Recruiting Intelligence

News of international student visa’s being revoked and stock market gyrations is all consuming. And rightly so. The White House seems hellbent on sowing chaos on as many levels as possible. In our world of higher ed enrollment and internationalization, international students are looking over their shoulders, unsure of what will happen next. Unfortunately, in the near term, unpredictability is the name of the game and every university administrator’s list of top priorities changes by the day (or the hour).

Harkening back to the stress levels our academic administrators and students experienced during the Covid-19 Pandemic. 

It’s enough to make you want to just turn it all off, hop a flight to Florida, and kick back under a beach umbrella on the sunny shores of the Gulf of America...right?!?  

Sad humor aside, we focus on providing global educational experiences, protecting students from harm, and playing exhausting defense to the chaotic shifts in policies as best we can. And, at the same, time we are playing offense for our institutions. How do we move forward? How do we fortify our international student programs even as our students feel shaken and ask legitimate questions about how and if they can continue to pursue a US education?

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  

• Look for us at NAFSA in May, NACUBO and APLU in June, and NACAC in September. Let us know  if you want to connect at these events.

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

With all the shifting campus priorities and endless breaking news reports, we take our role seriously as a condenser of information and a producer of insights on all things enrollment management. If we are doing our job, we are consistently additive to your work. Many of you likely missed some of our posts this past quarter (we understand!). So today, we offer a summary of the news we shared in Q1 ’25 with links to the articles and resources.   

You’ll find perspective on:  

• 3 Things to do now, despite the enrollment chaos  
• AI tools admissions teams will love  
• How to spot and fix admissions pain points  
• AIRC & AIEA conference insights 
  
• How WPI students are ideating systems to address student mental health  

As an added bonus, at the end of the post, we offer a link to our uplifting April Fools Day post that caught more than a few people off guard. We all need a reminder of the fun life can offer now and again. This one is worth the click. A quick read for a lasting smile.

This quarterly wrap-up is a bit shorter than those in the past per our recent switch to posting every other week - our content optimization guided by our analysis of our reader data. Let us know if our new cadence is working for you.   

Read on…  

AIEA rode into town overlapping the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in March. You tell me which one brought more excitement and better BBQ? 

The truth: I was down for the whole AIEA thing more than the rodeo. Clearly, I’m not the one to call when you are going out to a raucous party. It’s a character flaw, I know. 

AIEA’s board and their dynamic staff, led by newly minted CEO Clare Overman, delivered exactly what academic leaders and SIOs needed. An opportunity to gather amidst the chaos of the new administration in Washington, DC. An opportunity to fret, consider, and plan.  

Under the heading of planning, our boldest initiative, launched at the conference: a two-year research project in conjunction with AIEA to identify and share the effectiveness of various internationalization office structures. A complex endeavor to be sure. Learn a bit more about it HERE and sign up to stay informed. We are thrilled to be collaborating with former ACE Internationalization Lab leader Brad Farnsworth for this research. 

Those in this field do a whole lot with fairly little support or budget. Shared models and simply thinking together has so much value. The Intead team was honored to share the dais for three very different presentations with colleagues Balaji Krishnan (University of Memphis), Vivian Wang (University of Tulsa), Helen Zhang (Northeastern University), Mirka Martel (IIE), Andrew Chen (FrogHire.ai), and Brad Farnsworth (Fox Hollow Advisory).

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  

• Will you be at ASU+GSV in April or NAFSA in May? Let us know  if you want to connect at these events.  

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

Below, I share a few observations about the conversations at the conference ranging from fundraising from international families (alumni giving) to global partnership development and how that plays with enrollment management and student services. You’ll also find links to our slide decks and an invitation to chat if you’d like more information about our ideas on how your institution can improve in three areas: 

• Global Partnership Development and Management 
• International Student Career Placements
• Internationalization Office Structure and Outcomes

Read on for perspective on the machinations over White House pronouncements and access to our slides… 

I’ll be honest with you, the AIEA 2024 conference produced a tremendous number of insights from so many leaders in our field. It has been a challenge reducing, selecting, and summarizing those I think will be most valuable for you. But sharing great ideas is central to why we publish this blog, so today I’m narrowing down a set of seemingly disparate ideas and tying them together, so they are valuable, actionable, and transferrable to you.  

