An Education Group is born

As is characteristic of a modern university, EBS did not limit itself to offering Bachelors, Masters or Doctoral studies.

During the middle of the 1990s, they established several new subsidiaries that were not associated with the provision of higher education. EBS continued to grow and by the turn of the century the educational group with the name “EBS Group” had been born.

Madis Habakuk gave the following explanation about the creation of the group: “A university is a large institution, which must create its own infrastructure, provide instructors and perform research activity. Since EBS had a qualified faculty and was engaged in active research work, it became clear that it was possible to begin serving other markets – offering basic education and refresher training. In addition, EBS had already consolidated a number of activities, and further development of this do-it-yourself nature was more efficient than buying in the service. These are now also independent units, which fulfil orders placed within the Group while also offering services outside of the Group”.

The largest and oldest member of the EBS Group was the university with its several thousand students, other Group members were the EBS Upper Secondary School, the EBS Management Training Centre, and EBS Print. The latter dealt with the printing of educational materials (that particular company is no longer operating). The EBS Development Fund was also active, providing several dozen EBS students with scholarships from the school each year. EBS Campus, which handles the administration of the Lauteri 3 school building, was founded in 2004.

The creation of the EBS Group was also affected by events that took place on the global education market at the end of the 1990s. Madis Habakuk noticed that, in global terms, the field of executive training was an area in which business schools were rapidly taking over the market. “Therefore, the current dominant trend in the world at that time was this furious activity of business schools in the taking over of the training market,” noted Habakuk. One branch of his business school dealt with that in particular.