Recruiting Intelligence

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a 48-country region with 1.2 billion people has a gross tertiary education enrollment ratio of just 9.4%. The global average: 40%.

To put it another way, young Western European and North American students are 10 times more likely than their SSA peers to get a shot at a degree. Another example of where you are born truly matters.  

Many capable degree-seeking SSA students look beyond their home countries for education opportunities. The good news here is you are likely in a position to help them find and actualize their dreams. Let’s look into the numbers. 

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! 

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As it stands, a full 70% of the SSA population is under age 30. And, by 2050, the number of university-age individuals in the region is expected to double. Yet, there is little chance its higher ed system will meet the demand. The most recent count shows 88 rated higher ed institutions in SSA, that’s per the Times Higher Education Sub-Saharan Africa University Rankings last year. That’s a tight (read: unrealistic) enrollment squeeze for these universities by any measure.  

Are you taking note? If you aren’t, France sure is. They are the top receiving country for this significant cohort. A Campus France report shows that 92,000 (27%) of the 430,000 SSA international students in 2021/22 studied in Europe, with France their top choice, followed by Germany, then Portugal. That same year, 42,518 traveled from SSA to study in the US, a number that rose to 50,199 in 2022/23. That's 18% growth from just 2021 to 2022.

These student decisions make sense as SSA is home to 23 Francophone countries, and more than 60% of people who speak French daily live in Africa. In fact, 80% of children studying French are in Africa. For some prospects, this makes France an appealing choice for international education. Others are less interested in studying in the country that once colonized them, as one U.S.-bound student noted at the 2023 AIEA conference. 

Our suggestion: Get to know this region. The growing youth population of sub-Saharan Africa offers a clear contrast to America’s enrollment cliff. Of course, not every student source country will be right for your institution – and none will match the application potential from India, even China – but as you expand your market reach, you may find parts of SSA make a whole lot of sense for the programs you offer and the internationalized campus you are building.  

Key questions your enrollment team should ask before entering any new market. Obvious, but helpful to clarify and state them as you think about each country:  

• Is there a growing youth population? 
• Is there a growing middle-class/GDP growth?
• Can a set of families afford travel costs and your program tuition? 
• Do your programs line up with the job opportunities in that market? 
• Can you provide a welcoming community and academic support for these students on campus? 

If you ever need help exploring new market opportunities, we are just a click away: info@intead.com.

We've written about and analyzed African source countries before. Today, let's dive into Tanzania, an SSA country that currently meets 3 key market entry requirements. 

• Rising youth population: Nearly 20% of Tanzanians (68.6 million total pop.) are aged 15 to 24, with the median age 17. 

• Rising incomes: In 2020, Tanzania moved from low-income to lower-middle-income status and today gets a B+ per credit rating agency Fitch. 

• Employment opportunities for returning graduates: Tanzania’s unemployment rate is forecast at 2.38% this year, with growth in agriculture, mining, tourism, infrastructure, and energy sectors.  

Your institution's rank is far less important here and, as we noted, your competitor institutions are likely not present in this market.

Take a closer look with us at how you might position your institution to attract Tanzanian students. Read on for 5 key recruitment insights on this market. Go even further using our Resource Center offering 15 targeted articles and reports on specific approaches to recruiting students from Africa. Pro Tip: use the search bar and type in "Africa" to find, for example, this post on African Tech Hubs.

Market diversification is one obvious answer to sustaining enrollment numbers. How to successfully go about it, however, is often less obvious. Looking beyond your own campus to see how others are doing it can help. So, we have a story to share. 

If you've seen our other case studies, you know we share more concrete details and data than any other agency out there. We want to make you that much more dangerous and demonstrate the value of investing in customized, creative, and well-tracked paid campaigns.

In 2021, a mid-tier, public, Midwest regional university needed to recruit international students. It’s a student segment they’d had success with in the past, but Covid, as it does, threw a wrench in their recruitment efforts. It became clear they needed new ways to reach prospective students residing overseas. We know you were wrestling with this very issue at the time, too. We all were. 

Find us at AIRC and ICEF. Let’s connect! 

