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Recruiting Intelligence

Streamline Your Global Partnerships: 2020 Edition

How many cooks are in your international-marketing-kitchen? Many universities work with a dizzying array of partners in their efforts to reach international prospects—an endless stream of specialized contractors all working in separate silos and in different regions.

We’ve seen universities that have hired many vendors under separate contracts:

  • A partner to build their international microsite
  • A freelancer to write the blog copy on that microsite
  • A partner to run a Facebook ad campaign in India
  • A partner to run Weibo accounts in China
  • A partner to run webinars in Vietnam
  • A videographer to shoot student testimonials
  • A graphic design firm to design brochures
  • A social media manager to run their WeChat account
  • A market research company to provide yearly research reports
  • An SEO specialist to help with paid search in Latin America
  • An agency to create the annual viewbook

    Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…sorry, we dozed off there. It makes us tired just to write out this list. And we didn't even include the many agent contracts most universities sign in their primary target countries.

Does international student recruitment have to be this distracting and exhausting ?

Read on for our advice on streamlining and helping you get back to your real job...

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One Million Student Prospects Vanished This Spring

Just poof, gone!

But we know where they are hiding.

An excerpt from Jeff Selingo’s highly anticipated forthcoming book, Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions:

“A student’s name is sold by College Board, on average, 18 times over her high school career, and some names have been purchased more than 70 times…The coronavirus prevented more than a million first-time SAT takers in the high-school class of 2021 from taking the test this spring or summer. The canceled ACT/SAT doesn’t only leave rising seniors lacking a score; it also results in the loss of names for colleges to fill the top of their recruitment funnel.”

 

If you have typically used those purchased names to fill the top of your recruitment funnel…it’s time to rely more heavily on digital marketing to generate those leads.

Generating your own leads instead of purchasing them produces prospective students who have clearly expressed interest in what your institution offers. Higher quality prospects produce more efficient, lower cost results. In the end, a streamlined recruitment process to fill your classes.

But contrary to what Facebook and Google might have you believe, a successful lead generation campaign is more than just a few clicks in an ad platform. You’ve got to have the expertise to set up your audience criteria and so much more.

If you are concerned about meeting your enrollment targets, may we suggest a bit of help from the Intead team and our Intead Plus resource library?

Our Intead Plus members have access to the worksheets and data that help them justify their student enrollment marketing plans and craft targeted, ROI-positive campaigns. A year-round resource, Intead Plus offers strategic support, data analysis, recruitment planning, student personas, and industry perspective.

Oh, and did we mention that we are offering steep Intead Plus membership discounts to state consortium members? Study Illinois started the trend and now it might be available to you.

If you are a member of your state consortium, be in touch: info@intead.com.

Read on to figure out where those 1M students went and how you can reach them.

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The New Student Enrollment Playbook is Here

We’d like to think that your Wednesday ritual includes reading our latest Recruiting Intelligence blog release over your morning coffee, but we know that you’ve had a lot on your plate recently, and we don’t mean breakfast.

What a difference a week makes? Last week everyone was reacting to the ICE guidance that if U.S. classes were online only, international students had to head for the exits. Now, 7 days later, that order is rescinded and international students may stay in the U.S. and study online.

While this is welcome news, if anyone thinks this is the end of the headaches, confusion and policy level chaos on this topic, they've not been paying attention for the past few years.

Throughout the rise of COVID-19 we’ve been offering quick-hit, actionable advice weekly on this blog, advising on how to weather this storm, salvage your enrollment, and pivot your digital marketing strategy in response to this unprecedented global crisis.

This Not So Fun Fact from UNESCO still boggles our minds: By the first week of April, 190 countries closed kindergartens to higher education institutions simultaneously affecting 1.6 billion learners, 90% of total enrolled learners globally.

If you’ve missed any of our valuable insights these past few months, or if you just need a refresher — we know, there’s a lot to keep track of right now—you’re in luck. Our latest eBook, The New Student Enrollment Playbook: COVID-19 Edition is now available to download for free.

Consider it your one-stop-shop for all things COVID-19, and not to worry, we disinfect the download button following each click ; -)

From advice on crisis contingency planning to a review of the best online learning resources, The New Student Enrollment Playbook will help you and your leadership navigate this new normal and emerge stronger for it. Read on to download your copy.