Hey, use the comments below to let me know if I succeeded. 

For the observant, there is SO very much to take back to your desk from these gatherings. And since we had three Intead staff present and presenting at AIEA 2024, we came away with a lot.  

Events you won’t want to miss:

“Shattering Accessibility Limits in Digital Learning,” a Chronicle of Higher Ed-hosted webinar, featuring Gallaudet President Roberta Cordano and ansrsource CEO Rajiv Narayana. Register here. (All registrants will receive the recording even if they cannot attend. ASL interpreters will be present.)

The AIRC Spring Symposium on April 30. This one-day, in-person event in beautiful Niagara, Canada, will explore best practices in developing, managing, assessing, and sustaining the many partnerships that are foundational to international enrollment success. While there, be sure to attend Intead's session all about student recruitment marketing budgets – we've got some great new insights to share. Register today!

Many of the conversations we took part in or led at AIEA 2024 centered around fighting for and justifying internationalization budgets. One important notion (credit to David DiMaria, SIO, UMBC, (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) comes from the Japanese concept of Nemawashi (根回し). The term means “turning or taking care of the roots” and suggests that growth comes from taking good care of the foundation. There’s a lot of truth in this. 

As you seek to initiate a new project or grow something already in place, take time to meet with the many stakeholders individually and understand their points of view and concerns before the power brokers or full committee meets to take a vote on your plans and budget requests. Lay the groundwork so that you know the outcome before that decision point arrives. 

This is just one of the many ideas we’ve been ruminating on since our trip to AIEA. Read on for our selection of key actionable takeaways and our slides on data, AI in enrollment, and entrepreneurship in higher ed. 

A key driver for international students: the ability to gain hands-on work experience in their fields of study.   

If you’re paying attention to SEVIS stats, then you already know the demand for Optional Practical Training (OPT) has been steady for years now. Its numbers show that in 2022, the US pushed through 117,301 new OPT authorizations and 64,844 new STEM OPT authorizations for F-1 students. That’s up 87% and 307% respectively in one decade.  

The significant jump in the latter stat reflects improved opportunities for international STEM students. The STEM fields of study list keeps expanding and the length of stay upped in 2016 from 17-months to 24-months beyond the first year. All really good news for international students. Even better news for institutions like yours that recruit and support the students as well as employers like us who get to tap into their skills and drive. (Coming soon: A post about the journey of two of Intead’s very own and ambitious STEM OPT team members. Stay tuned!)  

The STEM OPT and how it plays out for international student recruitment and retention will be a big part of what we will be addressing head on next week at the AIEA conference in Washington, D.C.  

AIEA Is On! So many opportunities for idea exchange and learning. 

If you’ll be there (and we know many of you will be), sit in on our session, The View as a Data Analyst: International Enrollment Realities, on Feb. 19 at 10 a.m. featuring:  

• Dr. Michael Wilhelm, Associate Provost for Global Partnerships and International Education at University of North Carolina Wilmington 
• Dr. Khald Aboalayon, Academic Program Director, MS Data Analytics, SPS at Clark University 
• Iliana Joaquin, Intead’s Senior Digital Marketing Manager 

Other sessions with Ben and Iliana will cover a range of important topics including global digital marketing, international alumni engagement, AI and enrollment management, and a fave: being an entrepreneur in a bureaucratic environment.  

While tapping into the STEM OPT student audience is not without its downstream hurdles (the not-so-small undertaking of building appropriate programs, training faculty, and developing employer connections come to mind), doing so feels like a no-brainer.  

We know your prospective students are eager to earn a quality degree and build a career. So, if your academics align with their goals, then you’ve already got their interest. Studies also show international students vying for STEM OPT are more likely to complete their degrees – fabulous on many levels. We’ll be diving much deeper into this topic later in the year. We’ll keep you posted. But you get the idea. 

