“It started around November last year when we were talking with one of the partners of this company and the topic on education arose. Being passionate about education, we all agreed to do something different for the industry,” said Heah Hock Hin, one of the co-founders of Tertiary Advisory Group (TAG).
From being a topic that was only discussed over coffee, TAG was formed in a couple of months and started its activities by signing up with some local institutions and even participated in a few school fairs and organised an education open day.
TAG’s aim is to provide a growth platform to nurture secondary students right from the beginning till they get into their dream universities, wherever that may be. They are here to help students get a clearer picture and direction of what they want.
“Most of the students we encounter are completely blank about their future. They don’t know where to go, they don’t have a proper career path and we want to change that,” another one of the co-founders, Chim Weng Kong said.
The local colleges they are working with are Disted College and Advance Tertiary College (ATC). Disted is well known for their A-Level programmes whereas ATC is well known for their law programme. In this short while of TAG’s founding, TAG has signed up with York St John University in the UK and have managed to establish a top up degree programme between ATC and York St John where ATC’s diploma students can get a UK Business degree by just spending an additional year in UK after completing their Business Diploma programmes.
Working with other partner agencies, TAG is also able to offer choices of Universities in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and China to name a few.
Without charging anything, the services they provide are counselling, university and visa applications, flight and accommodation arrangements, interpreting and translation, preparatory classes, as well as seminars and training.
“We’re all very experienced in the industry so we know what the job requirements will be like five years from now, something the students might not see at this point,” continued Chim.
They also conduct MUET classes, where the lecturer is one of the examiners of the actual exam.
“Another one of our objectives is also to let students experience the university atmosphere. It’s a tuition centre, with our staff engaging them and with the brochures we provide, students will get some ideas of what they actually want, depending on their budget,” Heah added.
Students who are interested can walk in to their office situated at 8A, 1st Floor, Jalan Greentown 3, Greentown Nova, Ipoh or visit their page at fb.com/tertiaryadvisorygroup or call 016 555 6811 for further details.
