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MANILA - Phinma Corp sees more opportunities to acquire schools in three years time when K-12 students enter senior high school, leaving many colleges and universities without freshmen enrollees.
Phinma's last acquisition was in 2009 when it took over University of Iloilo to add to its portfolio that includes Araullo University, Cagayan de Oro College and University of Pangasinan.
"It's very expensive to acquire universities," Phinma president and chief executive officer Ramon Del Rosario Jr said in a recent interview.
"We also think that there will be opportunities to acquire as we move forward because quite honestly, not everybody will be able to cope with the K-12 problem," del Rosario said.
This school year 2012-2013, the Department of Education implemented the enhanced Kindergarten to Grade 12 (K to 12) reform program, adding two more years to the existing 10-year basic education curriculum.
With kindergarten as base, K-12 will have six years of elementary (Grades 1 to 6), four years of junior high school (Grades 7 to 10), and two years of senior high school (Grades 11 and 12).
By 2016, Grade 11 will be implemented with fourth year high school students moving on to senior high school instead of going to college.
By that time, Phinma will be ready to make a move "if there are opportunities in areas where we are in," del Rosario said.
"We will keep our eyes open," he said.
What is attractive for the Phinma Education Network will be colleges and universities within areas with "vigorous economic activity and where there are no De La Salle schools," he said.
"We have an agreement with the De La Salle brothers. We haven't gone into any area where there are De La Salle schools," del Rosario said.
In the meantime, Phinma is building on its strategy of expanding its present portfolio of schools by putting up satellite campuses and activating maritime courses.
Phinma has partnered with the Magsaysay group, a pioneer in the professional development of maritime officers, to allow Maritime Transportation and Maritime Engineering students in University of Iloilo to get access to the latter's state-of-the art facilities.
"Enrollment in maritime courses for University of Iloilo has gone shooting through the roof that we had to slow down in accepting applicants," del Rosario said.
Aside from the popularity of its maritime courses, enrollment at University of Iloilo also increased by nearly a third because it deliberately reduced its tuition rates in some courses as a matter of strategy.
"We thought we were priced a little bit outside of the market that we were catering to and we think we found the right spot now," del Rosario said.
Phinma's four schools have 31,000 students in the current school year, compared to the 27,000 last year.
Phinma is also engaged in the businesses of energy, housing, hotels, steel manufacturing and strategic consulting.
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