Laureate Education Inc

Laureate International Universities

Established	1999
Founder	Douglas L. Becker
Affiliation	Laureate Education
Administrative staff	50,000+
Location	Baltimore, MD, U.S.
Campus	More than 200 campuses and online
Website	www.laureate.net

Laureate International Universities are the for-profit universities and colleges owned and operated by Laureate Education, of Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. By 2015, the company owned and operated more than 200 programs, both campus-based and online, in 29 countries. Total student enrollment was more than 1 million students.

Laureate Education was founded as a company by Douglas L. Becker. It was originally created by Sylvan Learning Systems in 1998 as an operational division to focus on post-secondary institutions and called Sylvan International Universities. When the division was created, Sylvan was a public company primarily focused on educational services for students in primary and secondary education through company owned and franchise locations.

The company’s first investment was Spain’s Universidad Europea de Madrid in 1999, quickly followed by investments in post-secondary institutions in Mexico's Universidad del Valle de México, Chile's Universidad de las Américas and Switzerland's Les Roches International School of Hotel Management and its first investment in online higher education, Walden University in the United States. The Universidad Europea de Madrid purchase was for $51 million.

In March 2003, Sylvan Learning Systems decided to focus exclusively on post-secondary education. The company sold the K-12 business units, as well as the Sylvan name and trademark, to a new company, Educate, Inc., formed by Apollo Management. In 2004, Sylvan changed its name to Laureate Education, Inc, to reflect the change in focus.

In 2007, the company was acquired by an investor group led by Douglas Becker and Citigroup Private Equity.

Between 2007 and 2015, Laureate made 41 acquisitions with a total purchase price of about $2.0 billion. According to Laureate, a key to the company's growth was its expansion into Brazil, where Laureate owned 13 institutions with a total enrollment of about 281,000 students. By 2010, the company owned more than 50 institutions, both campus-based and online, in 21 countries, with a total enrollment of about 550,000 students.