Recruiting Intelligence

Increasing the effectiveness of marketing spending is a constant challenge for all marketing departments. Your team is constantly evaluating how to make your limited marketing budget work to your advantage as marketing channels continue to shift.

We consider the Australian university system an interesting microcosm worth studying. Like the U.S., they have a heavy contingent of international students, however, the range of institutions in Australia is much more homogeneous than the diverse education system found in the U.S.

We are experiencing a moment when two technologies and media trends have reached critical mass and are reinforcing each other. Social media and mobile technology are affecting society. Nielsen, a research firm, and Incite, a specialized consumer research consultancy, published the data compendium State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012. We reviewed this report with both domestic and international student recruitment in mind.

The US Treasury Department is keeping an eye on education debt. Why? Most of the debt is guaranteed by the US government and will become a liability for the US taxpayers in case of default. But the recent report considers many more aspects than the implications of debt default. This Treasury report "The Economics of Higher Education" is a very concise and excellent analysis of the current trends. Figure 1 is the graphic representation of what could be the single biggest challenge for US academic institutions. Your customers, students and parents, cannot afford your product and services anymore. Is that where we are heading? We will try to summarize the situation. But before you read further, know that there are a lot of economic factors here with complicating inter-relationships. Some of our readers might just want to skip to the end where we explain why this stuff is important and what it means to our jobs.