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Kenneth Casey from Cahersiveen.
A TEAM of Irish 25-year-olds — including a Cahersiveen man — are expanding their tech start-up to international markets to help young people worldwide choose the right third-level course.
UniBrowse was co-founded by Cahersiveen native Kenneth Casey and college friends Alan O’Beirne, Walter Holohan and Niall Cronin as an online search engine that makes it easier for school students to find college courses. It launched in Ireland in December 2016.
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Now, the company is expanding to Australia, with plans to launch in the UK and USA in the coming months. Co-founders Walter Holohan and Niall Cronin have recently relocated to Australia to oversee operations there.
Announcing the international expansion this week, Alan O’Beirne, who leads business development for UniBrowse, said: “Australia is seeing an increase in college drop-out rates, which is resulting in third-level completion rates being at an all-time low.
“From our research, the reason for students dropping out of college in Australia is the same as the reason here in Ireland: school-leavers just aren’t getting the right information when it comes to choosing their college course and they end up in courses that really don’t suit them.”
“UniBrowse was born out of our own personal experiences,” explains Mr. Casey. “Myself and my three co-founders all struggled with the decision-making process around college courses when we were doing our Leaving Cert several years ago. More recently, we saw how family members struggled to find useful information when they were finishing school.
“When you’re finishing school, you feel like you’re being asked to make decisions that will impact on the rest of our life. This is daunting enough without the added complication of trying to sift through hundreds of college courses, some with little to no information available.
“At UniBrowse, we make the college decision-making process much easier, so students feel really informed in advance about what’s involved in the course they’re interested in, and whether it will suit them. We provide a complete bank of undergraduate college courses, and students can search keywords for the course for them. Once they’ve found a course they like the look of, they can click it to find even further information, such as the modules completed throughout the degree and whether an Erasmus overseas placement is an option as part of the course.”
In addition to international expansion, UniBrowse will launch the second phase of its site here in Ireland next month.
“We’re keeping the exact details under wraps for now, but Phase Two will be targeted at parents,” said Mr. O’Beirne. “The process of finding the right college course isn’t just a stressful time for students, but for their parents too.”
Further information is available at www.unibrowse.ie.
