Recruiting Intelligence

I recently had the pleasure of connecting with Lavinia Yang, Executive Director of First Study, a Taiwanese education consultancy. Ms. Yang shared in depth responses about the recruiting landscape in Taiwan. Higher education professionals with an interest in developing or expanding recruitment in Taiwan should read Ms. Yang's insightful responses to my questions.

At the 2014 NAFSA Region VI Conference, I attended a terrific session given by Mindy Yiu and Ann Rahmat of Miami University (Ohio). These knowledgeable higher education professionals presented a session titled Tired of Traveling Alone: How to Form a Consortium Travel Group. Since many of our readers are in the position of planning travel we would like to share the highlights of this session.

President Barack Obama’s announcement at the end of 2014 that the US would be restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba opened the floodgates for articles and newscasts about what this will mean for US businesses. There are a range of businesses elbowing to enter the Cuban market, but what does this mean for the higher education sector? What will this mean for study abroad programs in Cuba, language schools that see possibility in opening in Cuba, and, in particular, what will renewed diplomatic ties with Cuba mean for Cuban students who seek to attend institutions abroad?

Brazil is the buzz word in international education recruitment these days. And we know that you want to learn as much as you can about Brazil. What do you need to know about Brazil in order to make your recruitment strategy more effective? This podcast will give you a great deal of useful information to build or expand your Brazilian student recruitment.

In 2014 our research and editorial teams worked hard to bring you engaging and cutting-edge blog articles. As we enter 2015 we thought a retrospective of the best and most popular Intead content of 2014 was in order-- just in case you missed anything the first time around.

In our previous blog, we introduced you to student enrollment trends in Japan. In this post we would like to give you a summary on the digital marketing environment which will make it possible for your institution to reach Japanese students more easily.

Last week we revealed that Intead has once again conducted a mystery shopper experiment. This week we reveal the big winners! Read on to discover if your institution made the list...

What happens when a prospective international student uses Facebook and Twitter to signify her interest in, and hopefully to learn more about, various institutions in the English speaking world? We, at Intead, recently conducted another mystery shopper experiment with institutions in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. As has happened in previous mystery shopper experiments, we were not surprised, yet still disappointed by the dismal rate of response by institutions in these countries. One country proved exceptional in their universities’ ability to respond quickly and effectively. You might be surprised to learn the big winner of this experiment.

To better recruit Japanese students it helps to have a deeper understanding of the higher education landscape in Japan. In this post we will introduce some factors that affect Japanese students’ interest and ability to study abroad.

“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” as Yogi Berra is famously quoted as saying.

In general, it seems much more fun to make long-term predictions, since nobody will check back whether we are right or wrong. And yet, with this blog coinciding with Election Day, there are plenty of pundits making all kinds of near term predicitions as we write this blog. At least half of them are going to be wrong. Will any of us go back and take them to task?

So why all this talk about predictions? The British Council published their 2024 forecast for postgraduate mobility trends. ICEF was kind enough to post the full report. 

• Continued strong growth in post-graduate mobility 
• The U.S. is projected to grow 4% per year and host 407,000 graduate students (Good news since the graduate school deans were worried about their enrollment figures.)
• India will be a driving force and Chinese graduate students are expected to increase despite a decline of 30 million students in China
• Useful summary of demographic trends for higher education 
• The status quo is projected forward without any impact from technological, policy or attitudinal changes

The authors state clearly that they rely on trends, "for which there is data available, and do not take into account other variables that may affect international student mobility in the future."

We'll be honest with you, we are really struggling with this last line. Making predictions about the future without considering other variables for which you have no data? Hmmmm.