The question now: how do you get them to your campus? Read on for the actionable insights… 

A great gathering in DC as nearly 800 attended this year’s AIEA conference. The conversations were varied and interesting, as always. Kudos to Darla Deardoff, David Fleshler, and their team for pulling off a valuable event.

We are looking ahead at our next chance to chat about internationalization with .Edu trustees and presidents in San Diego at the AGB conference in April. Honored to be presenting alongside Brad Farnsworth from Fox Hollow Advisory (former ACE VP) and Dr. Gretchen Bataille from GMB Consulting (former president of the U of North Texas among other amazing higher ed roles). We will be talking all about insights university leaders need to guide internationalization efforts. Reach out if you or others from your team will be there.

Reflecting on this past week with our AIEA colleagues, my thoughts turn to internationalization and the many factors that go into its student recruitment process – the admissions, the student support/success efforts, the development of global partnerships. So many factors to manage. We know this.

Underlying it all is the question of staffing structure and the challenge of retaining current staff and attracting new to keep the process moving (better yet, optimized). Switching gears, did we mention credential evaluation and oh, study abroad programs? Right, so many aspects.

With all of this yanking on us, distracting us as each area of our jobs calls us to focus, there really is only one approach to multi-faceted work like this: be thorough and work hard. There is no magic solution, despite what so many vendors seem to say.

Let’s get into it and review the promises being made in our field and some actions you and your team can take to improve your Gen Z enrollment strategy. What data are you looking at? And how much of it is True But Useless (TBU)? With thanks to our Chief of Strategy Patricia Tozzifor bringing this phrase to the fore. Her perpetual questioning keeps us focused on this: what can you truly act on?

Read on for insights prompted by the 2023 AIEA gathering:

…It goes further than identifying opportunities. You also need to manage them. Perhaps a renewed focus on the mechanics will move the needle more effectively?...

Our full-day workshop at San Diego State University was a truly packed day. After initial conversations about the current student recruitment landscape and the data that informs smart enrollment decisions, we broke into 3 discussion groups talking about recruiting agent management, global digital marketing, and global partners.

Attendees were free to flow from one conversation to the other as our all-star faculty held forth using the Intead Global Marketing Workbook as a guide (available through our Intead Plus subscription). It was fascinating to watch the flow of inquiries and learning throughout the day as attendees tapped the expertise they needed to formulate their global marketing plans.

And we noted the praise for the faculty perspectives gathered. Based on the feedback, participants appreciated the highly productive series of deep conversations with the opportunity for detailed answers to specific marketing/recruitment questions.

We spoke to even more colleagues at the AIRC and ICEF conferences who expressed regret that they were unable to attend our workshop due to timing and work conflicts. If you share that perspective, please let us know. We are evaluating when we might hold this event again, on the East Coast or in other locations. Send us a note. Perhaps we can make this workshop accessible to you.

In the meantime, read on for quick notable ideas from our whirlwind trip westward for AIRC, ICEF, and our workshop in between. You’ll be glad you did.

Your feedback keeps us on the right track. You, our blog readers, tell us with your clicks and your comments. We welcome the likes, the corrections, the whole shebang.

As we look ahead to what is shaping up to be a bustling 2023, we’d love to hear what topics you’d like us to tackle. Send us a note and we’ll take it into editorial consideration. Maybe even throw a shoutout your way.

Just coming off a whirlwind December with presentations at the AIRC and ICEF conferences and our full day workshop at San Diego State University, we have so much to share with you in the weeks ahead. Reflections, insights, slides. All in the name of making your student recruitment marketing plan that much tighter. You’ll be glad you are along with the ride.

Right here and now, we’ve compiled our readers’ top 10 posts from 2022. These are the blog posts that you said were most enticing and valuable. You clicked, you shared, and hopefully, you put into practice some of what you learned.

Big Picture: our analytics show in no uncertain terms that everyone wants to know more about China, TikTok, new market development, data analytics, and the student mindset. We'll have more on those topics throughout 2023. Still valuable: Read on for quick hit summaries and links to the content that most drew your attention, and the attention of your colleagues, over the past year.

