Recruiting Intelligence

The NAFSA room was sold out; every seat taken.  

That morning we really weren’t sure what to expect with our session being held in the very furthest room on the 3rd floor of the New Orleans Convention Center. And that convention center is one of the largest we’ve ever seen. Like, you need an Uber to get from one end to the other. 

We could not have been more thrilled with the turn out. What everyone came for: new data, never before collected, on what international students are doing after they earn a US degree. 

What’s been missing from our community’s conversation on the value of US degrees for international students is real ROI. Sure, we talk about ROI: “94% of our students are employed or pursuing advanced degrees 6 months from graduation.” But we’ve never quantified actual ROI...until now.  

Today we’re sharing a preview of new research on the career progress of international students who graduated from US institutions. (The full report will publish later this summer. Be among the first to receive this and 2 other groundbreaking reports by pre-registering here. You’ll also get our NAFSA 2024 session slides.)  

This NAFSA research report will be the first of what will become an even deeper analysis based on more research between now and 2025. We want to truly understand what a US degree produces for international students. Is it worth their investment? Is it worth ours? This is data we’ve been wanting to mine for years.   

Our next opportunities to meet!  

GMAC Annual Conference, New Orleans, June 19 – 21, 2024. Ben will be presenting on how global elections are influencing student mobility. More than just the US presidential election has the power to upend what students will choose to do next.   

EducationUSA, Washington, D.C., July 30-August 1. Ben and Viginia Commonwealth University SIO Jill Blondin will share insights on Navigating Budget Challenges in International Recruitment: Practical Strategies for Every Phase.  

Be in touch! We’ll buy the coffee. 

I was extremely honored to have presented our latest research at NAFSA last week alongside Dr. Joanna Regulska, vice provost and dean of global affairs at UC Davis. UC Davis is one of the 12 innovative and forward-thinking institutions participating in this groundbreaking study. 

Our research involved a 22-question survey sent to international students who graduated from our 12 university partners between 2019 and 2023 (see below for the full list). With a 5.3% response rate, 1,797 graduates from 131 countries answered our survey questions. Of these, 1,323 still reside in the US, 474 live elsewhere. 

What we learned will have a direct impact on international student recruitment, as well as offer perspective on US immigration policy. Data informs how we make sense of the world and move forward as a community and a society. The data collected encourages us to understand the value of CPT/OPT to our international students and the US.  

Laid bare: the real outcomes and the positive impact international student graduates are having on the US economy.  

For those of you interested in taking part in our next survey, be in touch at info@intead.com. So many of our higher ed colleagues at the conference raised their hands to evaluate participating in the next research phase of this project. Be a part of that! 

Below we share key takeaways from our research and provide you quick access to the slides from our NAFSA presentation. Read on... 

Greetings from New Orleans!  

NAFSA 2024 is well underway, and we are here for it. Literally. There are a ton of Intead team members in the Big Easy this year and we have a lot to talk about, not to mention all that we have to learn. Are you here, too? Let us know (info@intead.com). We’d love to connect! 

If you’ve been following our posts, then you already know we’ve been waist deep in data for months. The result of which is three different reports that we think will help shape the way you approach international student recruitment. Actionable insights delivered. 

One of our new outputs is a continuation of our popular Know Your Neighborhood (KYN) series. This time, a global survey done in conjunction with the global study choice platform Studyportals. 

Let’s meet in New Orleans @ NAFSA 2024! 

Join one of Intead’s two presentations: 

• ChatGPT and AI: What are the real opportunities for enrollment management? 
  TODAY (Wed 5/29/2024) @ 1 p.m. NOCC Room 391
  Featuring David L. Di Maria, Senior International Officer & Associate Vice Provost for International Education at UMBC, and Iliana Joaquin, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Intead 

• Groundbreaking Data: International Student Employment After Graduation
  Thurs., May 30, 2024 @ 11:30 a.m. NOCC Room 398-399
  Featuring Dr. Joanna Regulska, Vice Provost and Dean – Global Affairs, UC Davis and NAFSA Board Member with Ben Waxman, Intead CEO 

Our newest KYN report is our first post-pandemic addition to the series. In it you will find an analysis of the influencing factors and desires of international education-seekers when choosing where and what to study. And this includes the influence of politics and political leadership on their decisions – a question mark for many of us as we move through this long (and painful?) US presidential election season. Does this matter to international students? You betchya! 

