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…  

As student recruitment consultants, higher ed institutions ask us to focus on a range of pain points. We see an increasing number of institutions, driven by global competition, evolving markets, economic pressures, changing immigration policies, and more, seeking strategic realignment of their admissions and enrollment processes. The evolving ed tech marketplace brings new tools and AI to the process adding to the intrigue. Could technology be the critical player to winning the game? Sometimes, yes.  

It was no surprise to us when international enrollment officers packed the room for a presentation on Admission Process Analysis during the most recent AIRC conference. The conversation was led by Steven Boyd of Quinnipiac University and Intead’s Chief Strategy Officer Britt Godshalk who spoke directly to concerns we are hearing straight from enrollment staff. Concerns like: 

• “We need to know where our best markets are. We have an incredibly high volume of applicants with a very small yield.” 
• “Sometimes we have enough applications. But how do we make sure students actually enroll?”
• “I need to figure out how to move from our current enrollment plateau. And I feel like we’ve tried everything.” 
• “We have a communications coordinator specifically for admissions and I don’t know how to use him."

Sound familiar? You could write a book with the number of times we hear comments like these. In fact, our friend and colleague Dr. David D Maria, SIO and Vice Provost for International Education at UMBC, literally did (find his Achieving More with Less: Lean Management in International Student Office in the NAFSA bookstore – highly recommend).  

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  

• AIEA in March, ASU+GSV in April, and NAFSA in May. We'll be presenting our latest findings with colleagues from Chronicle of Higher Ed, IIE, AIEA, University of Tulsa, University of Memphis, Northeastern, and others. Let us know  if you want to connect at of those two 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.

Relying on our experience working with a wide range of institutions, public and private, over the past 15 years (and the guidance from David’s book), we have helped admissions leaders identify the admissions pain points that drive students away rather than drawing them closer in. Importantly, this fascinating day-long exercise uncovers opportunities to fix the problems and the improvement measures to track results. Ah yes, some good news. 

Process mapping is a simple idea on the face of it. Like any problem-solving session addressing a complex, multi-layered process, the key to success is getting the right people in the right room to wrestle the right questions. We’re sure you know just what we mean. Practical to downright critical cross-departmental conversations are too few and far between.   

IT, Marketing, Enrollment, Admissions, and faculty (at the graduate level) all play a role. Credential evaluation always comes up as a pain point (more on that in just a bit). Yet, when institutions bring all stakeholders together for one full day to critically examine how their roles interconnect, the clarity is remarkable. We’ve seen even the most efficient teams benefit. And by the end, everyone has a new appreciation for sticky notes and our whiteboard is filled with sound ideas, big and small. 

The litmus test for us is always this: at the end of the day, does everyone see a clear, achievable path forward? From the clear immediate wins to the more time-intensive improvements, a shared vision for a more efficient process will result. That’s the point of process mapping. Read on…  

Grabbed my briefcase, checked the full-length mirror. Yup, got my badge. Opened the hotel room door dashing to get to the AIRC conference networking breakfast buffet. Eyeroll and back into the room. Forgot to brush my teeth. 

Conferencing tip for my colleagues: If, in your morning rush, you forget to brush your teeth, remove your conference badge and lanyard before you brush. The physics of the lanyard and badge during the lean over sink, rinse and spit process…well, you can imagine. 

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  

• AIEA in March, ASU+GSV in April, and NAFSA in May. We'll be presenting our latest findings with colleagues at AIEA and NAFSA. Let us know  if you want to connect at either of those two 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.

The AIRC 2024 Conference produced exactly what it was supposed to produce at the end of a pretty arduous year. It’s all about the people in the room, their knowledge and expertise, and the culture of the gathering. AIRC achieves all of the right elements, repeatedly. The information we gathered will help us perform better in 2025 and beyond. 

The Intead team showed up in force. We presented our daylong Global Marketing Workshop as well as conference sessions focused on budgeting for international student recruitment and an approach to streamlining admissions processes to improve the overall intake. All very practical stuff.  

Institutions so often fail to calculate the full cost of IEM, leaving their international recruitment teams to a minimalist (at best) budget. An increasingly important consideration as demand for an international education grows in the coming years: How will changing student purchasing power influence your messaging? Can you reduce students’ total cost for a degree? 

