Recruiting Intelligence

Worldwide student recruitment is a big task. We wonder: how many representatives do you need to be successful? What is the ideal number of internal and external international student recruiters?

Would you like to increase your accessibility to prospective international students?  Would you like to increase your own productivity? We will show you two ways to be more accessible to students in a controlled and organized way.  

Video is a powerful force. In our marketing work we encounter the force of video every day. FACT: The second largest search engine in the world after Google: YouTube.

A personal experience, much to my chagrin: my son wants to learn how to tie a necktie. Does he ask me? No! He simply consults YouTube.  

One more example, my son's high school teacher has a meeting outside of school and he will miss a lesson. This teacher does not believe in the quality of the substitute for his high level math class. He selects a set of videos on YouTube with lectures on high level math and provides questions to answer. Online video content supplants human teaching in this case.

That gets us to our Intead Insight review of: "Research on the Use of Khan Academy in Schools." The research was conducted by SRI and the Gates Foundation to understand the outcomes of using Khan Academy videos as teaching tools. 

International travel tours and college fair attendance are two of the biggest expense items in most international admissions departments that utilize this recruiting channel for their international student enrollment.  We have developed a list of criteria for you on how to select vendors for these trips.

The visa interview is one of the unpleasant steps in the process of becoming an international student in the United States.  We recently had a conversation with Tony Edson, who worked for the State Department for 28 years and dealt with the visa process.  We suggest five activities to help your prospective students feel more comfortable with the process.  You can dispel online and offline rumors that make your students nervous during the interview, set the right tone and show that you care about your students. You will be doing your job better, increasing the odds of your students receiving the visa without a hitch and allowing them to enroll at your college. Don't leave it up to chance. 

Student enrollment requires a personal interaction with prospective students and their parents. At the same time, admissions departments are faced with many demands and limited budgets. Marketing technology is part of the solution to establish efficient processes in order to reach more students more efficiently but also since prospective students are researching their university choices via digital channels. 

During the winter break, I found more time to read lots of books and magazines. Let me share one headline that stuck with me.  "Average is Over." It's the title of economist Tyler Cowen's book about the future of our economy. But beyond the title of this book, this theme was prevalent in many of the books and articles I read. Competition is intensifying across all product and service categories, and product cycles are decreasing. Higher education is no exception to that increased competitive environment.  And you, the admissions and marketing departments, stand at the forefront of that competition for qualified and motivated students.  

Urban areas on the East and West Coasts, (Boston, New York, LA, Seattle) seem to attract international students.  What about the rest of the country?  Do middle-of-the-country universities participate in the U.S. long-term growth of international enrollment trends?