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The More Things Change…The More We Need to Figure Out

So, ICE tells all the online international students in the U.S. to go home and Harvard tells all students to go online for Fall 2020 (without lowering tuition). That’s quite a news day.

From day to day, the landscape continues to shift, sometimes dramatically.

If you’ve missed the past few months of Recruiting Intelligence posts because you’ve had other pressing priorities (we get it), then you may want to take a scroll through it all.

Read on for a quick summary of all the things we all need to figure out. (Spoiler alert: we've already figured out a lot of them).

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Yes, Another Privacy Policy Update

Are Privacy Policies everyone’s favorite topic?

Not really. (Maybe a few legalese junkies out there get excited.)

Are there a lot of acronyms involved?

Yes. (Makes everything so much easier to understand, right?)

Is privacy compliance vitally important to your institution?

Absolutely. (The confluence of ethics, legal protections, and digital efficiency).

Back in 2018 with the implementation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), our inboxes were full of privacy policy updates. While it was a nuisance to sort through the deluge of policy update emails from Facebook, Apple, and companies to whom we didn’t even remember signing away our personal information (ah, the 21st Century), these policy changes were even more of a headache for those who actually managed this personal data — college admissions departments, for example. Our introduction to GDPR has got you covered if you need a refresher on the basics of these regulations. 

Now there’s a new kid on the block: The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which rolled out on January 1st, 2020. Fear not, the enforcement grace period through July 1st, 2020 means there’s still time to review your compliance with the new policies before they fully go into effect.

How does CCPA differ from GDPR, and what does it mean for your admissions department? Read on...

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How Students Pay You Is Changing - Part 3

This week we wrap up our three-part series on #FinTech, where we’re exploring how money for college can be found and moved faster, safer, and smarter, alleviating some of the headache for students, their families, and this time around, for university administrators. This is part of our focus on #EdTech and all the changes our industry is experiencing.

In our first piece, we talked about new student loan options, especially for students from underserved demographics, those looking for social equality, those who want unique repayment terms, and international students. Then last week, we jumped to alternative funding sources, such as micro funding, income share agreements, and new developments in scholarship FinTech.

Those areas of FinTech were all helpful to the students seeking ways to finance their educations and helpful for university administrators to understand as the financing tools and options you students can access change.

Today we are looking at what is new in the world of financial data and payment processing. Let's consider how your job might get a little easier.

And speaking of making your job a bit easier, we have 3 new Intead student recruiting research reports headed your way. Now is a great time to consider an Intead Plus Bookshelf subscription. Don’t miss these valuable reports to help you improve your institution’s recruitment game:

  • Student Interactions on Peer-to-Peer Recruiting Platforms
  • Student Interactions with Chatbots and other Artificial Intelligence Tools
  • Student Recruiting in Emerging Markets: Africa and Latin America

Or you can learn from us with a personal meeting: we will be discussing our latest research and presenting our student recruitment insights at the upcoming TABS, ICEF and AIRC conferences. Email us to set up a meeting.

Read on for important insights into a set of really valuable questions you need to ask before embracing the latest FinTech tools…

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How Students Pay You Is Changing - Part 1

When you think of student loans, your first thought might not be of the Space Race between the US and the Soviet Union, but that’s exactly where they started. Following the launch of the Soviet Sputnik, the first federal loan program began in 1958 with the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) to serve students studying engineering, science, or education degrees.

Since then, technology has rapidly advanced—both in outer space and right here in the earthly realm of higher education. Interestingly, tech has also advanced in how to finance education.

Continuing our exploration of #EdTech, today we are turning to FinTech in what will be a three-part series. Most of us have probably checked our bank balance online and many are cashing checks with a click of our cellphone cameras. The younger ones among us are transferring funds to each other using Venmo. (You had to pay your babysitter that way just the other week, didn't you?). These same digital advances in FinTech are starting to overlap with EdTech.

The rising cost of higher education is a huge concern for most students and families. Today we explore some of the new financial technologies that allow money to be moved faster, safer, and smarter for the students and families that are eager to attend your institution.

Why is this important?