Read on to download our AIRC presentations.  

For those of you who are regular readers, we know the Intead team is guilty of generating too much value all at once. Not apologizing for it. 

The Intead team has cranked out 3 industry reports and 2 book chapters with never before gathered data. True to form, this stuff is absolutely instructive for the ways you will want to position your academic offerings.

Our latest research is THAT good. 

If you haven’t kept up on what we’ve published recently on the international student experience (3 separate datasets!), don’t worry. This post will catch you right up. It’s your quarterly industry insights at-a-glance, and this round includes new Intead research with our partners at NAFSA, Studyportals and F1Hire along with our own view of industry news. 

Our next opportunity to meet!  

EducationUSA Forum, Washington, D.C., July 30-August 1. Ben and Virginia Commonwealth University SIO Jill Blondin will share insights on Navigating Budget Challenges in International Recruitment: Practical Strategies for Every Phase.  

Be in touch! We’ll buy the coffee. 

In today's Q2 Wrap Up post you will find...

Access groundbreaking data on: 

• How international graduates are finding jobs in the US job market, and the regions most apt to hire them 
• International graduate employment stats, including specifics on salaries, employers and the institutions that are making successful employer connections  
• How the US election is shaping international student decisions 

Industry points of view on: 

• Why Guyana is an emerging student recruitment source 
• How to take a data-driven, actionable approach to budgeting for international enrollment  

Marketing insights such as: 

• Economists’ new take on the ROI of your degree 
• Knowing when you’re ready to tap into your international alumni network 
• Getting your WhatsApp Business account up and running 
• The enduring value of email marketing 
• Messaging for the (really) small screen 
• Link to the new higher ed industry pub: Entry Points to US Education: Accessing the Next Wave of Growth. 

Read on… 

That photo and headline were admittedly clickbait. There are certainly turbulent waters ahead, but no abyss from our point of view. We do have some great fiscal perspective to share here. And awesome photo, right? We took that while attending the AIRC Symposium and ICEF North America Workshop in Niagara, Canada. 

During the AIRC event, Maggie and Ben gave a truly valuable presentation with a new set of Intead slides focused on a data-driven, actionable approach to budgeting for international enrollment efforts. This session and the slides were extremely well received, especially in the currently ambiguous, post-covid student mobility climate.  

Let’s meet in New Orleans @ NAFSA 2024! 

Join one of Intead’s two NAFSA presentations: 

• ChatGPT and AI: What are the real opportunities for enrollment management? 
  Wed., May 29 @ 1 p.m.
  This one gives you the real-world picture, filtering out all of the smoke and silliness. Featuring David L. Di Maria, Senior International Officer & Associate Vice Provost for International Education at UMBC, and Iliana Joaquin, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Intead 

• Groundbreaking Data: International Student Employment After Graduation
  Thurs., May 30 @ 11:30 a.m.
  This one presents unprecedented data about the value of international students after they graduate. Never before research Intead conducted with support from NAFSA and 12 US institutions offers great opportunities to advocate for your internationalization efforts. Featuring Joanna Regulska, Vice Provost and Dean of Global Affairs, UC Davis and Ben Waxman, Intead CEO

Get ahead with soon-to-be-released data from Intead.  

Intead is gearing up to release 3 new proprietary data sets that will change the way your team thinks about international student recruitment in the coming year. Incredibly telling data on international student career aspirations, the companies that hire them, and how the US election figures into international student decisions. More to come at NAFSA 2024. Pre-register to receive the reports as soon as they become available. 

For the past 15 years, the Intead team has been watching the numbers and predicting the future of international student enrollment with accuracy. It was February 2020, as the Chinese government shut down travel in and out of Wuhan and Covid had just begun its rampage though Italy that we were quoted in the Boston Globe pointing to the impending global shut down of international student mobility. Not everyone was happy with our saying so. But we weren’t wrong. 

Our point: we are willing to be bold and make statements that others have every reason to avoid. Someone’s got to feed our industry sober and helpful intel without all the blather. 

