Recruiting Intelligence

This past weekend further developments unfolded in the Korean SAT debacle. As you may recall widespread cheating caused ETS to cancel the May 2013 SAT exam in Korea. For background information read our recent blog post: May SAT Cancelled- Will It Hurt International Student Recruitment? Earlier in May there was some debate whether the SAT would be given in Korea in June. In the last few days there seem to be some answers coming out of Korea. A Korean colleague notified me that several students were banned from taking the SAT in any country in June. The Korea JoongAng Daily confirmed my colleague's report. Read the article Test Maker Bans Some From Taking June 1 SAT. And the follow-up article: Missing The SATs Can Be Worse Than Taking Them. Even the Wall Street Journal is reporting on the Korean debacle: South Korean SAT Cheating Scandal Continues.

India is the second largest source country for students who are looking to study abroad (China tops the list).   However, the complexion of the study abroad market in India has changed a lot. Ten years ago, the USA and UK were the top destinations, but now we see Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Ireland and other non-traditional destinations like The Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, China and Taiwan all actively wooing Indian students.

This is the second installment of a three part series. Click to read Part I.

Vietnam is becoming one of the hot areas for international student recruitment. With a young population, a rising middle class, and a cultural emphasis on education, many more Vietnamese families are considering education abroad for their children. The US is but one player in this burgeoning education abroad momentum. Click here to listen to a recent podcast with Michael Goldberg, Fulbright scholar who spent six months in Vietnam in 2012.

We've been having a great time this spring at Intead. Not only are we hard at work creating great content for our blogs, Insights, inSession eCourse series and conference presentations, we have also had one of our employees serve as an undercover mystery shopper. If you are unfamiliar with the concept this is a frequently used method in the retail industry to explore how a business operates when secretly examined. We had our employee pose as a prospective undergraduate from China. He sent an email through a QQ account requesting information from 30 institutions in the US, Canada and Australia-- popular destinations for Chinese international students. He asked about admission requirements for Fall 2014 and he requested information in Chinese to share with his parents. We were curious about the response rate from institutions as well as the information they would provide our mystery shopper. The data gleaned from our mystery shopper experiment was quite fascinating.

Universities are looking for future revenue streams. Couldn't universities invest in the future of their students and secure their own future? How would that work? 

The internet was a buzz last week due to news that the College Board was cancelling the administration of the May SAT in South Korea. A cheating scandal was unearthed and in an effort to curb widespread cheating (and possibly to punish those involved) the College Board announced that the SAT would not be administered in South Korea in May. There was some debate whether the June test date would be cancelled as well. According to our sources there remains conflicting opinions whether the June test date will be cancelled. As of the publishing of this piece it has not yet formally been cancelled.

The United States continues to be the most desirable study destination within the world (Source: i-graduate).  International student enrollment grew by 16.5 percent in the last four years across the United States according to the IIE open door report.  The competition among universities for qualified students with sufficient financial means is increasing on a global scale.  Canada and Australia recently launched new initiatives to bolster their competitiveness.