Knowing what your target audience is into is always important from a recruitment and retention point of view. Is your institution making it easy for students to use the modern financial tools available?

In our FinTech series, we are going to look at new student loan offerings and alternative funding sources for scholarships and crowdsourcing. And while those are helpful on the student end, we will also discuss FinTech solutions for verifying financial details and aid approvals as well as payment management systems.

Quick reminder: This December, the Intead team will be attending the TABS conference in Boston, the ICEF conference in Miami Beach and the AIRC conference in Miami. Drop us an email if you’d like to meet and hear about our latest research. We are releasing 3 new market research reports in the coming months. So much insight!

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International Study’s Global $ Impact: How Does Our Industry Compare?

We report on student mobility trends in all of our research. Where are they going? What influences their decisions? How do we reach them with really great information to help them make informed decisions? These are the questions we ask and answer as marketers and communicators.

IIE data is always useful as a historical view of what happened over the past few years. What we also look for is data that is more immediate. What is happening right now. Better yet, how does what is happening right now affect what will be happening next year and beyond. The attempt to produce crystal ball predictions that have a bit more grounded intelligence and bit less unpredictable magic.

One of IIE’s figures that is helpful from a policy level and industry advocacy point of view is the size of the market. Education is an export for most countries and here in the US, IIE has helped us value that at roughly $36B. That is the value of international students coming to the US and spending their money on tuition, housing, food, transportation, clothing and of course, the BIG decision between Beats headphones or Jaybird wireless earbuds.

But we wonder how does this $36B relate to the GLOBAL student mobility market?

Read on to find out.

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#EdTech Basic Training: Bootcamps and the Future of Coding

Students are settled into their dorm rooms, pumpkin spice is again a major topic of conversation, and the craziness of the drop/add period is wrapping up. Summer might already feel like a distant memory. But, way back in June—before all of the student orientations, barbecues and beach trips—we spoke about credentialing and badges. One of the non-credit suggestions we made was for universities to offer coding bootcamps in order to help credential their students or alumni.

There are so many ways to engage prospective students at all levels who want to advance their careers. Our Non-Traditional Student e-book Quality. Cost. Convenience. has 9 case studies from your peer institutions. It might be worth a look if you’ve not already downloaded it. The Extended version for Intead Plus members includes three bonus chapters on market segmentation and recruitment strategies.

Read on to take a look at some of the options already out there for these coding bootcamps, and see if they actually make a career difference for students and offer your team an enrollment edge.

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How Our International Audiences View Us Now

If you’ve been following our blog and our market research, you were reading today’s headlines three years ago.

Intead has been conducting primary research on student and parent interests and influencers for a very long time. And we’ve been publishing our results for you. And we’ve been incorporating our findings into our clients’ marketing activities.

More than three years ago, we reported on international student concerns about the news coming out of the US. At that time, presidential candidate Donald Trump shared his views on Mexicans and a host of other things using headline grabbing terminology that continues to this day.

Research we've conducted, both primary and secondary, found that the parents of international students are staying on top of news coming out of the US. And we noted both students and parents increasingly raising safety as a top-level concern as opposed to a passing thought. We also identified visa processing issues as a concern to international admissions operations. And we identified the growth in international students attending US-based private high schools and the value of, and best practices, for recruiting those students.

All that, and more, was part of our conference presentations, publishing and client support in 2016.

Many sources of academic news tell you about the trends. Our goal, and we hope you know we deliver on this, is to answer the question, “So what?”

A favorite question of our friend and colleague, Harry Lane, professor of international business and strategy at the D’Amore-McKim school of business at Northeastern University. He will always push his students to consider this point: data and information are only as valuable as your ability to determine what actions you should take.

We get trend data and reams of other information all the time. So what?

This is where Intead shines. We’re all about the strategic decisions and tactical execution that emerge from the data we gather.

In fact, we have three new global marketing reports based on new research that we will release this fall and present at all your favorite conferences. (AIRC and ICEF Miami, anyone?). Oh, and not for nothin’, but a subscription to Intead Plus might be worth a look.

Getting the answer to “So What?” three years ahead of your peers, that’s gotta be valuable.

Read on for a few observations and action-oriented tips based on what we are seeing now…

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