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Recruiting Intelligence

Recruiting Intel Digest - The Most Useful Stuff from Q1 2024

 

Admissions teams are working a little harder this admissions season, thanks to a few external inputs. We’re looking at you Supreme Court and FAFSA. That’s not to mention the many conversations we know you’re having on standardized tests. Just a bit more to add to your standard workload of actually recruiting, admitting and enrolling students. So, if you’re a little (or a lot) behind on your Recruiting Intelligence reading, then this is the post for you. We’ve compiled all our top news from Q1 2024 into this one spot.  

  • IMPORTANT NOTE: HAPPENING TODAY  “Shattering Accessibility Limits in Digital Learning,” a Chronicle of Higher Ed-hosted webinar. Featuring Gallaudet President Roberta Cordano and ansrsource CEO Rajiv Narayana. Register here. (All registrants will receive the recording even if they cannot attend.) 

Let’s talk international student enrollment at the upcoming AIRC Spring Symposium on April 30, 2024. This one-day event in beautiful Niagara, Canada, will explore best practices in developing, managing, assessing, and sustaining the many partnerships that are so foundational to international enrollment success. While there, be sure to attend Intead's session all about student recruitment marketing budgets – we've got some great new insights to share. Register today! 

And look for us at these other industry events coming around the bend: 

  • ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, May 1-3, 2024. 
  • NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024.  

Hope to see you soon! 


ICYMI: What we were posting about this quarter:  

  • STEM OPT – personal narratives and growing demand 
  • LMS “learnability” – accessibility is not the same as learnability 
  • Shortcut tools (AI anyone?) – how to take a template approach wisely 
  • Vietnam as a top student source – and not just for US institutions 
  • Budgeting framework tools – a free download to help your team plan ahead 
  • Audience segmentation – why cultural nuance matters 
  • Social media – a looksee into what your peers are up to online 
  • And more 

 All really good stuff. Read on… 

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AIEA 2024 Reflections: Tend to the Roots

 

I’ll be honest with you, the AIEA 2024 conference produced a tremendous number of insights from so many leaders in our field. It has been a challenge reducing, selecting, and summarizing those I think will be most valuable for you. But sharing great ideas is central to why we publish this blog, so today I’m narrowing down a set of seemingly disparate ideas and tying them together, so they are valuable, actionable, and transferrable to you.  

Hey, use the comments below to let me know if I succeeded. 

For the observant, there is SO very much to take back to your desk from these gatherings. And since we had three Intead staff present and presenting at AIEA 2024, we came away with a lot.  


Events you won’t want to miss:

“Shattering Accessibility Limits in Digital Learning,” a Chronicle of Higher Ed-hosted webinar, featuring Gallaudet President Roberta Cordano and ansrsource CEO Rajiv Narayana. Register here. (All registrants will receive the recording even if they cannot attend. ASL interpreters will be present.)

The AIRC Spring Symposium on April 30. This one-day, in-person event in beautiful Niagara, Canada, will explore best practices in developing, managing, assessing, and sustaining the many partnerships that are foundational to international enrollment success. While there, be sure to attend Intead's session all about student recruitment marketing budgets – we've got some great new insights to share. Register today!


Many of the conversations we took part in or led at AIEA 2024 centered around fighting for and justifying internationalization budgets. One important notion (credit to David DiMaria, SIO, UMBC, (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) comes from the Japanese concept of Nemawashi (根回し). The term means “turning or taking care of the roots” and suggests that growth comes from taking good care of the foundation. There’s a lot of truth in this. 

As you seek to initiate a new project or grow something already in place, take time to meet with the many stakeholders individually and understand their points of view and concerns before the power brokers or full committee meets to take a vote on your plans and budget requests. Lay the groundwork so that you know the outcome before that decision point arrives. 

This is just one of the many ideas we’ve been ruminating on since our trip to AIEA. Read on for our selection of key actionable takeaways and our slides on data, AI in enrollment, and entrepreneurship in higher ed. 

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How “learnable” is your digital content?

 

Today, an important and fascinating aspect of how EdTech is evolving for higher ed. Little discussed, but hugely valuable to your student success efforts. We are focusing on both aspirational and pragmatic approaches to solving specific digital accessibility challenges that are likely not on your radar. 

We’ll start here: Learning Management Systems (LMS) are designed to help faculty and students connect effectively. But what happens when the vast amount of content housed on those tools is not given full accessibility considerations?  

Today’s digital classroom embraces the talents and perspectives of learners with neurodivergencies, aural impairment, visual impairment–including students who are partially or fully colorblind–and those for whom English is not their primary language, among a range of other diversities and learning differences.  

