So this happened pre-covid. I worked for an educational institute for international students. The owners of the school inherited a lot of money and had a number of businesses and this school was not really their top priority. So as the young manager I had freedom to do what I wanted as if I owned the place. We started with a dozen students but as time progressed we started getting bigger and bigger. We were able to build a team with fantastic teachers and created courses no other school had. The other businesses of the owners started failing and this school became their only profitable project. I was getting a lot of pressure to keep increasing profits to fund their other projects. Mind you I was on a 50k managers salary while they had just bought a $13 million house.
While there are a lot of dodgy schools, I was very clear that we wouldn’t be one of them and made sure we were compliant. Educational auditors loved us, with one saying we were the best school they had visited. I rejected any sort of dodgy dealing and fought the owners multiple times.
As for the male owner, he treated me like crap. Bullied me, shouted at me in front of junior staff, called me names in group emails and was one of those people who say things like “don’t forget, you are replaceable”. At the time I tolerated it as I was building this amazing school but after a few years I was like I had had enough, so I joined a bigger better school. I had begged for a salary increase but they pretty much said I didn’t deserve one as my job was easy and anyone could do it.
Now just prior to me leaving the owner had just rented out a super fancy new campus with a million dollar annual rent.
Anyway, to keep things short, the owner started to do lots of dodgy things after I left. He pretty much said on the day I left, now we feel free to run the school the way he wanted. They started enrolling students on dodgy visas, they let compliance completely slip, started decreasing teaching hours to save money, started firing the expensive teachers to replace with cheaper teachers etc. Basically within a couple of weeks they got downgraded as a level 3 school which means that most students would avoid enrolling there due to visa rejection and the student numbers dropped by 70%. Compliance auditors were informed by students that the school were running non compliant classes. The auditors showed up and threatened school closure. They were given a couple of months to improve but with no manager they were pretty much f**cked (no other manager was willing to work for almost nothing like I did) and they declared bankruptcy.
Long story short: I worked my ass off building a very profitable school but was treated like shit. Left the place where they became dodgy and went bankrupt in 3 months.
Happy to answer questions 🙂