So, read on for what we see ahead and will be talking about at the upcoming NAFSA and GMAC conferences. Oh, and to grab our budget planning slides from the AIRC Symposium that will be available here to our blog subscribers for just one week before we move them into our library only available to our Intead Plus subscribers.  

Tianyu Shen is a business analyst from China. Isabel Aucca is a digital campaign manager from Peru. These two members of the Intead team, both on STEM OPT programs through Northeastern University and Hult International Business School respectively, have amazing stories as international students, travelers, explorers, and knowledge workers here in the US.

Many of you already know Tianyu and Isabel through the conferences they attend for Intead and the work they do with our network. If you haven’t had that pleasure, be sure to introduce yourself to them at an upcoming industry conference (AIEA, NAFSA, AIRC, ICEF, etc.) These two super talents bring their skills to our work in their respective fields (market research, business and data analytics, digital campaigns development and optimization, and competitor analyses) along with incredibly valuable international perspectives.

Their comments below will quickly give you a sense of what it is like to be in their shoes and understand a bit more about what drives them. And since so many of you work to create fulfilling experiences for international students, we thought we’d use this platform to share words that will surely resonate with you and your team.

Opportunities to Meet In Person 

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations and we hope you can join us. 

• AIRC Spring Symposium in Niagara, Canada, April 30, 2024
• ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, May 1-3, 202
• NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024
  

Let us know if you’ll share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 

As you read the perspective below, consider what it is that drove their decisions to study and work outside of their home countries. Note the courageous decisions they made and the personality traits that are likely common to many of the international students you are seeking. It is these kinds of personal reflections that inform larger marketing strategies and help us create truly engaging content to attract future international students to our institutions.

Tianyu, who grew up in China, attended an English language institute in Boston before earning his undergrad degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and then his master’s at Northeastern University. As excellent as this background is, it does not provide andy indication of the genuinely joyful, energetic, and thoughtful person he is.

What he has to say about where he is now: “It’s human nature. When you receive something and people support you, you want to give back. For me, I feel so grateful for all of the education I received. It’s life-changing. And I’m grateful for all the people who helped me out along the way. Now, working at Intead I can help others who are standing where I once stood. I’m so thankful.”

The feeling is absolutely mutual.

Isabel, an undeniable dynamo from Peru who speaks three languages (Spanish, Portuguese, and English), earned her undergrad from the Universidad del Pacifico in Lima and her master’s from Hult International Business School in Massachusetts.

“Arriving at a place like Intead, it’s the purpose they have, it’s the type of company where you can be hands-on in every project – all of varying client scopes – and so many different ways to engage with the work. On one project I wear a digital hat, another I’m focused on research, and on others I get to be really creative about the overall marketing plan. That sets personalities like me up for success."

Isabel absolutely does her part to set us (and that means you) up for success, as well.

Following our recent #AIRC2023 full-day digital marketing workshop in December, both Isabel and Tianyu independently posted to LinkedIn about their experience helping others learn their craft during the workshop. This post brings their reflections to you.

Read on…

As I headed to Phoenix for the AIRC 2023 conference, I wondered if the window had already closed for education institutions just now considering starting up with commission-based agents as an international student recruitment channel. Happy to tell you, that window has not closed at all.  

Yet, there is a lot to consider for those institutions just starting, and those having been at it for years. 

With the largest AIRC conference to-date (480 attendees), more than 200 first timers attended. Clearly there is demand to learn more about how effective university-agent partnerships work. And having been part of the AIRC community for 14 of their 15-year history, I can tell you that AIRC is one of the best places to learn about international student enrollment growth. 

From sample contracts to efficient agent engagement policies and practices, AIRC’s documentation and counsel are outstanding. This year, 7 members of the Intead team traveled to Phoenix to attend, in part because the learning opportunities and global connections at this conference are among the best in the industry. The other part was the opportunity to share our own expertise with the attendees at our full-day Global Marketing Workshop. That was a hoot. The Intead team just loves this stuff. 

We’ll be at AIEA in DC in about 6 weeks and participating in 3 great presentations: 

• AI for enrollment management  
• Entrepreneurial leadership in bureaucratic environments 
• A discussion around International Student Points of Entry and a new international student-focused publication to be released later in 2024 
  

And of course, we will be presenting at NAFSA in New Orleans in late May. If you’d like to schedule time to chat over coffee instead of over Zoom, please be in touch (info@intead.com). 