But while the online classroom roster of tools has evolved, the digital content thrown into your LMS has largely failed to keep up. In fact, our current digital content is unable to provide full access to as many as 1 in 5 students in the US. And the Department of Justice is taking notice as an increasing number of institutions are facing legal challenges to “digital accessibility.”  Non-compliance has consequences as seen in a number of significant lawsuits making headlines. 


Join This High-Value Webinar

“Shattering Accessibility Limits in Digital Learning,” a Chronicle of Higher Edhosted webinar with visionary panelists: Gallaudet University President Roberta Cordano, DREDF Senior Staff Attorney Ayesah E. Lewis, and ansrsource President and CEO Rajiv Narayana. The webinar will be moderated byReporter Kelly Field, who covers, in detail, education and disability access for the Chronicle of Higher Ed, among other media outlets.

Register HERE (no cost to attend and registrants will receive the recording)


Digital accessibility stopped being about just a Dark Mode toggle a long time ago, and the content passively or casually “thrown onto” your LMS by faculty with competing priorities often overlooks accessibility accommodations. The current state simply isn’t going to cut it.

Today, digital accessibility includes formatting and presenting content in a way that accommodates the vast variety of student needs. Providing alternative text for images, closed captions for videos, and text transcripts for audio content are just a few of the features that help your learners learn. 

Read on for a few valuable, actionable tips and an institutional assessment process that may help you make smart decisions and engage your colleagues 

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Required: Cultural Nuance in Edu Marketing - 3 Helpful Examples

 

Cultural nuance is no “nice to have.” It’s a must. Does your current marketing team understand this? Do they have the deep consumer insights needed to attract, recruit, and convert different cultural cohorts? Let’s get into it.  

When we talk about audience segmentation – the customization of content by region or country or academic interest AND country/region – what we’re talking about is the language and metaphors, images, and offers that resonate. We’re talking about deep consumer insight research that enables marketing efforts to move the needle in a competitive marketplace. Without these insights, your colorful examples, imagery, phrases, and language can only take a campaign so far.  

Non-marketers you can roll your eyes if you like. We suggest you take a look at our 3 examples below for a quick look under the hood at how deep market research informs the creative process and produces stronger results. 


Opportunities to Meet In Person 

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations and we hope you can join us. 

  • The Forum on Education Abroad in Boston, March 21, 2024
  • AIRC Spring Symposium and ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, April 30 - May 3, 2024
  • NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024

Let us know if you’ll share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 


As we develop approaches to attract and recruit students to institutions, we carefully consider what they will find relatable and help them make wise decisions. What will capture their attention among the many ads and posts they see online? What phrases will resonate with them as they consider their options – at each point in the decision process (the marketing funnel)?

Essentially, we are trying to figure out what will pause their scroll and prompt the smart click.

Prospects can only follow up with so many offers. In the end, they will apply to somewhere between 5 and 20 institutions. Most will receive 3 to 7 acceptance letters, sometimes more. What will help them make a wise decision for their particular situation? Will the content you create and disseminate influence them to apply and then enroll? 

So many institutions believe their own marketing and put out the most generic messaging because they think the great pool of prospective students will simply find them and connect with them. Some faculty and administrative leaders still believe that "marketing" is unnecessary (or worse) because their institutions are clearly excellent and students will simply find and select them. This point of view persists within the academic community -- marketing as snake oil sales. And hey, there are plenty of marketers out here lacking integrity in their approach, so, we understand the disdain for the marketing field.

To be clear, effective marketing is communication with integrity. Effective marketing helps consumers make wise decisions. Full stop.

Read on to explore the use of motivational language, colorful metaphors, and local language to create marketing campaigns that will attract attention, resonate, inform, and recruit. 

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The International Student POV...Intead Staffers Reflect on OPT

 

Tianyu Shen is a business analyst from China. Isabel Aucca is a digital campaign manager from Peru. These two members of the Intead team, both on STEM OPT programs through Northeastern University and Hult International Business School respectively, have amazing stories as international students, travelers, explorers, and knowledge workers here in the US.

Many of you already know Tianyu and Isabel through the conferences they attend for Intead and the work they do with our network. If you haven’t had that pleasure, be sure to introduce yourself to them at an upcoming industry conference (AIEA, NAFSA, AIRC, ICEF, etc.) These two super talents bring their skills to our work in their respective fields (market research, business and data analytics, digital campaigns development and optimization, and competitor analyses) along with incredibly valuable international perspectives.

Their comments below will quickly give you a sense of what it is like to be in their shoes and understand a bit more about what drives them. And since so many of you work to create fulfilling experiences for international students, we thought we’d use this platform to share words that will surely resonate with you and your team.


