Recruiting Intelligence

During the past couple of weeks we have analyzed international student data for trends showing us which universities have been successful with their international student recruitment activities. See Consider the Competition (Insight 4/10/13) and the blogs onOhio and Massachusetts. One of our readers suggested that we compare trends between universities using independent international recruiting agencies and those using only internal resources for their international enrollment efforts.

Customer demographics are important for many businesses. Education is no exception. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) publishes a must-read report for higher education executives, senior admissions officers and trustees creating mid to long-term strategies for academic institutions.

WICHE’s April policy insights “Demography as Destiny: Policy Considerations in Enrollment Management” provides highlights of the detailed report “Knocking on the College door.” The report’s ideas are not necessarily new or surprising, but they are well documented and graphically presented. Helpful state-by-state analyses are available (here is the example for Ohio).

In the business world, companies measure their influence and success in financial metrics: revenue growth and profits. Add share price and market capitalization as measures for publicly listed companies. The education world is dominated by not-for-profit and public universities as well as a large number of non-profit education-related associations. This Intead Insight looks into two, admittedly crude, measures of influence for the non-profit education world: revenue generated by leading non-profit education associations and social media presence.

International student enrollment is a long-term investment for any academic institution. Building institutional capabilities, contacts and international brand recognition requires a multi-year approach and investment. Industry benchmarks and comparative data can let us know which institutions have been successful in building international enrollment successfully over the years. We used the IIE open door data from 2009 – 2012 for this analysis. For today’s Intead Insight, we focus on the following questions:

We listened with great interest to a one hour webinar by Chris Boehner, Executive Director of Varicant, "Developing a China Strategy" made available by the boarding school organization SSATB (Slides only: click here). Chris presented the complex picture of the current Chinese environment with a rapidly growing middle and wealthy upper class. During the last four years, Chinese students at U.S. private schools have more than quadrupled. This growth trend is supported by the size of the population and the strong wealth creation in China. Today, China has a group of one million millionaires with a relatively young average age of 39. This wealth group is growing rapidly. A very large majority (85%) express an interest in sending their children out of the country for their education. And 30% of those families express an interest in sending their children to the U.S. for that education. And then there is this: 65% of those U.S. bound families want that foreign education to start with a U.S. private boarding school. When you do the simple "back of the napkin" calculation (see Graph 1) you get the future potential of 170,000 additional international K-12 students from China's wealthy economic upper class. Today, there are roughly 24,000 Chinese private boarding school students in the U.S. So we are looking at a growth factor of 7x (see Graph 2). Oh, and Vericant notes that China is adding 61,000 new millionaires every year (6% growth rate). This pool would not include families with more modest means who often pool resources, sell apartments and liquidate savings to fund their child's education. Given the history of the past several years, Vericant's predictions seem to be more than wishful thinking. Their data suggests a very real international student enrollment pool. And, for the most part, those international students will have excellent English skills and will have adjusted to the American culture having studied at U.S. private high schools.

Change is coming to higher education and if you are in its path, you'll be run over. The traditional university is being unbundled. This is one the core theses of this bold and forceful report: An Avalanche is Coming. The authors are Michael Barber, Katelyn Donnelly and Saad Rizvi, all senior education advisors and executives for the education service provider Pearson Corporation. The report makes the case that the next decades could see a golden age of higher education, but only if all players seize the initiative and act ambitiously. We have added a brief video introducing the report by the author below (3 min).

Australia focused on international student enrollment growth

Government and industry in Australia recognize the future economic, political and cultural importance of international student enrollment for the country. They work in tandem to support a broad-based strategy to increase enrollment by 30% by 2020. Let's say that again: 30% growth by 2020!

Are you selling what your customers want? And pardon us for using the word "selling" when talking about academic marketing. We realize this word makes folks bristle, to say the least. However, the schools you find yourself marveling at, the ones advancing on the US News and World Report ranking, are the ones with the capacity to grit their teeth and apply hard business criteria to their marketing and sales activities. The school names you often hear bandied about as the market leaders, the ones your leadership reference in meetings saying things like, "Well, X university tripled their international student population in the past 4 years. Why can't we do that?" -- these are the schools that segment their markets and tailor their messages to the customers most likely to buy what they have to sell. Ooooph! Did we just say that?

MOOCs are THE hot topic, aren't they? Universities are debating how to respond. We hear amazing numbers of students enrolled.