I saw that ETS Capital has announced the existence of a new advisory board, which features some high profile names. The board will play a role in efforts to “scale ETS Capital’s investment and M&A platform,” according to director Emal Dusst.
Longtime ETSologists know that ETS Capital is the in-house investment arm of the Educational Testing Service. It was founded using part of the proceeds of ETS’s one billion dollar sale of Prometric in 2018. It has been somewhat quiet of late, perhaps because much of that money has been spent on investments (530 million to buy PSI, an estimated 12 million to buy Wheebox, an estimated 22 million to buy Kira Talent, alongside minority stakes in ApplyBoard, MPOWER Finance, CollegeDekho, LeverageEDU, etc).
If ETS Capital is scaling up, perhaps management is confident that more funds are forthcoming. We may be quite close to the sale of the TOEFL and GRE tests, as indicated a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal.
If time permits, I’ll write a “how we got here” post about the potential sale of these products. The modern-day history (from the late 90s to the present) of ETS is fascinating and hasn’t been covered as much as the early history of the organization. Given the tenor of my posts here (and elsewhere) over the past six years one might view such a sale as inevitable. That’s a fair perspective, but I don’t think things necessarily had to go this way. In any case, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.