At AIRC 2023, we gave our full-day Global Marketing Workshop with half a day devoted to an interactive lecture on the fundamentals of the strategy that drives a university’s tactical execution. After lunch, we dove into 1:1 consulting with participants to address the group’s self-identified greatest needs.  

It was fascinating to see how our workshop attendees debated and decided amongst themselves what the second half topics should be. Here’s where we ended up: 

• I need a marketing budget, what do I do to get it approved? 
• I have a marketing budget. Now what? 
• Identifying and filling resource gaps 
• Processes for nurturing and converting leads 
• Creating authentic and powerful recruitment content 

Do these topics resonate for you? Be in touch and we can share what we know and how we have helped institutions like yours succeed.  

During the AIRC conference, Intead’s Sr. Digital Marketing Manager Iliana Joaquin joined Dr. David DiMaria, SIO at UMBC, for a practical discussion about how AI and ChatGPT are being used today in enrollment management and what we can realistically expect in the next year as AI-driven tools evolve. Short answer – it ain’t there yet, but it very likely will be in the next couple of years. So much more to talk about on this topic. There are definitely some gains that can be made in some areas, but the hype from the vendors is creating so much noise. Very frustrating.

Later at the conference, I ran a session with Vanessa Andrade about staffing challenges that so many institutions are facing today. The discussion about what skills and tasks to hire for and what to outsource was dynamic with so many additions from the folks in the room. This is what we absolutely love about the AIRC conference.

We are making these insightful presentations available to blog subscribers for free. Download them here.

Below we summarize 3 key take-aways from the conference. Please read on… 

Is it all about the enrollment numbers? Hitting “the number” is the driving force behind so much effort. So much pressure. A growing number of US universities now use education agents. And now, more universities are evaluating agent aggregators. Many have contracts in place with aggregators already and we hope those early adopters take a squinty-eyed, very close look at the results of those contracts.

How many applications? How many enrolled? And the quality of those students throughout the process. Are they succeeding academically?

If you are not familiar, check out our post and a recent (Dec 2022) lively ICEF panel discussion here. Hitting you in the face is a changing student landscape, the pressure to hit your enrollment number, and the agent aggregators who may be able to help, and quickly. Also in your face: the question of trust and integrity.

Some institutions have a hard enough time outsourcing their recruitment to individual agents, even those with third-party accreditation like AIRC. And beyond education agents who also use subagents, agent aggregators are farming out recruitment processes on a massive scale around the world using online platforms to scale the work rapidly. Questions arise as to how well any particular subagent is familiar with your institution, much less whether they are vetted for integrity.

Smart institutions want to know who’s representing their brand on their behalf. Fact: there’s just not enough transparency right now in this student recruitment system.

To be clear, we are in favor of agents. Human agents with whom you can connect directly, vet their talent, train, and guide. Intead has been a strategic partner to AIRC for more than a decade and our team fully supports ICEF’s efforts to bring enrollment leaders together with education agents from around the world. Both organizations push for clearly articulated best practices.

For more insights, check out our webinar with AIRC about the State of the Field. Our Intead Plus subscribers also have access to our ebook on University-Agent Partnership Trend Data and our Agent Management ebook all in our resource library available to all.

What we all know is that the system is less than perfect and students lose out when universities and agents are not doing their jobs with integrity.

Education agents, when brought into the fold as a partner, can be incredibly valuable. The key: partnerships, as in humans supporting other humans. 

Like any relationship, a meaningful partnership is built not bought. Is this even possible with the aggregator trend? Scale brings problems and when folks are lazy (and human beings tend to be), scale can bring disaster.

Look at the agent aggregator model from a simple business process point of view. If a company has 7,000 vetted partner sales offices, that company would need a robust credentialing team to monitor and control for quality. They would have a defined process for maintaining a certain quality of sales office staff hiring, training, work processes, and regular review of results delivered. Consider the level of effort hospitals go through to confirm the credentials and qualifications of their clinicians and physicians who have admitting privileges.