Opportunities to Meet In Person 

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations and we hope you can join us. 

  • AIRC Spring Symposium in Niagara, Canada, April 30, 2024
  • ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, May 1-3, 202
  • NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024

Let us know if you’ll share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 


As you read the perspective below, consider what it is that drove their decisions to study and work outside of their home countries. Note the courageous decisions they made and the personality traits that are likely common to many of the international students you are seeking. It is these kinds of personal reflections that inform larger marketing strategies and help us create truly engaging content to attract future international students to our institutions.

Tianyu, who grew up in China, attended an English language institute in Boston before earning his undergrad degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and then his master’s at Northeastern University. As excellent as this background is, it does not provide andy indication of the genuinely joyful, energetic, and thoughtful person he is.

What he has to say about where he is now: “It’s human nature. When you receive something and people support you, you want to give back. For me, I feel so grateful for all of the education I received. It’s life-changing. And I’m grateful for all the people who helped me out along the way. Now, working at Intead I can help others who are standing where I once stood. I’m so thankful.”

The feeling is absolutely mutual.

Isabel, an undeniable dynamo from Peru who speaks three languages (Spanish, Portuguese, and English), earned her undergrad from the Universidad del Pacifico in Lima and her master’s from Hult International Business School in Massachusetts.

“Arriving at a place like Intead, it’s the purpose they have, it’s the type of company where you can be hands-on in every project – all of varying client scopes – and so many different ways to engage with the work. On one project I wear a digital hat, another I’m focused on research, and on others I get to be really creative about the overall marketing plan. That sets personalities like me up for success."

Isabel absolutely does her part to set us (and that means you) up for success, as well.

Following our recent #AIRC2023 full-day digital marketing workshop in December, both Isabel and Tianyu independently posted to LinkedIn about their experience helping others learn their craft during the workshop. This post brings their reflections to you.

Read on…

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Budgeting Framework for Student Enrollment Projects (and More)

 

Are you in a position to approve funding requests from others? Or are you the one asking for funds? We have some perspective that can help you either way.

Today, we are offering up a framework for evaluating budget requests based on your ability to achieve defined goals. Just in time for budget season. It's a quick one-pager.

Here's the thing: your budget is more than the sum of its line items - an idea that’s not lost on you. After all, numbers tell stories. Like the dollars that allowed your team to meet international students at the airport. Or, ensured your first-years first connected at your well-planned international student orientation. Or, that scholarship fund that changed yield results. Real stories. Important stories. Made possible, in part, by funds allocated through strategic planning with scarce financial resources. 

Because, where you allocate funds represents what you find most important. In other words: your budget is an expression of your values.

The budgeting framework we offer up today is there to help you conceptualize your budget requests with your goals clearly in mind. Your student-first goals.

Ensuring your budget holds space for these stories, these values, is so important. Because everything from your institution’s mission down to the smallest line item on your Excel spreadsheet should come back to supporting students. All this assumes you have the data that backs up those stories. We are not talking about one-offs and lovely but lonely anecdotes. 

Recently we caught up with our good friend and colleague Dr. Jill Blondin, Associate Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at Virginia Commonwealth University, who by the way was recently named SIO of the Year by IIE (Go Jill!). You may know Jill through the strategic budgeting workshop she runs along with Western Michigan University’s Dr. Paulo Zagalo-Melo, Associate Provost, and Annette Cummins, Assistant Director Global Education and Business Manager. Good news there: Jill and Paulo will be hosting a 2.0 version of their budgeting workshop all about revenue-generating strategies later this year. Watch for updates!  

The perspective Jill offered makes so much sense: “Align your budget with your strategy. Not the other way around.”  

Sage advice because as we all know too well, losing sight of our real goals is all too easy once we get deep into the budgeting weeds. We see numbers and things get tactical fast.  

This is especially true when the dollars we get aren’t the dollars we need. Or think we need. The truth is by keeping our eyes trained on creating a truly student-first experience, international recruitment and student services teams can often accomplish way more than we may at first realize when budget numbers fall flat.  

As Jill said to us, “The international office should not be the alpha and the omega of an international student’s experience.” Indeed, an international office cannot be everything to everyone. Middle ground collaboration is essential. Integrating international students into the full campus experience is the point anyway and your budget should reflect this. More on cross-campus collaboration in another post.  

For today, we offer a quick reboot of our popular “3 Essential Budget Questions: A Framework for Planning.” Use this as a guide to focus and prioritize your annual budget discussions this year.  