The analysis is a thought-provoking comparison to our oft cited 2016 Know Your Neighborhood survey (Intead Plus members can access the full series here), which was conducted with FPP EDU media on the precipice of and in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election when Mr. Donald Trump was a first time Republican Presidential Nominee. Our report lays bare the undeniable shifts in the priorities of international education-seekers in the time since, including their current perspective on choosing to study in the US based on the winner of the 2024 US presidential election (Mr. Donald Trump versus Mr. Joe Biden).  

Were our findings surprising? You be the judge: 

• 30% of the international student respondents are more likely to want to study in the US if Mr. Trump wins, compared to just 14% who said so in the lead up to the 2016 election. 
• 28% are less likely to want to study in the US if Mr. Trump wins, compared to 54% who said so in 2016. 
• 42% said it didn’t make a difference, compared to 32% in 2016. 

Interesting. And we haven’t even gotten to the qualitative insights that really illuminate international student sentiment. We will have that ready for you soon. 

Until then we are offering our blog readers key findings from the Know Your Neighborhood 2024 survey via a downloadable infographic that will give you a lot to think about. It will certainly give you something to talk about. In fact, we can’t think of a better conversation starter for those mingling about at NAFSA this week. Give it a try! Read on… 

No one on the Intead team has participated in an Iron Man competition, but the adrenaline levels we are experiencing make me wonder if preparing three different, compelling, in-depth reports in time for NAFSA next week compares. I'm confirming that no one from our team will be running, biking, or swimming to New Orleans for NAFSA, but we have been running the analytics on some really novel data all related to different aspects of the international student journey. We’re so close to the finish line! 

The work has been exciting, sometimes difficult, and the data is beyond beaten up at this point. The payoff will be so rewarding. We really can’t wait to share all we’ve learned.

Today, we are going to let a few whiskers of one of our cats out of the bag. 

Let’s meet in New Orleans @ NAFSA 2024! 

Join one of Intead’s two NAFSA presentations: 

We’ll be presenting insights in our two valuable Nafsa sessions: 

• ChatGPT and AI: What are the real opportunities for enrollment management? 
  Wed., May 29 @ 1 p.m. in NOCC, Room 391
  Featuring Dr. David L. Di Maria, SIO & Associate Vice Provost for International Education at UMBC with Iliana Joaquin, Director, Digital Marketing at Intead  

• Groundbreaking Data: International Student Employment After Graduation
  Thurs., May 30 @ 11:30 a.m. in NOCC, Room 398-399
  Featuring Dr. Joanna Regulska, Vice Provost and Dean - Global Affairs, UC Davis and Nafsa Board Member with Ben Waxman, CEO at Intead 

Be the first to know!  Pre-register to receive Intead’s 2024 proprietary reports as soon as we publish them. 

We are all seeking to understand the global landscape for international students. Our latest research takes a hard look at the US career options and outcomes – key drivers of international student decision-making. Career outcomes are, after all, a central metric for many international students. Our take: not understanding how your institution plays into the US international employment scene puts you at a recruitment disadvantage. 

So, we partnered with our colleagues at F1 Hire to examine both public and proprietary data sets.  

If you’re not familiar with F1 Hire, its web extension, designed for international students in the US, has become the must-have tool for OPT/CPT/H-1B job seekers. Together we analyzed the US Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM) and H-1B visa application data tracked by the US Department of Labor between 2018-2023. We will be sharing insights into the career pathway options for international students who entered the US workforce upon completing their degrees at US higher ed institutions as well as those who earned their degrees abroad. We reviewed this data against IIE Open Doors stats and proprietary data owned by F1 Hire. 

What we learned was fascinating.  

By drilling into this employment data, we see many ways institutions can use this information as a recruitment tool to demonstrate their success in helping international students find employment.  

An example: Our analysis of F1 Hire’s collection of 1.5 million job opportunities reveals significant disparities in H-1B opportunities relative to the number of international students by state. 

Here’s a sneak peek that surprised us: We found 6.4 H-1B opportunities in New Mexico per international student studying in state compared to just .34 H-1B opportunities in New York per in-state international student. Hello, New Mexico as a student destination! We simply didn't see that coming.

Our full report, which will be available soon, provides keen perspective on: 

• International student earning potential 
• Geographic insights (countries and regions) 
• Industry insights 
• India-specific insights 
• Job search insights 

And of course, we offer our take on what this all means for your international student recruitment efforts. 

Read on to register and be among the first to receive our full report. Below, we also share key takeaways from our research… 

An influx of petroleum dollars tends to turn heads. Just ask Guyana.

This small South American country used to be among the Western Hemisphere’s poorest. But that’s all changing since Exxon Mobil discovered oil just offshore in 2015. And not just some oil, but more than 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas. The country is now on track to be a top 20 oil producer within the next 3 years (by 2027). In 2022, it was reclassified as a high-income country by the World Bank.

