Recruiting Intelligence

This we know: this is a time to prepare, as in, think 5 years out. #PIELIVE24 in Boston brought industry leaders together as we all move toward the next Trump presidency. Challenging travel and visa regulations will be headed our way. Join us in developing the plans that focus on the international students we support and the progress we need for everyone in this field.

We have work to do.  

As one fearless leader, Fanta Aw, said in a recent NAFSA town hall, “We’re not allowed to be tired!” The Intead team found this rallying cry inspiring. Of course, we are tired. It has been a long year. Nevertheless, we all need to pick ourselves up, face forward, and use all the power we can muster to support the changes we know are worth it. 

Kicking off the PIE event in Boston, Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, pointed to the need to build on our collective strength to find a clear, unified voice. She asked us to use that voice to bolster our individual work and to serve as the foundational support our allies in Congress need from us so that they can ensure the US remains a strong, safe, desirable destination for international students. 

If you are looking for enrollment growth in the current environment, you'll find a Pro Tip at the end of this post you really don't want to miss!

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  

• AIEA in March and NAFSA in May, we'll be presenting our latest findings at both. 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.

PIE Live Boston wasn’t all politics and regulatory hurdles, though. The rising potential of Africa as a student source market, building trust on campus, university partnerships, and the value of US degrees were all hot topics. Intead’s presentations focused on how to read the latest IIE Open Doors data and our Connecting Dots research about career outcomes for international students. If you’ve not downloaded that yet, find it HERE.

I was honored to share the main stage to foster discussion around the hot-off-the-press IIE student mobility numbers with esteemed colleagues Clare Overmann, CEO of AIEA; John Sherman, CEO of The Evaluation Company; and Maureen Manning, senior vice president of strategy and insights for The PIE, US, who did a truly deft job moderating the discussion. 

A clear-eyed look at the new Open Doors data at PIE Live ‘24.

A key insight from that presentation: as the number of students desiring an international education grows globally, and given the fact that a growing number of them will have less money to spend on that education (see discussion below), lesser expensive degree options are going to attract more students.  

Your To Do: make a strategic decision about whether you want to: 

• Offer less expensive options (think certificates, scholarships, accepting more credits from prior activities to reduce time (and cost) to completed degree, among other options) OR  
• Develop stronger value propositions that make your institution stand out as worth the higher cost.  

Changing global dynamics have pushed the Intead team to focus our recent research on unearthing real data on international student career outcomes. We will be doing more research on the topic in the months ahead. Reach out if you’d like to be a part of it. We’ll also be presenting on this topic at AIEA and at NAFSA in 2025. We hope you’ll join us at those sessions and participate in the discussion.  

At PIE LIVE Boston we were joined by Kerry Salerno, vice president of marketing and communications at Babson College, and Andrew Chen, CEO of F1 Hire,for another presentation oncareer pathways available to international graduates. Standing room only for that session as institutions are clearly getting the message about arming prospective students with useful career outcome data.  

In total, the event brought together 330 colleagues from 25 countries. Since many of you (our faithful readers) were not there, we thought we would bring a bit of the conference to you. Read on to access Intead slides from our sessions on the new Open Doors data as well as career outcomes for F1 students.

It could be the rush to diversify student recruitment markets. Or the need for tech tools and processes to bring the student journey into the AI era. Or maybe it’s to simply find marketing insights and cultural nuances for a specific region or country. More often than not, it has to do with needing to build internal support for your global student recruiting plans. Whatever the reasons, all we know is our digital content is flying off our virtual shelves.  

Because of the rush – downloads from our site are up 41% year over year – we thought it a good idea to pause our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this important message: Intead has a digital Resource Center enrollment leaders and practitioners tap every day as they consider next steps and start their research.  

Our next opportunity to meet is THIS WEEK! 
Join Ben and Virginia Commonwealth University SIO Jill Blondin on Aug. 1 at 2 p.m. at the EducationUSA Forum as they share insights on Navigating Budget Challenges in International Recruitment: Practical Strategies for Every Phase.  Find them in Salon F. Hope to see you there!

Our publishing goes far beyond simply reporting. When we write and edit, we first ask ourselves: 

• Does the content bring value to our community, or is it simply self-promotion?  
• Can we make our insights more actionable for our readers?  
• Can our readers use our content to formulate, articulate, and justify their student recruitment plans? 
  

For the uninitiated, our growing library currently houses more than 800 pieces of content relevant to the work you do every day. Think ebooks, case studies, conference slides, actionable one-pagers, podcasts, webinars, and more. It’s built on Intead’s 15+ years of publishing on the topics you care about and our ability to predict the future. 