Our budget framework asks you to take a step back and reflect on whether your actual results are feeding your goals. This worksheet guidance is yours free for download. As you think through your budget needs and priority projects, keep in mind that you want your budget strategy to reflect your student-first approach.  

Read on to access this useful budgeting tool 

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The Changing International Enrollment Realities…and a nod to AIEA

 

A key driver for international students: the ability to gain hands-on work experience in their fields of study.   

If you’re paying attention to SEVIS stats, then you already know the demand for Optional Practical Training (OPT) has been steady for years now. Its numbers show that in 2022, the US pushed through 117,301 new OPT authorizations and 64,844 new STEM OPT authorizations for F-1 students. That’s up 87% and 307% respectively in one decade.  

The significant jump in the latter stat reflects improved opportunities for international STEM students. The STEM fields of study list keeps expanding and the length of stay upped in 2016 from 17-months to 24-months beyond the first year. All really good news for international students. Even better news for institutions like yours that recruit and support the students as well as employers like us who get to tap into their skills and drive. (Coming soon: A post about the journey of two of Intead’s very own and ambitious STEM OPT team members. Stay tuned!)  

The STEM OPT and how it plays out for international student recruitment and retention will be a big part of what we will be addressing head on next week at the AIEA conference in Washington, D.C.  


AIEA Is On! So many opportunities for idea exchange and learning. 

If you’ll be there (and we know many of you will be), sit in on our session, The View as a Data Analyst: International Enrollment Realities, on Feb. 19 at 10 a.m. featuring:  

  • Dr. Michael Wilhelm, Associate Provost for Global Partnerships and International Education at University of North Carolina Wilmington 
  • Dr. Khald Aboalayon, Academic Program Director, MS Data Analytics, SPS at Clark University 
  • Iliana Joaquin, Intead’s Senior Digital Marketing Manager 

Other sessions with Ben and Iliana will cover a range of important topics including global digital marketing, international alumni engagement, AI and enrollment management, and a fave: being an entrepreneur in a bureaucratic environment.  


While tapping into the STEM OPT student audience is not without its downstream hurdles (the not-so-small undertaking of building appropriate programs, training faculty, and developing employer connections come to mind), doing so feels like a no-brainer.  

We know your prospective students are eager to earn a quality degree and build a career. So, if your academics align with their goals, then you’ve already got their interest. Studies also show international students vying for STEM OPT are more likely to complete their degrees – fabulous on many levels. We’ll be diving much deeper into this topic later in the year. We’ll keep you posted. But you get the idea. 

The question now: how do you get them to your campus? Read on for the actionable insights… 

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Peer Check: How Edu Marketers Use Social to Engage

 

Don’t blame Gen Z, but their insatiable appetite for social media can create quite the content grind on the backend. We hear it from our clients. Why must engaging social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, which afford marketers all the playfulness and flexibility you could ever want, require so much time and attention? It’s the lament of the modern marketer. 

Content creation is not time intensive. You can use ChatGPT and crank out reams of it in minutes. (As if!) 

See last week's post for our perspective on the use of ChatGPT for enrollment marketing (or any marketing).

Engaging, authentic, effective content creation is highly time-intensive. 

Our advice: stay calm and scroll on. Sometimes, you just need a little inspiration from others who are playing in your same space.  


Opportunities to Meet In Person 

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations and we hope you can join us. 

  • 2024 AIEA Annual Conference in DC, Feb 18-21, 2024
  • ICEF North America in Niagara Falls, Canada, May 1-3, 2024
  • NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024

Let us know if you’ll come share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 


So today, we invite you to pause for a quick competitor looksee. We’re not talking about fast-moving trends – those fleeting fads are here one day and gone the next, literally. Remember Wednesday’s (Jenna Ortega’s) dance on TikTok? 22 billion views in 2023. Loved it, right? Not so much on anyone’s mind today, though. 

You can always check TikTok’s Trending Intelligence for the latest. Instead, let’s focus on more lasting ways to use social media in your digital marketing. And yes, we will be checking on what your peers are up to. 

So, read on to get an edge in your social media strategy and draw inspiration (or perhaps critique) from a few real-world applications.  

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The Questionable Use of Shortcut Tools – ChatGPT and Templates

 

Until Threads, ChatGPT was the fastest-growing consumer app in history taking a short 2 months to amass 100 million users. Though Threads’ frenetic growth has tapered (and then some), interest in the AI tool has more than 1.4 billion visitors actively engaged with it each month.  

Today, it’s all about the tools we use that offer us shortcuts to our work as marketers. While ChatGPT is the latest shortcut tool, it is not so different in so many ways from the old school marketing template that saves us time and if misused (like ChatGPT) reduces, even eliminates, our creativity and effectiveness.

