Recruiting Intelligence

By 2025, the Lumina Foundation wants to announce: Mission Accomplished!

They want to announce that 60% of Americans are obtaining a college degree, certificate or other high quality post-secondary credential. Hey, MOOCS, do you think that you will count?   

We have admired for many years the single, focused mission of this foundation. This month, Lumina published its report "a stronger nation through higher education." It's not only a beautifully prepared report and website, but we love the message and data provided to all of us.  

Lumina Foundation CEO Jamie Merisotis, a relentless advocate for education, says, "we see even more encouraging signs - unmistakable signals that the need, the hunger for education is stronger than ever." He quotes that three of four Americans believe that a postsecondary degree or credential is important to attaining a better quality of life, while fully 90% believe it's important for the nation to increase college attainment rates. We second that. 

Demographics are destiny. And educational institutionals rely on demographic trends to chart their futures. In most cases, the demographic trends that are most important to any particular institution are fairly narrowly defined by geography. A relatively small percentage of US institutions can effectively draw students from across the country and around the world. 

To give us insight into the demographic trends that will define our future, the U.S. government's National Center for Education Statistic's published it's very comprehensive updated Education Statistics to 2022 . Do the math -- you are only 8 years from this recruiting environment. 

Five Trends to Watch in Higher Education, published this month by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a management consulting group, has some dramatic and valuable things to say. You may recall that last week, we presented our thoughts on another BCG report in our Intead Insight: Can Millennials Change Marketing Forever? Uh, yes (eyeroll). We certainly consider both of these BCG reports worthy your attention. 

In this latest BCG report, the authors talk about influential forces rather than trends, saying that "five forces are reshaping Higher Education." Today, we'll review these forces and offer up a few of the report's charts that we find the most informative and intriguing.

"How Millennials Are Changing the Face of Marketing Forever -- The Reciprocity Principle" is a research piece published by BCG (Boston Consulting Group), a management consulting firm. While the report reviews how millennials interact with a range of consumer brands and products, there are valuable lessons for those of us in academia. After all, this age group is pretty heavily represented in our classrooms, hallways, and registrars. Let's see what we can learn from BCG.

In honor of the U.S. Federal Tax Filing Deadline this week, we dedicate this Intead Insight to another federal agency with filing requirements – the US Immigration and Customs Service and the SEVIS system that many of you know all too well (and wish you didn't).

We all know that the visa process plays a significant role in the university enrollment process. We highly recommend you listen to our podcast with former State Department Officer Tony Edson for valuable insights into the State Department's Visa Services.

"Will I get a job in India after I graduate from your institution?"

This is probably one of the most challenging questions for an US admissions officer from a prospective Indian student. In contrast to the question about scholarships which is bound to ocurr as well, the admissions officer has no control and very limited knowledge about the value of the degree in the Indian market.

The reality is that U.S. universities have done a very poor job tracking, let alone supporting, their international students' career opportunities in student home countries. Let's see if we can help.

The vast majority of companies still treat social media as a fad and social phenomena. Their use of social media tools for marketing is rudimentary and the equivalent of marketing by billboard. Not to say that billboards are ineffective. It's just that digital marketing and social media offer a different marketing opportunity and by and large, folks simply don't know how to use it effectively.

And so, because social media marketing is free, more and more companies are putting up their billboards (first it was websites back in the 1990s and now it is social media accounts). So here's the thing: digital marketing is a waste of time given the number of billboards now posted, UNLESS you have the infrastructure to create and disseminate compelling content and track the online activity.

And so, the answer is "yes" that will require more investment in digital tools, staff or vendors. Effective marketing is not free afterall. Even when using social media. Sorry to be the ones breaking the news.

Today we want to highlight data from a report from Sprout, a company providing social media management tools.  

How do you successfully market education? Is today's youth so disaffected by bleak job prospects that they just don't care? Are parents turned off by inflated and growing tuition costs?

Higher ed is increasingly challenged to demonstrate that education matters. More than ever before, higher ed must demonstrate that there is a positive return on the investment of time and money. What's a university to do?

Objective research to the rescue: the Pew Research Center recently provided a useful study, called “The Rising Cost of NOT Going to College.”

Chart 1 (below) shows the growing divergence of earnings between groups with different levels of education.  As you can see the gap has risen from generation to generation. Today’s millennials, with at least a Bachelor degree, earn significantly more than less educated full-time worker in the same age bracket of 25-32. 

China is the second market in our series on niche or micro-markets in student recruiting. Last week, we covered the Indian market as presented by Lakshmi Iyer, today we are sharing with you the insights from Kim Morrison from GrokGlobal on the Chinese market. Kim gave a great presentation at the annual AIEA conference in Washington, D.C., in February 2014.

We recommend that you download the presentation which contains many more fascinating slides than we can present here (registration required - Please note that the actual presentation starts on slide 5).  

India is the second largest source of international students coming to the U.S. Many factors are contributing to this flow of students and current projections suggest future growth in the number of Indian students studying in the U.S. and other countries. In looking at the Indian market you will find a very diverse student population and complex market than many outside observers assume. When we here at Intead evaluate the Indian market, we consider the many "micro-markets" within the country that are more likely to be effective for international student recruitment.