Recruiting Intelligence

Innovators in education are using technology to produce better educational outcomes. Another set of innovators in academia are using technology to differentiate higher education program offerings and stand out in the global marketplace.

We will share a range of innovation trends in pedagogy with you today. Ever since we traveled to Australia and talked with UK universities last year for our last ebook on agent management, we have been spending more time evaluating and researching these markets. 

While the headline for this post may be a bit overly provocative, we hope it caught your attention and you will read on. We think this is an important one and we want all hands on deck. You are an important participant in maintaining educational integrity as market forces push to streamline your institution.

The Delta project is one of our favorite data sources and this latest report did not disappoint. Their lastest Delta Project Report looks at what drives the cost of higher education.

The report identifies the main cost drivers and shows that higher ed headcount as a ratio of the number of students enrolled remained relatively flat at public institutions and increased x percent at private universities (see Chart 1 below).

From a business point of view, the challenge is productivity: institutions did not produce any growth per employee. Before you start sputtering about using this measuring stick for the academic market, bear with us for just a couple paragraphs. We can leave it to your colleagues conferring MBAs to debate why there was no growth. They can also consider how to establish benchmarks for measuring growth for education. For our purposes today, we are simply looking at this as a financial and statistical fact that other parts of the economy have shown increased productivity or more output per employee hour. 

Student retention is one of the key buzz words in higher education. As a metric, this one is a key indicator or an individual institution's success in providing a valued education and in aggregate, an indicator of our country's ability to export education. 

University President is a high profile and very challenging position. Trends in higher education are not making the position easier. As a result, we were interested in this little study of What Presidents Think underwritten by Pearson and published by the Chronicle of Higher Education. 

• What motivates and interests this generation?
• How can universities communicate and how does this student group communicate with each other?
• What can we tell about how this generation consumes content?

The millennial index highlights five different segments and personas (See Chart 1). Depending on your focus (undergraduate vs. graduate studies), you will find a different share of these segments among your target audience. 

This INTEAD insight is going to report on our learning. Have a look at our chart below. Over 50% of all emails were opened on a mobile device in December 2013 according to Return Path, a large email solutions provider.  27% were opened on a desktop client such as Outlook and 22% from a webmail client such as Gmail opened within a browser. 

In this Intead Insight, we take a deeper look at the long term trends in international student enrollment. Universities need a long-term commitment to build internationalization programs. Successful international enrollment requires dedicated staff resources and expertise as well as campus-wide support. 

We are using the open door data, collected annually by the Institute of International Education (IIE). This year to year view of international student enrollment trends is extremely helpful. The most recent report showed a 7.2% overall increase in the total number of international students studying in the U.S. which represents 3.9% of all college level enrollment in the U.S.

This has been a momentous year for universities interested in using commission-based recruiting agents. The NACAC decision seems to have lifted a black cloud from many institutions and we know of many that are actively establishing or expanding agent relationships to enhance enrollment capabilities in international markets.

We are not policy makers at INTEAD but hands-on practitioners helping universities compete for the right students in a global marketplace. And we are passionate about the importance and role of education in all of our international societies--the empirical data clearly shows that education is key to improving the lives of individuals and societies as a whole.

Social Media use in China is important and relevant for U.S. universities recruiting students in China. If you are a regular reader of Intead Insights or our blogs, you will not be surprised by this message. Hanover Research published a concise and very readable summary, "Social Media and Web Marketing in China," reviewing the main social media platforms in China and incorporating compiled research highlights from Zinch, WES, The Guardian Network, the College Board and other sources.