The Australasian College Broadway (the College) was established by Maureen Houssein-Mustafa in 1994. A wholly Australian owned company, it is now recognised as the benchmark College in Australia offering Nails, Beauty, Makeup, Hairdressing, and Business Management qualifications all under one roof. The College has since begun extending its offerings to include Aged Care, English and a number of other qualifications, each with a pathway to Higher Education.
Maureen commenced the College with a $1,600 outlay, and the school had only 6 students when it first opened its doors. Nearly 20 years on and the College has now been independently valued at $30 million. It has the capacity to accommodate 1500 domestic and international students, taking courses across different skill areas yearly. The recent expansion of the premises which spans over 8,500 sq metres, makes it the largest private hair and beauty college in Australia.
Two decades after starting with $1600 and a leased shop on Sydney’s Broadway, Maureen Houssein-Mustafa’s Australasian College has just joined the likes of the ANU and RMIT as a registered higher education provider, bringing degrees to the hair, beauty & make-up industry for the first time.
- Maureen Houssein-Mustafa is 29th on the 2014 BRW Rich Women list, with a fortune estimated at $40 million.
“There was no course out there teaching people to use these machines safely, that’s why you see clips on A Current Affair of customers who’ve been burnt by IPL,” Houssein-Mustafa says.
“We’re talking to government about requiring education in this area. To use a laser eye machine you need to go to uni for seven years, why should you be able to just take a weekend course for a machine that can leave someone’s body scarred?”
The process of qualifying as a higher education provider took three years and will have cost $6 million by the end of 2013/14, Houssein-Mustafa says.
She had to establish an academic board - it’s chaired by veteran CSIRO director Dr Terry Cutler - and develop an entire new wing at the College’s main campus in Glebe.
The Health Science (Clinical Aesthetics) degree, which includes a mentorship program, will cost $66,000 over three years including all materials.
An associate degree in dermal therapy is in the final stages of approval and is scheduled to commence later this year, Houssein-Mustafa says.
“Beauty education is catching up with what customers are demanding. People used to want their legs waxed, now they want permanent hair reduction. They used to be happy with a facial, now they want skin-resurfacing,” she says.
The Australasian College already employs 90 full-time equivalents to service more than 1000 students. Under the vocational education & training (VET) framework, they can receive diplomas in hairdressing - “which gives you all the skills you need to start your own salon” - for $29,500, or diplomas in beauty therapy or make-up costing between $17,000-$19,000.
Already the first beauty school to have been approved as a Registered Training Organisation, under which students can ‘study now, pay later’ under the VET Fee Help scheme, Houssein-Mustafa expects fee help for the new degrees to also be approved soon.
“Hairdressing or beauty used to be things you did because you couldn’t get into uni,” says Houssein-Mustafa, the product of a Cypriot-Turkish migrant family who herself left school aged 16.
“Now it’s a profession, and I’m about investing in its future so there are pathways there for talented people to progress in it.”
Claiming to have been profitable even since her first month in business, Houssein-Mustafa says a key to her success has been investing in her staff. One, Janis Gordon, came for what she thought was a three-hour temporary secretary stint just after Houssein-Mustafa had opened her business. She’s now been there 20 years and is general manager of the College.
Staff receive the equivalent of three weeks per year professional development, with courses often accompanied by a supervision program for the particpants’ children - acknowledging the fact many of them are mothers.
In 2011, Houssein-Mustafa was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for services to vocational education and training, and to the community for philanthropic efforts like funding scholarships to her college for unemployed youth under the SISTER2sister program.
Sources: internet sites
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