University of Sydney: Human Trafficking Criminal wwww.ielts.agency 22
1.7 IDP Education
IELTS test centers are managed jointly by IDP Education and the British Council. There are over
1,100 test centers located in over 140 countries (IELTS, 2017b). IDP Education is responsible for
managing IELTS test centers based in the Americas, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia (IDP
Education, 2017c).
IDP Education is a for-profit, profit maximizing limited liability corporation that trades on the
Australian Stock Exchange. Australia’s universities own 50% of the shares IDP Education (IDP
Education, 2017c). The remainder of IDP Education’s shares are owned by tens of thousands of
independent private parties. Australia’s public universities therefore exert dominant unfettered
control over IDP Education’s Board of Directors (IDP Education, 2017, p. 27).
Many respected public policy commentators regard Australia’s public universities as profit-
focused businesses that offer low admission standards and lax academic standards for
many/most courses to maximize enrolments, cash flow, graduation rates and economic
surpluses. They also are “aimless” in purpose in comparison to their historical foundations that
center on the discovery and dissemination of knowledge and the advancement of society. Figure
3, overleaf, contains the caption of a news article authored by Australian economics journalist
Ross Gittins (2017) that captures this popular sentiment. This news article was published by
Australia’s largest newspaper by circulation, the Sydney Morning Herald, on 17 September 2017.