Recruiting Intelligence

Making fun of language and cross-cultural misunderstanding-- should we really do that?  I assure you that all of us who have worked, lived and traveled around the world have had our fair share of mishaps, misunderstandings, and embarrassing moments.  In the end, we believe that good willed individuals around the world understand the difference between naive, unintended mistakes and people who want to learn and, well, the opposite, people who are narrowminded, chauvinistic and only want to know their own ways.  

Universities are getting hit by a tsunami of changes ranging from increased competition among universities as they expand traditional recruiting territories, stronger on-line competition from traditional and new competitive entries, rising tuition and student debt levels as well as a new marketing environment.  I am focusing on the latter change, which is getting less attention given the magnitude of the other factors. 

Our mystery shopper experiment as well as our direct work with university clients has shown us repeatedly that many international admission officers don't have appropriate digital support services, such as email, mobile delivery and publishing tools available. This article will introduce you to several cloud-based services to ease your work with prospective international students. 

Tuition discounting is a common way to attract students and or to make the university program affordable to potential students. Universities will encounter an even greater mindset challenge in respect to price as digital courses, MOOCs, and hybrid courses proliferate and become more acceptable as an education credential to employers.  At that time, pricing will be an even bigger issue since you are looking at the willingness to pay at all, not the level of payment. I speak from experience since I spent many years of my professional life in the digital content industry convincing consumers to pay for what was available for free elsewhere.  My experience was rooted in the social expression industry marketing paid online greeting cards, instant messenger content and mobile content, generally widely available for free. Nevertheless,we were able to show value and millions of consumers were willing to pay every year for that digital content. 

Branding and reach will be a major challenge and opportunity for MOOCS of existing public and non-profit universities.   First of all all, let's clarify that MOOCS are Massive Open Online Courses offered by a variety of for-profit-and non-profit academic institutions. 

For all those students of economics, yes PPP can stand for purchasing power parity, but I would like to use PPP as President and Parent Perspective. Why do I want to talk about that perspective? 

Brand building has been a fascinating topic for me for a long time. We all know of venerable brands in different industries: Coca Cola, IBM, Apple...As so many things, brand building has accelerated in the time of digital marketing-- think of Google, Facebook, Twitter which have become household names in much shorter time periods than traditional brands.  Consider which well known university brands come to mind for you first when you think of universities--- we'll get back to your thoughts later and let's compare notes at the end of the blog. 

Universities are looking for future revenue streams. Couldn't universities invest in the future of their students and secure their own future? How would that work? 

The United States continues to be the most desirable study destination within the world (Source: i-graduate).  International student enrollment grew by 16.5 percent in the last four years across the United States according to the IIE open door report.  The competition among universities for qualified students with sufficient financial means is increasing on a global scale.  Canada and Australia recently launched new initiatives to bolster their competitiveness.