Recruiting Intelligence

Tuition discounting is a common way to attract students and or to make the university program affordable to potential students. Universities will encounter an even greater mindset challenge in respect to price as digital courses, MOOCs, and hybrid courses proliferate and become more acceptable as an education credential to employers.  At that time, pricing will be an even bigger issue since you are looking at the willingness to pay at all, not the level of payment. I speak from experience since I spent many years of my professional life in the digital content industry convincing consumers to pay for what was available for free elsewhere.  My experience was rooted in the social expression industry marketing paid online greeting cards, instant messenger content and mobile content, generally widely available for free. Nevertheless,we were able to show value and millions of consumers were willing to pay every year for that digital content. 

You are reading an excerpt from our e-book "88 Ways to Recruit International Students" (Click here to read the entire book)

#57. Search Engine Optimization

At the 2013 ICEF Toronto Workshop I had the pleasure of attending several thoughtful sessions. One of those sessions, led by Anna Ryzhova of the Association of Russian Educational Advisors, was particularly useful. For those institutions that are looking to expand recruitment into Russia, understanding how to enter the Russian market is critical. Through our blog we try to give you a deeper knowledge of various markets to help you begin or expand your recruitment efforts.

We are thrilled to announce that our mystery shopper experiment we announced last month is now featured in two videos created by the ICEF Monitor. This is Intead's fifteen minutes of fame-- actually it's not quite that long! If you're curious about how nearly 25% of institutions we surveyed didn't reply to prospective international student inquiries, here is your chance to check out the video explanations. It's summer-- take a break, pour yourself a glass of lemonade and enjoy the two part video series. 

You are reading an excerpt from our e-book "88 Ways to Recruit International Students" (Click here to read the entire book)

#59. Create a Wikipedia page in local language

For all those students of economics, yes PPP can stand for purchasing power parity, but I would like to use PPP as President and Parent Perspective. Why do I want to talk about that perspective? 

Brand building has been a fascinating topic for me for a long time. We all know of venerable brands in different industries: Coca Cola, IBM, Apple...As so many things, brand building has accelerated in the time of digital marketing-- think of Google, Facebook, Twitter which have become household names in much shorter time periods than traditional brands.  Consider which well known university brands come to mind for you first when you think of universities--- we'll get back to your thoughts later and let's compare notes at the end of the blog. 

Disney/Pixar continues to amaze me with their ability to create fictitious worlds that seem real. The amount of time that their design team spent researching college websites to create the new Monsters University site is considerable. This fictional website is better than many real college websites. Attention to detail is amazing. Real institutions can learn a great deal from the Monsters University site. Even without a monster budget (ha ha) like Disney your institution can emulate the best of this site to enhance viewers' experience with your website.

This is the third installment of a three part series. Click here to read Part I or Part II.

This past weekend further developments unfolded in the Korean SAT debacle. As you may recall widespread cheating caused ETS to cancel the May 2013 SAT exam in Korea. For background information read our recent blog post: May SAT Cancelled- Will It Hurt International Student Recruitment? Earlier in May there was some debate whether the SAT would be given in Korea in June. In the last few days there seem to be some answers coming out of Korea. A Korean colleague notified me that several students were banned from taking the SAT in any country in June. The Korea JoongAng Daily confirmed my colleague's report. Read the article Test Maker Bans Some From Taking June 1 SAT. And the follow-up article: Missing The SATs Can Be Worse Than Taking Them. Even the Wall Street Journal is reporting on the Korean debacle: South Korean SAT Cheating Scandal Continues.