Recruiting Intelligence

In honor of the U.S. Federal Tax Filing Deadline this week, we dedicate this Intead Insight to another federal agency with filing requirements – the US Immigration and Customs Service and the SEVIS system that many of you know all too well (and wish you didn't).

We all know that the visa process plays a significant role in the university enrollment process. We highly recommend you listen to our podcast with former State Department Officer Tony Edson for valuable insights into the State Department's Visa Services.

How do you successfully market education? Is today's youth so disaffected by bleak job prospects that they just don't care? Are parents turned off by inflated and growing tuition costs?

Higher ed is increasingly challenged to demonstrate that education matters. More than ever before, higher ed must demonstrate that there is a positive return on the investment of time and money. What's a university to do?

Objective research to the rescue: the Pew Research Center recently provided a useful study, called “The Rising Cost of NOT Going to College.”

Chart 1 (below) shows the growing divergence of earnings between groups with different levels of education.  As you can see the gap has risen from generation to generation. Today’s millennials, with at least a Bachelor degree, earn significantly more than less educated full-time worker in the same age bracket of 25-32. 

China is the second market in our series on niche or micro-markets in student recruiting. Last week, we covered the Indian market as presented by Lakshmi Iyer, today we are sharing with you the insights from Kim Morrison from GrokGlobal on the Chinese market. Kim gave a great presentation at the annual AIEA conference in Washington, D.C., in February 2014.

We recommend that you download the presentation which contains many more fascinating slides than we can present here (registration required - Please note that the actual presentation starts on slide 5).  

India is the second largest source of international students coming to the U.S. Many factors are contributing to this flow of students and current projections suggest future growth in the number of Indian students studying in the U.S. and other countries. In looking at the Indian market you will find a very diverse student population and complex market than many outside observers assume. When we here at Intead evaluate the Indian market, we consider the many "micro-markets" within the country that are more likely to be effective for international student recruitment. 

Student retention is one of the key buzz words in higher education. As a metric, this one is a key indicator or an individual institution's success in providing a valued education and in aggregate, an indicator of our country's ability to export education.