Recruiting Intelligence

Today's Intead Insight may appear like an advertisement for Coursera. It's not. It just looks that way because the figures from Coursera are remarkable. They have grown from two courses to 532 courses within 24 months. From one university partner to 107. Let us just say, BAM!

International student enrollment is becoming an important part of tuition revenue management in many universities. The revenue side is obviously only one part of the equation and it matters how much it will cost the admissions department to recruit the international student cohort. In the United States, we have seen very little publicly available data to benchmark international recruitment costs. So we trekked to Australian to see if our colleagues there could give us a little bit of guidance on benchmarking our expenses to recruit internationally.

Universities are constantly on the cusp of behavior changes since their young undergraduate applicants include a larger percentage of early adopters of technology than the overall population. Even graduate applicants and the non-traditional students are made up of large groups of digital natives. This reality will have an impact how universities recruit and teach students and stay in touch with alumni. Those willing to make an investment in the very near term will quickly outpace the competition. Let us explain...

One of the key functions of higher education programs is to award a credential. The credential signals to our environment that we have passed certain hurdles, mastered certain content. The certificate provides a filter for the hiring market to help managers select candidates worth investing time and effort to interview and hire with a level of confidence that talent and skills have been pre-established and pre-evaluated.

Consumer behavior is changing, in part because consumer options are increasing rapidly. Simple case in point, how many channels did you have to choose from when you watched TV as a child?

Graduate Business Schools have become globally oriented education institutions. In the United States business schools are experiencing strong financial headwinds and international students have been a welcome source of tuition revenue. Competition among schools has and will intensify based on a number of trends: schools are increasing their recruiting range, launching hybrid and online programs reaching way beyond their traditional recruiting radius. Obviously bigger brands and budgets are taking market share from local schools.The latest news that Thunderbird business school is accepting an investment from Laureate and forming a joint venture shows the competitive pressures in this education segment.

Yes, we know that Paul Revere did not actually shout, "The British are coming." But that's how we felt after reading the latest report on International education strategy: global growth and prosperity, published by the UK Ministry of Education. Let us say right up front that we were impressed.
The report has a refreshing, comprehensive, upbeat focus and offers a competitive spirit supporting the importance of British higher education in the world and what the sector can contribute to the UK economy.
We miss that spirit of enthusiasm, energy and competitiveness in our U.S. discussions. Who would have thought that our European colleagues could be quite a bit more entrepreneurial than we are here in the U.S.

We hope that you had a wonderful summer that you are coming back to the office and your activities relaxed and re-energized. We look forward to our collaboration and your comments and feedback in the new school year.