Think Education Group Manager Reviews

Pros

Free breakfast, nice offices, good team

Cons

no business ideas whatsoever. 8 colleges aggregated into 1 entity and no soul It inherits the lack of vision of the Seek group Too many nice looking girls painting their nails during business hours Salaries below average

Pros

Only a few good people are left. The nespresso machine is nice when there are enough capsules. Friday drinks are back.

Cons

Lots of people are leaving or being made redundant. Not sure if that will be beneficial for the students. A place no one should work or study. It's a big waste of time and precious sanity.

Pros

The new premises are clean.

Cons

All student facing staff are treated as enemies by management and HR. There is a culture of bullying that is not only accepted, but encouraged. Students will receive a passing grade in any subject, from VET to Higher Ed, as long as they keep paying their fees. When lecturers argue that students who cannot speak English, do not turn up, or refuse to hand in assignments should be failed, management overrides academic staff and passes them anyway so students will keep paying the fees. Administrative staff are working up to 11 hour shifts without break, and yet there's still not enough working time to answer phone or email inquiries from students, leading them to become frustrated and angry. New staff cannot be hired fast enough to replace those that quit and there are no procedures and no training for new staff as the high turn over rates mean there's no hand over or time to write procedures down. The attitude from management is that students can go home, go to the pub, or leave and go to other schools. "There are plenty of other places they can go if they don't like it here!" Popular choices so far are Endeavour or Open Universities. Students themselves are seen as nothing other than walking money, and easily disposable. Services are being reduced in order to deal with huge staff turn over (staff leave due to bullying, or are fired when making bullying complaints), and staff are randomly pushed into new job titles for which they are not trained, not supported, and not paid to cover for other staff being forced to leave. Moral here is in the toilet, students are angry, and staff have to face the anger of the students who pay a lot for very little. The HR team are incompetent and stir up trouble amongst the staff, instead of working to improve staff engagement. Over all management style is interesting. For example, model the new campus so that every staff and student is in one giant room with a cafe, so that when teaching, the lecturer with the loudest voice 'wins', and everyone else just has to try to work or study with others shouting around them. Forget using the library as anything other than a coffee shop, there's no place to study or learn or work. Library services have been cut so that the libraries cannot even remain open to help students, and IT has fallen into a heap leaving students and staff to solve their own IT issues while new services are rolled out that remain unsupported and untrained.

Pros

Lecturers are dedicated to their students and disciplines.

Cons

Corporate culture is obscene. Middle management are forced to take on horrendous workloads, and decisions from higher management are erratic and cause even greater workload. A never ending cycle of "improvement" projects which are poorly conceived and managed, and result in multiple steps backwards in terms of staff and student satisfaction and engagement. Higher management do not listen to or trust their staff. The company talks big but fails to deliver on promises of academic standards, staff and student support, and corporate transparency and honesty.

Pros

Great colleagues. Some good senior managers. Colleges still have some soul new campuses under development sound fantastic innovative and student centered

Cons

Massive workloads. Poorly managed org restructure. Jobs for boys. No leadership. Micromanagement, bullying, unreasonable expectations. Students and staff unhappy, badly treated and ignored.

Pros

Dedicated hard working staff who strive to deliver the best education possible for their students. Always seem to be working against senior management and campus management.

Cons

Senior management say they care about staff and students, but everything seems driven by bottom line to the detriment of staff and students