(Yicai) Jan. 27 -- US' Educational Testing Service, the world's largest non-profit educational testing and assessment organization, has held talks to sell its Graduate Record Examination and Test of English as a Foreign Language or find investors, amid pressure from declining numbers of Chinese going to study in the United States, intensified market competition, and recent policy changes, according to a report.

ETS expects to sell the businesses for about USD500 million and has narrowed down the negotiation targets to several companies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 24, citing people familiar with the matter. The New Jersey-based firm hopes to expand its influence in the Middle East and India through the deal.

According to rumors, potential investors ETS is in talks with include China's Hillhouse Capital, US private equity firms Nexus Capital Management and Veritas Capital, and Iranian-born education entrepreneur Martin Basiri, who founded online study-abroad application platform Applyboard.

ETS and Hillhouse have not yet replied to Yicai's request to comment on the report.

Yang Lei, a teacher who has been preparing students for TOEFL at a Shanghai language training institution for 10 years, told Yicai that the number of his students going to study in the US has tumbled after the Covid-19 pandemic, recovering to only 40 percent during a peak last year compared with the level before 2019.

ETS' GRE and TOEFL exams have been confronted with unprecedented challenges in recent years, with both being suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, some higher education institutions, including Harvard University and Stanford University, have altered their admission policies and no longer consider the GRE as a mandatory requirement for some of their graduate programs.

The number of international students in the US rose 5 percent to 1.18 million in the 2024/2025 academic year from a year ago, according to the Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange in the US. China ranked second among relevant sources with 265,000 students, down 4.1 percent year on year.

Multiple competitors are also challenging the position of TOEFL in the English proficiency testing market, Yang noted. Some students choose to study other courses, such as the International English Language Testing System, the Australian Education Assessment Services, and the Duolingo English Test, he said.

"More and more parents and students have been considering countries and regions such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada," Yang pointed out. Nearly 80 percent of students at the institution where he works chose IELTS last year, and only 10 percent picked TOEFL, he noted.

Over the past year, US President Donald Trump has frozen federal contracts and funds for many colleges and universities, restricted their ability to recruit international students, and tightened visa policies, greatly reducing the appeal of the country for those seeking higher education.

Established in 1947, ETS is in charge of managing the Test of English for International Communication, which is a test for assessing workplace English proficiency, the Praxis exam for teacher certification in the US, and other standardized tests.

The College Board also entrusted ETS to develop and administer tests such as the Scholastic Assessment Test for college admissions and the Advanced Placement courses, but the pair agreed to cancel the agreement in 2024, losing the firm about USD300 million in revenue a year.

Editor: Martin Kadiev