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

• AIRC Annual Conference – As you read this, our team is in Phoenix offering our full-day digital marketing workshop. If you are at the AIRC conference, please look for us here in Phoenix, Dec 6-9, 2023 
• ICEF North America Workshop in Miami, Dec 11-13, 2023. We'll be offering a half-day workshop on Dec 11 and meeting with everyone on Dec 12-13.

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

Back to the results of our digital campaigns in Bangladesh and Vietnam.

With a media buy budget of $35,000, the institution was admittedly skeptical they’d be able to make any meaningful progress in a new market. We always want more wiggle room with our media buys, but we also felt certain they could succeed, with the right approach. They trusted our experience and the market research we delivered.

Our mission: understand who and where the prospective families are and then reach them in ways that prompt engagement. So our data detectives and creative talents set out to: 

• Confirm the institution’s high-value student recruitment regions and where there might be room to grow
• Develop on-brand, targeted, and effective digital marketing assets   
• Launch and optimize digital campaigns to generate highly qualified leads (and build awareness, but really, we all want the high-value leads) 
• And of course, report on campaign analytics to inform future marketing investments.

By any measurement, it went really well. One $12,000 media buy generated 40 million impressions, 500,000 clicks, 1,087 leads, 122 applications, 40 admitted students, and 7 enrolled. But who’s counting? (Please say you are!)

It was a fast, 14-week campaign involving two markets, two academic programs, and two social platforms. Want more insight? Download our free case study. Read on… 

Forget Wordle. Here’s a real problem for you to solve: If India, which recently unseated China as the world’s most populous nation, has over 1.4 billion people and 17.5% are aged 15 – 24 (that's ~240M students), will its roughly 1,100 universities have enough seats for all its university-eligible students?

The short answer: no.

Clearly, India's education leaders have some planning to do.

Take a step back and consider: India is enjoying a big year. They just landed on the moon. Hosted the G20 summit. Are top-dog population-wise. And its fast-growing economy is as strong as ever. A Pew Research Center survey this year even shows a full 68% of Indians feel their country is growing in global influence. All really good news for India.

But the devil is always in the details with rising nations and the truth is, there are too many young Indians who can’t get the higher education they want. At least not now and not at home.

Opportunities to Meet In Person 

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

• PIE News Live in Boston, Nov 13-15, 2023 
• AIRC Annual Conference – we’ll be offering our full day digital marketing workshop here in Phoenix, Dec 6-9, 2023 
• ICEF North America Workshop in Miami, Dec 11-13, 2023 

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

The Indian government is fully aware of this growth and for the first time its University Grants Commission has taken strides to welcome foreign universities into the country. (Note: only institutions in the top 500 global rankings need apply.) Deakin University and University of Wollongong, both of Australia, are the first to be granted approval. You can bet others (and we’ve had interesting conversations with a few) are doing the financial analysis and considering the blueprints for academic collaborations of their own.

One key caveat of the regulations, India is not recognizing online degrees from foreign institutions. India’s leadership wants in-person set-ups. As the former vice-chancellor of New Delhi’s National University of Educational Planning and Administration puts it, “Online education goes against the expected gains of internationalization.” Plus, the government would like to increase on-campus higher education access in-country while also attracting foreign students to India. Makes sense on multiple levels.

You know what else makes sense? US institutions vying for Indian students’ attention. And yes, of course you are already recruiting in this key region and have seen an uptick in actual enrollments. US visa approvals of Indian applications have hit record numbers since the pandemic.

Trust us, there’s so much more we think you should consider doing to tap this market effectively. Let us tell you why. Read on…

For an industry that takes a lot of heat for being slow-moving, it sure feels like change is happening fast. You feel it, too, right? The pains of adjustment and growth. We’re learning to get comfortable getting uncomfortable. And we’re all here for it.

This blog, as you know, is one way you can keep up with important topics and industry trends that are propelling higher ed forward. This past quarter, for instance, we weighed in on pivotal topics like the current drivers of Chinese student mobility (hint: keep recruiting!), the integration of predictive modeling (new inescapable buzzword: AI), non-traditional student’s non-traditional needs, the use of agent aggregators, and more.

