University of Pretoria, the University of Johannesburg and the University of Kwazulu-Natal, while 13 feature in the 2019 rankings of the best-performing universities in the five BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. South African legislation does not allow private higher education institutions to be recognised as universities, however the Stadio Group is already in the top ten universities within South Africa in terms of size.

ALL-ENCOMPASSING INSTITUTION

Recognising the calibre of the historic centres of learning in the country, Vorster outlines how Stadio has always been geared toward honing and crafting offerings which take on and, ultimately, overtake, the established order. “Stadio Holdings was founded in 2017, and acquired seven higher education brands,” he tells us. “The strategy was then to condense this down into three distinct brands, of which two are AFDA, which operates in the film and creative space, and Milpark, which includes CA Connect, focusing on accounting and financial services. These remain independent higher education institutions and will follow a product excellence strategy tailored to them specifically.

“We have consolidated the four remaining brands into what we have branded Stadio Higher Education,” he says of this conglomeration of four highly prestigious institutions: Embury Institute for Higher Education, LISOF, Prestige Academy and Southern Business School; this latter was founded by Vorster.

“This is where we want to establish this comprehensive, all-encompassing institution with multi-faculties and schools, and multitude modes of delivery. Our goal is to position Stadio in such a way that we can go toe-to-toe with the big public universities in South Africa – we are already bigger than some of these – and, should legislation in South Africa change, we are well-positioned to achieve university status.”

Its proven ability to offer the pinnacle of tertiary teaching through such a mix of both contact and remote learning methods stood Stadio in excellent stead to fend off the sorts of challenges which scuppered many during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We are very cognisant of the shifting higher education landscape,” Vorster, who, having started in his current role on 1st April 2020, could hardly be more well-placed to comment on the rigmarole of the pandemic, details.

“In the Stadio Holdings group only 20% of our student population was following typical, contact learning. With 80% of our student population already studying via online and distance learning it was much easier for us to deal with the sudden shift to remote learning as a full-time provision. The most significant adjustment that we had to make was from a final assessment point of view, away from the expected traditional sitting of exams.

“It was, in fact, the contact learners that presented us with the biggest challenge,” Vorster counters, “but this was assuaged greatly by our already having in place a ready-made platform, as well as much expertise, from our existing distance learning, which we could use to move the contact learners onto. The massive efforts on the part of our staff to achieve this enabled us to attain what, at one stage, looked like the impossible feat of ensuring that all projects and assignments were completed as scheduled within the academic year.”

STUDENT SHAREHOLDERS FIRST

The quality and ease of this transition was a major factor behind Stadio’s reporting a 10% jump in enrolments, to some 35,031 students, for the period ended December 2020. Over the same period, distance learning students grew by 12% to 28,664 students, while contact learning students also grew by 3% to 6,367 students.

“We were able to successfully complete the 2020 academic year on time with drop-out figures of 2.5% for contact learning and 6.1% for distance learning, the lowest since we started with operations in 2017,” Vorster unravels, a hugely pleasing growth in student numbers given the extreme conditions faced throughout the year. “Stadio is considered a leader in distance learning, which gained further traction during the year.”

In another landmark for the country, Stadio has just become South Africa’s first higher education institution to make its students shareholders. “We are very excited about this initiative; it really feels like we are onto something special,” Vorster beams. “It came about from seeking an answer to private institutions never receiving the same support from their alumni as with public universities.

“Take a UCT or a Wits, for example – their alumni really give back, to a completely different degree to us and other private institutions. The long, 150-year histories of these universities is clearly impossible to replicate in a short period of time, but to get around this we sought an alternative way that we could partner with our students for life.

“We are empowering our learners by giving them qualifications that we believe to be of the very highest quality and perfectly aligned with the world of work. This is crucial for us, but secondly we are empowering them to start building up their own portfolio of wealth, to bring the sometimes seemingly unattainable world of investing closer to our students, whilst continuing to upskill them through the provision of training and courses following their graduation. The challenge for us is to meet all their lifelong learning needs and this share scheme is one such way that we can further empower our students beyond their studies.

“We want to foster that environment whereby parents, grandparents, children – all are channelled through the institution that their predecessors attended.” The Stadio Khulisa Student Share Scheme has already seen postgraduate alumni issued with shares worth R1000, with around 1,200 to receive similar in each year to come. “For us it is a significant step in really putting our students on the track of opening up the financial market, and a new world, to them. We are giving back to our students through this ground-breaking initiative.”

STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE

Vorster’s ‘WWS’ acronym neatly summates the three pillars on which, for him, the entire programme is built, and the third stands for what he terms the ‘student-centred experience.’ “The first W refers to widening access,” he explains. “The legacy in South Africa is of huge numbers having been excluded, whether for political reasons or simply due to very poor schooling at secondary level, preventing their entry into further education. We are putting in place infrastructure to overcome this historic issue.

“Our alignment with the world of work is the second of these key focuses, and we are driving it incredibly hard. We have industry involvement through every step of the journey, from the programme development phase to guest lectures and seminars in our classrooms, then to the moderation of the programme and, finally, to help get our graduates employed.”

It was revealed in September that the first phase of Stadio’s Centurion mega-campus, a comprehensive multi-school campus had been completed. With investments of around R223 million, the facility will provide support for distance learning students and cater for contact learning, as these numbers return to pre-pandemic levels.

“There was an existing structure there that we bought,” details Johan Human, Stadio COO, “but it was far from complete, and originally designed for a very different purpose. We are working with Triple3 Construction in this ambitious project, who exude a real sense of partnership which is, in my long experience in the education space, quite unique in a contractor.

“Triple3 was incredibly accommodating in helping us to find solutions, even when we had to pause the whole undertaking at the height of the pandemic.” Human says, “and even though the site is incomplete, from the outside it looks both beautiful and functional. This is quite a feat, and only possible through Triple3’s support, flexibility and willingness to go the extra mile.” The campus will accommodate around 3,000 students on a purpose-designed site when complete, scheduled for 2022.

Vorster stresses the importance now of tying together the various strands which will combine to allow Stadio to succeed in its quest to help the nation learn and flourish. “My goal now is to consolidate all that we have underway, and then to put down the blueprint for growth to come,” he replies. “I want to see the 47 programmes we have in development accredited, and then to set out a concrete infrastructure for contact learning and distance learning.”

“Our target is to reach the magic 56,000 student mark which we have set for the company, before 2026.” With so much already accomplished in such a short space of time, there appears to be little in the way of Stadio reaching a different class of higher education. “Our vision ultimately is to be a leading Higher Education provider, accommodating 100,000 students over time –  to be a new vision in higher education,” Vorster concludes.