Development Services: a major contribution to IDP’s reputation and success

IDP’s global position and reputation in international education is built on our origins in international development assistance. We have played a major role in international development and education, which contributes to our current business expansion and success in student placement, evaluation and assessment services and English language training.

IDP’s heritage in international development and education: 1970s and 1980s

Origins: IDP was established in 1969 as the Australian-Asian Universities Cooperation Scheme (AAUCS) by the Australian university vice-chancellors to support international development activities funded mainly through Australian government aid grants.

Development activities: AAUCS/IDP contributed to the institutional strengthening of a number of universities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines until the late 1980s. AAUCS/IDP designed and managed programs that provided advisory assistance through Australian university personnel, who worked for short periods over a number of years in universities in these countries. The programs included scholarships and short-term training and provided technical equipment, research and reference publications mainly in agriculture, education, engineering, health, nursing and public administration.

Benefits in development and reputation: AAUCS became the Australian Universities International Development Program in 1981 and the International Development Program of Australian Universities and Colleges in 1984. IDP, under its various names, became known across the region through these development activities and their benefits. The South-East Asian universities benefited from the upgrading of teaching and research skills, development of curricula to meet emerging needs, enhancement of skills for competitive research grant applications and considerable improvement in support services, such as libraries and science laboratories. The cooperative program in Indonesia, for example, involved support to some 14 universities across Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara Barat and Timor through collaborative research, curricula development and technical advisory support to libraries, science laboratories and English language training facilities.

Benefits to Australian education: IDP established a positive reputation and close working relationship with Australian universities. IDP’s activities contributed to internationalising Australian university staff, courses and campuses. These activities brought an increasing number of international academic staff and students to their campuses. In response to the specific needs of international academics and students and their accompanying families, the universities began to develop support systems. This prepared them for the influx of international private students who would come from the late 1980s following Australia’s changed approach to domestic and international education. 

IDP’s reputation in international education and development: 1990s onwards

Winds of change: IDP had moved to winning management of development assistance programs through tendering by the 1990s. We worked with the Australian Government through AusAID and later its departments of Defence and Education as well as with the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, United Nations and in direct negotiation with overseas governments. IDP’s two overseas offices, set up in the 1980s to support development assistance activities, had increased in number and geographic spread as the company began counselling students on Australian study courses in response to the Australian Government’s encouragement to bring full-fee-paying students into the Australian education system.

Development activities: IDP succeeded in winning business in institutional strengthening through education and training in a wider geographic area: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Southern African countries, Mauritius, Bulgaria, Latvia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

We managed some 350 to 400 short or long-term programs ranging in contract value from two to three hundred thousand dollars to more thanA$70 million. We continued to draw on the expertise of Australian universities and vocational education and training institutions but also now on government and industry expertise.

The focus of our education and training expanded to include health and health sciences, forestry and environment, social security, economics and trade, public sector management and all aspects of education, including fellowship and scholarship management and education systems and personnel at all levels – basic, junior secondary, senior secondary, vocational training and higher.

Our activities included major capacity-building programs, customised short-course training, appointment services, institutional linkage activities, alumni and tracer studies, and scholarship and fellowship management.

IDP’s heritage and reputation: IDP’s reputation has been built on its experience and integrity as a development assistance company, its people and systems, the expertise it can mobilise from Australian and international education systems and its overseas support network through its offices.

This heritage and reputation contributed to IDP’s success as it expanded from the mid 1980s into student recruitment and into international language testing and training. IDP continues to manage scholarship and fellowship programs, though we no longer bid for major new development assistance programs.

We are proud of the contribution that our past activities in international development assistance have made to the people with whom we have worked, to the countries in which we have worked, and to the Australian education and training institutions with which we have cooperated in development. This is a rich heritage to draw upon as we expand our student placement and international language testing expertise to new countries and new markets.