Of course, you were busy juggling all this progress with bottom line issues like student yield. So, if you didn’t get to all of our posts, we understand. Read on for a summary of the top news from Intead’s “Recruiting Intelligence” blog and click through on those topics that are meaningful to you now.

As we publish this week, NACAC 2023 just wrapped up in Baltimore. Some great opportunities to connect and learn, as always. And some growing and adjustment pains for NACAC as well as they figure out how to serve their members and regional leaders. Some natural frustration there, to be sure. We’ll share the slides from our presentation and more reflections on the gathering in a couple weeks.

Next Up: Join us in Paris Nov 8-10 at CIEE's 76th Annual Conference. Let us know if you'll be there (info@intead.com).

But here, and now, for many of you, we share some great reading while you are traveling the world in search of students while others are setting the recruitment plans in motion back in the office. Read on…

In 2019, the Intead team along with FPP EDUMedia conducted primary research to assess the influencers, interests, and political reactions in African and Latin American student populations to help institutions like yours tap emerging, or what we now consider, evolving student markets. 

More than 12,300 international students from over a dozen countries responded to our survey. What we learned has helped shape some really important conversations with clients looking to broaden their international reach.  

Enrollment ambiguity continues to push us to explore new opportunities. We encourage you to return to this research for still relevant guidance as you look for ways to grow, diversify, and strengthen your international recruitment strategy.  

If you want to chat about how you are building your Fall 2024 strategy or the tactical execution approaches we have found most valuable, Ben and Iliana will be at the NACAC conference presenting alongside our colleagues from AIRC and Middle Tennessee State University on Sept 22 in Baltimore. Can we schedule a time to chat? Coffee's on us! 

We know folks are short on time and just want us to get to the actionable points. So, we took the key ideas from our previous research and put them into a one-pager comparing Africa, Central America, and South America. You can grab that at the bottom of this blog post.  

In the full Emerging Markets e-book, available to Intead Plus members, you will find very helpful recruitment strategy insights: 

• How your university can best appeal to student prospects in specific evolving regions and countries (segmentation)  
• Influential messaging tips that highlight your strongest differentiators (stand out in the marketplace)  
• Effective distribution channels to reach your target audience with those differentiators.  

To get the free one-page comparison, read on… 

What if recruiting international students was as easy as looking in your own backyard? OK, maybe not literally in your backyard. But, there is certainly a lesser-tapped market that is closer than you might think. (And we found this beautiful photo of a typical American front yard and really wanted to use it  ;-)

In 2014, the Institute of International Education reported that 73,019 international students were enrolled in secondary schools in the United States. And of those students, 67% were seeking their secondary diploma. Exchange students, as well as domestically-based international students, are an important target group. They have knowledge of the culture, language and education system in the U.S. and they are easily accessible in the high schools just down the road from you!

Bottom Line: There is plenty of potential for recruiting international students from within the U.S. secondary school system. These students typically have a much easier time adjusting to post-secondary education in the U.S. at a university. But, recruiting them is different than the process your recruiting team might use when attracting domestic students. If you are using your domestic student marketing approach with the international students in your backyard, you are not reaching this target market effectively. Emily can add to your perspective here and share a few tips you might want to pass along to your domestic recruitment team.

Have we talked enough about telling compelling stories lately? If we haven’t, here is a friendly reminder. Compelling content is key to engaging your target audience. And as a university, your target audience happens to have some of the most tech-savvy people on the Internet today…and not because of their technical training, simply because of their age. Seems like they were all born with a cell phone in hand.

What we’re saying is, your prospective domestic and international students spend a lot of time online and on social media. They visit university pages to find out more information about academics and programs, and they visit universities’ social media pages to learn more about the culture, campus, the surrounding area and student life.

They want to know, “Will I fit in here?” and then they go online thinking, “Let’s see what their social media feeds look like.”

Here’s the Pro Tip: When they check out your social media, there better be some compelling videos: Inspiring. Clever. Goofy. Engaging. Convincing.