As I wrote from the MSY airport lounge, #AIEA2022 had just wrapped. At that time, in the previous 24 hours, Russia had launched a military attack on Ukraine, some of our colleagues tested positive for Covid at the AIEA conference, and Boston (my destination) was expecting a foot of snow the next day. Oh, and my Boston flight was unceremoniously canceled with no flights available to get me to Boston for another 3 days. Life as we know it continues with turbulent distress, ambiguity, and elements of normalcy.

With these realities in mind, I offer focused reflections on the ideas that struck me most during the conference and a few ideas on how they might add value to your work. As always, we don’t want to get all esoteric here. It’s about actionable steps for internationalization and diverse student experiences that take us all forward, together, with vision.

Enrollment management is complex. The tools available to help us can be confusing. Read to the end of this post for some very tangible advice from 4 international students who spoke at the conference.

More learning ahead

We hope you will be joining us at NAFSA 2022 in Denver this Spring. We will be sharing 3 forward-thinking presentations and a poster session. We are honored to co-present with colleagues from Benedict College, San Diego State University, Clark University, Northeastern University, CIEE, ICEF, and GNET. More details on those in future posts.

More immediately, read on for reflections and action items from AIEA 2022...

In the age of snack-size content, The Handbook of International Higher Education, 2nd Edition is for a hungrier reader.

This deep-dive resource, thoughtfully delivered to all of us by AIEA, provides exceptional context for many of the issues we are all facing now and offers a glimpse of what lies ahead.

The book explores the evolution of student mobility, commercialization of academia, higher ed-tech, the student experience, and more. Collectively we’ve spurred so much change since the handbook first published just a decade ago. Not to mention the issues that have changed us (immigration, social justice, COVID, technology).

Side note: if you’ll be attending the 2022 AIEA conference in New Orleans (Feb 20-23), be in touch and we’ll find time for a coffee and an exchange of ideas.

There’s little doubt that we are in the midst of profound transformation. How we move forward must be informed by where we’ve been. Our colleagues agree international education is vital to an increasingly interconnected world. Yet, even this bedrock is evolving. Once driven by societal cooperation, contribution, and service, there is an undeniable shift toward competition and marketization in higher education. Perceptions and approaches vary depending on where you are in the world and the primary sources of your institution’s funding (i.e., government vs. private).

Read on for our quick summary of what the handbook offers us from a student recruitment point of view. A piece of the higher ed puzzle that is evolving with quickening speed.

Reflecting on AIEA conversations and what we are seeing in the field, I find myself thinking about the risk of being a follower and the value of being a strategic leader.

• Followers see where the crowd is headed and go there without due diligence.
• Leaders see where the crowd is headed and then check the numbers.

This is important. Increasingly so.

The effort to recruit international students is heating up in the US. The pressure on university administrators is growing. With India and China sending the most students to the US, most newcomers to the field – the universities finally joining the fray and looking to diversify their student body – are turning to these source countries. It can be a mistake.

We are seeing the global education agent network being pressured to produce more students for more campuses. That increased pressure is going to bring us renewed stories of fraud and inappropriate recruiting behavior. We don't want to see anyone caught up in that mess.

It is important, REALLY important, to align your team with talent – the kind of partners who don't cut corners and have your best interests at heart. This field is full of questionable characters, as we all know. Many of us have the scars to prove it.

Following our travels to San Diego for our Annual Student Recruitment Bootcamp and moving on to DC for AIEA, the Intead team is grateful for all of the opportunities to connect face-to-face with you, our colleagues and friends in such a challenging time for our industry. (More on our Bootcamp in a post in March.)  Focusing on AIEA for a moment, we have to thank AIEA's Darla Deardorff for feeding so many of us with great information and wonderful food for a few days in DC. The AIEA conference was well run and well delivered. Informational and so often inspiring.

During the conference, we had the pleasure of giving presentations on enrollment trends with Kaplan International and on US–India university partnerships with Monmouth University and Sannam S4. Both sessions were filled with lively discussion and audience engagement. As always, we shared ideas and had fun learning from each other. Thank you to all who attended! It is always a pleasure.

Read on for more reflections and insights from the conferences and my thoughts on enrollment trends and predictions.