As you consider signing up with an agent aggregator, we highly recommend you ask tough questions about their staffing process, the vetting, and the monitoring. For institutions sharing their brand reputation with these outsource partners, it is buyer beware. Like super beware.

If you are not finding the quality control measures in place on the agent aggregator’s side, that means the quality control must be staffed on your side. Which then starts to beg the question: what are you paying for? Answer: the broad, global connection network. Keep in mind, that is something you can develop yourself in a way that is more targeted and more sustainable over the long term. Many institutions with thousands of international students started that process years ago and rely on their network today.

Not sure how to evaluate or where to start? Drop us a note.

Some of these aggregators are growing fast and coming on strong. They are shaking up the education market and making trusted agencies nervous. There are simply too many subagents operating in anonymity. Anonymity creates opportunities for questionable behavior (and we are being nice with our choice of words here).

 As we all broaden our scope to avoid the US domestic enrollment cliff and fold new target regions into our recruitment strategies, agents have an important role to play. Read on for 3 valuable tips on how to get the most out of this potentially beneficial partnership. Hint: it all comes back to developing trusting relationships with fellow, reliable humans.

The student recruitment landscape has been in a state of flux that was forced upon all of us. Institutions have adapted in obvious ways (ramping up online education) and subtler ways that vary by institution. [Note: In Spring 2023, We updated this blog post from our previous summary of 10 international recruitment options to now incorporate 12 options]

Looking a bit over the horizon, we recognize that there is always the potential for unanticipated disruptions in addition to the challenging factors we see very clearly. As we consider what is next, the lever that has the greatest value is flexibility. The ability to ramp up or down with relative ease. The avoidance of plans that lock us into something long-term constricting our ability to adapt as circumstances change.

Building Flexibility Into the System

With that in mind, we offer up a quick comparison of 12 ways to develop strategic advantage for enrollment and their relative flexibility. In this case, we measure flexibility by two factors:

• Time: Investment of administrative/staff time into making it happen and sustaining it
• Money: Investment of capital (cash out) to make it happen

When we consider time, we also think about commitment – alliances and partnerships come with contracts that may or may not be easy to modify or escape from as factors on the ground change.

All in all, we see the largest value in those options that offer the greatest flexibility – least amount of effort (time), least amount of financial investment (money), and ability to ramp up or down on short notice (flexible contracts).

A little ways back, Brad Farnsworth, formerly at ACE and now running Fox Hollow Advisory, joined me to present at the CIEE Summit 2021. We discussed some of the options raised in this blog post and how they relate to institutional initiatives that deepen internationalization efforts.

Read on for more on those strategic advantages.

Love this photo: a last-minute session prep discussion as we reviewed the slides for our AIRC 2022 session all about the student journey. The student path to enrollment is really no path at all. That, despite even our best efforts to pave a smooth walk to first-year orientation.

Experience tells us time and again that the actual route to enrollment is filled with intersections, stop signs, potholes, and wrong ways. And influence comes from all directions. It is a multi-factor decision for students. And the path itself is not linear.

In December, Intead had the great pleasure of sharing the stage with Vanessa Andrade and Sean Cochran at the AIRC conference in Los Angeles. Vanessa is the SIO and director of international partnerships at California State University, Northridge, and Sean is the international enrollment management director at California State University, Long Beach. It was a lot of fun. Our session prompted a great discussion with attendees – a hallmark of AIRC Conference sessions.

If you couldn’t sit in, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered by making our slides available to you for a limited time.

And Hey! If you are at AIEA next week in DC, look us up. Join us for a great session on how trend data informs international student recruitment planning. Co-presenting with Karin Fischer from Chronicle of Higher Ed and Dr. Ahmad Ezzeddine from Wayne State University.  Always happy to talk through this student journey perspective to help you hone your approach.

 In the AIRC session back in December 2022, we had a few important learning objectives:

• Learn to re-envision the many and varied touchpoints of the student journey
• Gain perspective on which touchpoints can be controlled and emphasized to help students select a “best fit” institution
• Understand, from the student's point of view, just how influential some of the nontraditional touchpoints are to university selection

 Sound worthwhile? It is. Read on to access this valuable content.