Let’s check in with Emily who found some excellent (totally worth the click) examples to point us in the right direction. Congratulations to both of our winners: two more universities have won the coveted Intead Award for Creative Engagement. 
(Framable certificates are on their way!)

In last week’s introductory post Africa's Competitive Edge on international student recruitment in Africa, we set the scene. Though the economies in many countries have seen hard times recently, the momentum of students in both North and Sub-Saharan Africa seeking to study in the U.S. and other places around the world is increasing. Documenting the trend: increasing numbers of competitive SAT scores being sent from Nigerian students to U.S. universities.

Today, we will share our thoughts on the trends and opportunities of student recruiting specifically in Nigeria—the largest sending country in Africa in 2015. Almost 9,500 students from Nigeria are studying in the U.S. today. Let's look at a few ideas about how to market to this particular group of students. There is a lot to learn about this country to be successful in your recruiting efforts. We want to get you started.

Have you been to Nairobi? Vibrant city there. International student recruiting options? Yeah, worth evaluating.

There are a number of African countries that interest us as potential international student recruiting pools. Like other regions of the world, many countries here are experiencing very recent economic pain due to dropping oil prices. In addition, competition is growing from a number of higher education institutions within Africa – primarily in South Africa.

This continent is a difficult territory to navigate as a student recruiter. And given some of the recent increases we’ve seen in international student mobility from some regions on this continent, we wanted to see what we could learn. And of course, we wanted to share that with you.

Today and for the next two weeks, we share insights in our three-part series about recruiting from select markets in Africa. Part I, below, provides a larger picture of Africa and the trends of international students studying abroad. Parts II & III will take a deeper dive country focus on Nigeria and Kenya and the potential for recruiting international students from those countries, as well as tips on how to reach them using the most promising marketing channels we could identify.

The Bottom Line: The reality is that many other destinations are more sought by your U.S. recruiting colleagues. African markets are less so. And therein lies the opportunity. The less traveled path represents the less competitive path. Consider how nice it would be to be among the top ranked universities at a college fair. Is that possible for your institution in Beijing? There are market opportunities and then there are market opportunities. Depends on who you are and what you are willing to put into the hunt for international students.

Let’s find out what Emily, our American international student stationed in Leiden, Netherlands, can teach us about this vibrant part of the world.

How many mobile devices do you have? You got your cell phone, your tablet… Turns out in Saudi Arabia, a heck of a lot of people have more than one mobile device, too. We Are Social reports that the number of mobile subscriptions as a percent of total population = 173%.

Yes, More mobile subscriptions than there are people! So, we’ll ask you again, as we have in so many of our posts, is your international student recruitment content mobile friendly?

Let’s get to the point of this post: Saudi student recruitment. In the last few years, students from Saudi Arabia have certainly left their mark on international higher education. With the growth of government sponsored scholarship programs, such as the King Abdullah Foreign Scholarship Program (KASP), the number of students from Saudi Arabia studying in the U.S. for the 2014/2015 school year jumped to just about 60,000. That's an 11.2% increase from the previous year, according to the International Institute of Education (IIE). With numbers like these, you should be paying close attention to this market.

And most of you are. Paying attention that is. In our conversations with our colleagues at many institutions, we hear concern. A strong reliance on Saudi Arabian students to help meet recruitment targets might be leaving institutions vulnerable. Not unlike the reliance many schools have on Chinese or Korean students. When the political or economic winds blow, it affects a significant swath of your international student population.

You are not alone in this vulnerability. So we asked Emily, our international blogger, to dig into the international student recruitment scene in the land of Saud and let us know where and how to focus our recruitment efforts. As usual, she did a great job and found some really interesting research.

BOTTOM LINE: Potential changes being enforced by the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission (SACM), are affecting how many Saudi students are studying abroad and the funding available. However, many Saudi students are able to pay their way, independently. When recruiting in this particular market, it will be essential to brush up on your Saudi cultural knowledge and reach out to prospective students online. Mobile phone apps, YouTube content and targeted landing pages will put you ahead of the competition and help you meet your recruitment goals. There's a lot of information in this post, read on...