On the surface, we can point to a plan well executed, right? Our starting point has already been legitimized based on past performance (ChatGPT or some previously used design or report template). So, it stands to reason that using those tools will produce similar results. Uhm, maybe…

But probably not.

It is basic human nature. Use of shortcut tools often means we slack off on scrutinizing the details of what we are producing. Less scrutiny of what we produce and deliver to the world, less customization of our messaging and content, means we are prone to error. Some of those errors can be hugely damaging.

There goes our credibility with our target audiences.


Opportunities to Meet In Person 

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations and we hope you can join us. 

  • 2024 AIEA Annual Conference in DC, Feb 18-21, 2024
  • ICEF North America in Niagara Falls, Canada, May 1-3, 2024
  • NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024

Let us know if you’ll share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 


Looking particularly at ChatGPT, its ability to read and synthesize the entirety of the internet is amazing, staggering. Searching and understanding for complex information and analysis of huge datasets - what a time savings. Useful with even not so complex information. If only it provided reliable results without blending information inappropriately and even fabricating results out of thin air. Recent ads we've heard from AI service providers include the claim, "hallucination-free AI." Uhm, what?

Can you truly promise that? How did we get to a place where you need to promise that? 

When even the experts cannot explain to us how and why AI is producing falsehoods, when we get information that might have completely fabricated results and basic users (non-subject matter experts) cannot identify which pieces of information are accurate and which are not, we are in serious trouble.

Read on for perspective and our actionable what to do checklist. We want to help you, as a marketer, use shortcuts like AI and marketing templates wisely and avoid falling into the banality of functionality – the death knell of any marketing effort and potentially, the killer of a brand's soul. 

Important Note to Readers: This is not another article on how to master ChatGPT prompts to get ‘genius’ responses.  

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Yes, You Should be in Vietnam, but here’s the thing…

 

With the very real concern of declining domestic enrollment numbers, US institutions are right to broaden their recruitment strategies, including their international reach. Thinking beyond traditional student markets, like China and India, is old news by now.  You’ve diversified your draw and Vietnam has been on your list, right?

Don’t get us wrong, China remains an important market and neighboring India is clearly a recruitment stronghold. Learn more about these sending countries in recent posts here (China) and here (India). Today, we focus on Vietnam and why this country offers value to institutions looking at best practices and diversification in their international student draw. 

When we run our global marketing workshops, more than a majority of the institutions attending identify Vietnam as a student market they've targeted as a growth opportunity. The competition for students coming from Vietnam is only growing.


We’ll be at AIEA in DC in about 4 weeks and participating in 3 great presentations: 

  • AI for enrollment management  
  • Entrepreneurial leadership in bureaucratic environments 
  • A discussion around International Student Points of Entry and a new publication to be released later in 2024 

And of course, we will be presenting at NAFSA in New Orleans in late May. If you’d like to schedule time to chat over coffee instead of over Zoom, please be in touch (info@intead.com). 


According to the latest numbers from Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), approximately 190,000 Vietnamese students study abroad, the majority focusing on post-secondary institutions. That was for the 2019-20 academic year, though it appears the numbers are as strong or better today. Globally, Vietnam ranks as a top 10 sender of outbound student mobility per the ICEF Monitor. 

The majority of these students head to South Korea or Japan for university. Depending on who you ask, either 66,000 Vietnamese students studied in South Korea in 2022 per Capstone Education or just over 37,000 according to Korea Educational Development Institute. Less disputed are Japan’s numbers, which Study Japan puts at 49,000 incoming Vietnamese students in 2021. 

The third most popular destination is the US, hosting nearly 22,000 Vietnamese students in 2022-23 per the latest IIE Open Doors data. A distant third, yes, but considering the literal distance (8000+ miles between LA and Ho Chi Minh City as the crow flies), the numbers are encouraging. The reasons for choosing a US education we most often hear when speaking with Vietnamese students: 

  • A US degree is strong 
  • Classroom instruction encourages creativity and develops critical thinking 
  • Soft skills are taught 
  • Access to a multinational job market

That all makes sense from a prospective student perspective. But, why should your institution choose to actively recruit in Vietnam? What might make these students interested in your institution? And will it be a worthwhile effort for your institution’s enrollment growth? 

Below we share 3 big reasons why we find Vietnam a top student source for markets around the world and offer an insider’s take on the Vietnamese student mindset. To shape our thinking, we tapped our long-time colleague Hien Dao, founder and CEO of Golden Path Academics Vietnam, a Hanoi-based program that preps Vietnamese students for global academic and professional environments. She’s a great resource for any Vietnamese student recruitment initiative. Read on for insights. 

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