What are we really buying when we buy an educational institution?
A sector in full consolidation
Private education is going through an unprecedented consolidation cycle: in Spain alone, sector transactions exceeded €6 billion in 2024, with international funds and education groups acquiring universities, business schools, vocational training centres and school networks. In Latin America, the large groups maintain an active acquisition agenda.
Behind every deal lies a question that EBITDA multiples cannot answer: whether the educational project is sound, whether its accreditations and enrolment are sustainable, and whether the value that justifies the price will survive integration. That is the ground I work on.
Educational and academic due diligence
For education groups and networks evaluating an acquisition or incorporation, I analyse what financial due diligence cannot see:
- Soundness of the educational project and real learning quality, beyond marketing indicators.
- Coherence between declared purpose, educational model and the real student experience.
- Faculty and institutional culture: dependence on key people, teaching capacity and openness to change.
- Transformation capacity: what can evolve, at what pace, and with what risks to identity.
Cultural and educational integration
Most of the value in an education deal is won or lost after signing. An integration that ignores teaching culture, project identity or family trust erodes precisely what was paid for.
I have supported real processes of incorporating institutions into education networks, working on the dimension that decides the outcome: historical roots, identity, mutual recognition, shared purpose and the integration of educational models.
- Reading the cultures and identities that meet: what must be preserved and what can evolve.
- Building a shared “we”: purpose, common language and recognition of each institution’s history.
- Progressive integration of educational models without imposing uniformity or freezing transformation.
Post-acquisition educational transformation
After the deal comes the deeper question: what common architecture will the institutions share, and what will each keep as its own.
I support this phase by connecting purpose, educational model, graduate profile, curriculum, experiences and assessment — the same systemic architecture I use in any transformation process, applied to the specific context of an integration.
How I work
With absolute confidentiality and no conflicts of interest: my work focuses on the educational, cultural and institutional dimension of transactions. For the financial and legal dimensions, I work alongside the specialised advisors each party already has.
I bring what almost a decade inside educational institutions across three continents makes visible: where the real value of an educational project lies, where its risks are, and what it takes for it to survive — and grow — after the deal.