For enrollment leaders, and those aspiring to be, we offer management perspective on budget development, staffing structures, team management, technology implementation and more. 

Some of our Resource Center users know exactly what they are looking for and they type it into the search bar. Others use our handy checkbox options to quickly filter their search: 

• Agents 
• Alumni 
• Digital Marketing 
• International Student Recruitment 
• International Students 
• Market Research 
• Non-Traditional Students 
• Persona 
• Predictive Modeling 
• Social Media  
• Technology 

We also offer deep, well-researched insights on student recruiting in key countries and regions: 

• Africa 
• Brazil 
• Central America
• China 
• Colombia 
• Ecuador
• Europe 
• India 
• Kenya 
• Latin America 
• Middle East 
• South Africa 
• South America 
• South Asia 
• Southeast Asia 
• US 
• Vietnam
  

Search by keyword, topic, region, or category. It couldn’t be easier. 

Sound valuable? (We welcome your feedback. Oh, and those notes we get from readers telling us how they used one piece or another to push forward…love that!)

Click here for direct access to our Resource Center page.  

You’ll find a good amount of our content is available for free. Some, however, is for our Intead Plus members only. Our members have access to a range of team training tools, webinars, ebooks, and slide decks that required significant effort on our part to put together -- the kind of stuff we use to guide our clients. These pieces offer even more value to our readers. 

And, if you’re curious what your peers are downloading lately (and who isn’t?!), read on… 

Our first time attending the GMAC Conference put on by the talented folks who produce and manage Graduate Management Education (GME) testing and so much more. With 600+ in attendance, the networking flows easily and the conference logistics seem a bit smoother than some of the other conferences we attend.  

GMAC, as an organization, has a larger, more international staff than other U.S. academic associations. And they have a revenue stream (from testing) that others in this field do not have. Their global outposts support academic business programs in countries around the world and confirm the value of their entrance exam for institutions in these countries as well. 

Conference sessions covered marketing, recruiting, admissions, diversity, program management, and predicting future enrollment, among others. With many concurrent sessions, I found it hard to identify the most valuable use of any given hour in my schedule. That’s a good thing. 

Our presentation topic: predicting the student recruitment future based on international data and the global shift toward stronger anti-immigration policies. Our slides will be available to you for the next week before they move to exclusive access for our Intead Plus members. 

Our next opportunity to meet!   
EducationUSA, 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.  Hope to see you there! 

The Resource Center for Industry Insiders 
Take your challenge of the day and plop it into our search bar. With 800+ publications and our 15 years of weekly blogging, you will find relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Valuable perspective and data ontopics you care about. From agent-university partnerships to predictive modeling and CRM efficiency, to new market development, our Resource Center has you covered. Check it out.

Below we share 4 way-cool and thought-provoking takeaways from the sessions I attended at GMAC. And of course, the slides from my session about the future and how cultivating an innovation mindset is your best approach in the face of national and international policy threats. We compare and contrast very reliable sources (IIE, British Council, and IDP) and make our own case for the value of innovation and perseverance. 

Read on for the insights and be sure to scroll to the very bottom for the link to our slide deck – which we think is well worth the scroll ; -) 

Conferences come and go each year. And each time we attend a conference or a session, we promise ourselves, “I just want one thing to take away that I can use when I get back to the office.” And as the conference slides into our rearview mirror, do we confirm that one thing? Do we do something to ensure the time and money invested really bring value to our work? 

If we are being honest: Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. Right? As far as our boss is concerned: Always, YES!  ; -) 

Well, here’s our effort to make an honest person of you (of all of us). We are looking back at New Orleans and NAFSA 2024 (just 6 weeks ago) and sharing our actionable takeaways we think you can use in your day-to-day. With 7 of our Intead team spread out around the conference, it was tough to filter our takeaways down to just a few. We’re bringing out the best 4 for you. 

At this year’s NAFSA, Intead’s Iliana Joaquin teamed up with UMBC SIO Dr. David Di Maria to talk about the realities of using AI in enrollment management. You can grab those slides here.

And I gave a presentation with UC Davis SIO Dr. Joanna Regulska offering new data we conducted with NAFSA on the value of a US degree. You can read about that and grab the slides here.  

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.  Hope to see you there! 

The Resource Center for industry insiders 
Access our international student recruitment research database with over 800 datasets, infographics, webinars, podcasts, articles, and more. A go-to collection of Intead’s 15+ years of industry analysis. Check it out and bookmark for later. 

Read on for a quick-hit summary of 4 key takeaways from the NAFSA 2024 conference conversations we found useful: Visas, Budgeting, Staffing, and Strategic Planning. We’ll keep it short and sweet.