The Wall Street Journal is reporting that ETS has held talks to sell both the TOEFL and GRE tests. The non-profit is reportedly seeking a purchase price of about 500 million USD, or a for-profit partner who might invest (but not purchase outright) the tests.
According to the WSJ’s report, ETS “has narrowed the talks to several firms that could potentially buy the exams or act as a strategic investor to expand ETS’s reach into the Middle East and India, said people familiar with the matter.”
As for potential buyers, “[i]nterested parties include the Singapore-based investment firm Hillhouse, the private-equity firms Nexus Capital and Veritas Capital and the education entrepreneur Martin Basiri, some of the people said.”
ETS CEO Amit Sevak has declined to comment.
Regular readers know that Nexus Capital recently purchased the ACT test from its non-profit owner for about 240 million dollars. Veritas Capital, meanwhile, purchased the assets of non-profit testing giant NWEA for about 890 million dollars. Martin Basiri, of course, is the co-founder of the fairly successful Canadian firm ApplyBoard (which everyone reading this is quite familiar with) and more recently an admissions-related company called Passage (which we are all much less familiar with).
Most astute test watchers are well aware that we’ve been on the path to such a move for a very long time. The dominance of both tests has been eroded since the pandemic years, while ETS itself has experienced financial woes that have necessitated several rounds of layoffs and buyouts. Several much smaller testing products have already been eliminated from the organization’s portfolio.
I’ll have more to say on this topic in the days ahead, I’m sure.