As you might imagine, Guyana’s neighbors have taken notice. Venezuela, for one, has ratcheted up rhetoric on the long-running territorial dispute claiming the land as theirs. The US, too, has shown a heightened interest in the small country. Case in point, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled there just last summer to meet with Guyana’s president and key members of the cabinet.

All interesting. But why write about it here? Because this is the kind of ripening market that should catch your attention if your role is about expanding your international student recruitment to new markets.

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

• 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
  
• GMAC 2024 Annual Conference in New Orleans, June 19-21, 2024

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

Obviously, Guyana’s potential is no replacement for that of booming Indian or even the huge but slowing Chinese student markets. After all, its population is a small 800,000 (note: 27% or approximately 216,000 are in your key age group 10 – 24). But, for the proactive, trend watching recruiter looking to make an early entrance and develop relationships in an emerging region, Guyana could make a lot of sense. The cherry on top: Guyana is an English-speaking country – the only one in South America. 

To put it more plainly: 

• There is no language barrier for Guyanese students heading to the US, UK, Canada, or Australia.
• Guyana’s middle class is growing, rapidly.
• There are some concerns about safety in the country, even beyond the threat of opportunist neighbors, making relative perceived safety in the US less of an issue than say to a student/family from a place like Japan.

Got you thinking? Let’s take a closer look at Guyanese culture, education, and economy and how these factors might or might not connect to your international student recruitment strategy. And a big thank you to Dr. Mellissa Ifill of the University of Guyana for taking time to weigh in on this post! Read on… 

Have we been selling ourselves short? A recent working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research has got us thinking, "Yeah, maybe." 

The not so fine print in “Late Bloomers: The Aggregate Implications of Getting Education Later in Life” is this: the age at which you get your degree matters. The economists found that the younger you are when you get degreed, the stronger your financial return on the investment from that degree. As a result, it may be time to take a closer look at how you present your institution’s ROI.  

Events you won’t want to miss:

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
  
• GMAC 2024 Annual Conference in New Orleans, June 19-21, 2024

The Late Bloomers paper (link below), which looks at university grads beginning with the US 1930 birth cohort onward, also reveals that around 20% of students obtain their 4-year degree after age 30, hence the late bloomer label. A not so insignificant figure, with more than a few not so insignificant implications.  

Sure, the popular notion that university grads are early 20-somethings remains true enough, but the 1-in-5-student stat reveals this belief is not the whole truth – and never was. Turns out the non-traditional student market is significant (you’ve read our series on the non-traditional student advantage, yes?).  

Significant and new with this paper: the understanding that late bloomers’ ROI may not be as strong as once thought. On the flip side, the new data analysis means the ROI for younger grads is even stronger than we believed. Interesting, and worth promoting.  

Other notable findings from the paper: Late bloomers have helped narrow the gender and racial gaps in university enrollment, even despite a widening racial gap among the early university grad set. And, late bloomers account for more than half of the growth in the share of university-educated adults from 1960 to 2019.  

There’s a lot to unpack here, including why we think you may be selling yourself short based on these fresh insights. Read on…we’ll keep it actionable. 

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… 

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… 

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… 

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. 

2023 ushered in some much-needed numbers. Enrollment rose among undergraduate (+2.1%) and graduate (+0.7%) students. And while freshmen enrollment trended downward (-3.6%), interest in shorter-term credentials was on the rise (+9.9%). All this per National Student Clearinghouse figures. 

Likewise, IIE Open Doors data showed a 12% increase of incoming international students in 2022-23. And the more up-to-date SEVIS data indicated 2023 fall enrollment maintained this welcomed momentum. All good news in aggregate. As we parse all these data sets, there are interesting findings and nuanced opportunities to be sure. 

Yet, all news was not good. The chaos of the world at large continued to make its way onto campuses across the nation. Safety continues to be a growing concern, and your prospective students and their families are unsure what to make of it. More admissions inquiries shift from campus life to safety and mental health support services. Also important to note: social justice activities influence an increasing number of applicants. 

In the midst of it all, we do our best to use this blog to weigh in on topics that matter to enrollment teams like yours. So, it’s always interesting for us to look back and see which posts were your faves for most valuable content from the year. There are always a few surprises. 

In 2023, there was a ton of interest in all things internationalization – especially around how student activity in India and China is changing. But that’s not all.

We were told our posts on student career prep, social media trends, and budgeting framework were also really helpful. So, with that, we share our top 10 posts from 2023, as chosen by you, our readers. Plus our staff pick for the most valuable post of 2023. If you missed any of these top pieces, you’ll want to read on…