Recruiting Intelligence

You have spoken!

After a busy year of developing academic recruitment plans, speaking at conferences, creating compelling marketing campaigns, publishing new innovative research, and of course, sharing all the best stuff with our blog readers, we can now tell you…of all our publishing in 2019, these posts most caught your attention.

And since you have been busy as well, we know some of you may have missed our most useful stuff.

Below are posts that had the most clicks and shares – so as you peruse, note the “email this post” button at the bottom to help out your colleagues who are responsible for one enrollment thing or another.

Read on for links to 2019’s Top 10 blog hits and (bonus) our inspiring Staff Pick!

As your institution strives to hit ever-more ambitious enrollment goals we know that you are focused on the future.

Part of that future, for those up to the challenge, will be putting great effort and resources into diversifying your student source countries. With shifts in student mobility, declining enrollment in English language programs, and major changes in the Chinese student market, now is not the time to rest on your institution’s laurels.

Beyond the educational, cross-cultural benefits of a more globally representative student population, broadening your recruiting channels will help you meet your enrollment targets. Your CFO and senior administrators will thank you, since diverse global enrollment = diverse revenue sources, meaning a more stable base of tuition that can weather downturns in individual markets.

But which student markets should you target? And, more importantly, how can you best appeal to those students?

Enter our latest Know Your Neighborhood eBook: a special edition report focused on student recruitment in the emerging markets of Africa and Latin America. In partnership with FPPEDUMEDIA, and their fabulous international student database, we reached out to our target markets and received more than 12,300 survey responses from students in 16 countries. Of course, we crunched the numbers and created some great infographics to convey our insights to you.

With this report you will make better and more informed decisions as you embrace and adapt to a changing global market.

From top program interests to messages that most influence students’ university selection and everything in between, we’re giving you a country-by-country breakdown of our findings, including recommendations on how and where to engage students.

Give it a read, and when you’re ready to put the insights into play, we’re here to talk: info@intead.com.

Read on for a preview and to download your copy…

Have you been in touch with your business school professors for a crash course on competition? Yes, we know they can be a bit, well, opinionated and sometimes pompous (we’ve spent our share of hours in MBA classrooms). But they actually have some tips that are going to be increasingly valuable. And they are incentivized! They want to see their classrooms full, just as you do.

The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) recently released their 2019 Application Trends Survey report, which collected data from 1,145 programs and 336 business schools across 40 countries.

Today, we are diving in to see overall trends in MBA applications, as well as which countries saw growth or decline, where students are coming from, and why they are or aren’t choosing certain countries in which to study.

And speaking of international enrollment trends, have you downloaded our latest special edition e-Book? Together with FPP EDU Media, we surveyed prospective students from 16 countries in Africa and Latin America to provide you with insights into these emerging markets. Download your copy today to get the 411 on students’ program interests, digital behavior and more.

Read on for the latest in MBA application trends…

Despite the dire headlines throughout the academic industry addressing the "looming crisis" and the excellent research on the topic from so many great sources (thank you Chronicle of Higher Ed), the availability of college-ready students is growing at a rapid pace.

How could we say such a thing!!??!?

Everyone knows the pool of high school students is going to fall off a cliff after 2024-2025, right? The demographic trends lines have shown this for years!!! The big academic marketing and analytics firms (you know who we are talking about) are pushing their predictive analytics services as your holy grail and so many institutions are buying into it.

Not so fast! Please, not so fast.

Welcome to our three-part series on Non-Traditional Student Recruitment. You will want to share this one with some key colleagues at your institution. There’s a theme to this series: Be Nimble!

Research and analytics must lead to action and results. And 36 million potential students could be evaluating your institution right now. Do you have the right advisers and team to help you be nimble and capitalize on the opportunity?

A recent comment from a highly experienced senior procurement officer regarding her institution’s contract with Intead, “There is no other company that could do this project for us.”

Listen to the Voice of the Customer

A time of change does require expenditure. Knowing where and how to spend is the key. The big question: Will the board-level advice you are paying for pay off for you?

Answer the bigger question that is actually going to improve your enrollment numbers. It is a question that your audience (students) are asking and you need to be able to answer:

“I want to move from here to there. Have others like me been able to do that?”

Read on for the clear direction for enrollment growth. It is not simple, but it is the future…

Everyone feels stress on the job. Recruitment and admissions teams are feeling it too, according to a recent story from Inside Higher Ed.

In Inside Higher Ed’s 2019 Admission Officers Survey, 336 admissions leaders weighed in, and the majority admitted they were concerned about filling their classes, especially in a timely manner. And not just a majority, but a super majority.

While we may wish for the stressless job, we knew what was in store when we took on this kind of work. And nothing relieves stress like the ability to point to a plan. Yet, the plan forward has so many options. Which ones are best for your institution? Where is the best ROI? The annoying answer: It depends.

Come see us at the AIRC Annual Conference in Miami in December where we will be offering a 3 hour pre-conference workshop on all the latest trend data and the actionable plans that help you move forward. Email us if you'd like to set up a meeting between Dec. 8 - 13 (ICEF + AIRC events).

So, let’s talk right now about the pros and cons of the various plans that lead to enrollment success.

If you follow the trends of higher education, you’ve no doubt heard the prediction that 50 percent of the country’s colleges will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years. And that perspective has been touted for the past 20+ years, so…we need to take it with some salt.

Still, we have seen an uptick in closures and mergers of late. This is worth looking at because, there is some truth to this prediction and we’d be fools to simply say, “Never gonna happen.”

There are plenty of industries that have gone through these kinds of retrenching or refocusing. In the world of Mergers and Acquisitions, any business is broken down on paper for its assets and liabilities. Assets are considered for liquidation – the idea of “selling off the parts.” This is happening in academia as well. Harsh but true: profitable departments or schools within an institution are being “adopted” by other stronger institutions while the rest of the weaker institution is shut down.

Before we all consider our college diplomas to be rare antiques, is there any way to safeguard against this trend?

Below, we share some perspective on different options being considered and some resources you may want to access for a deeper dive. Here’s one of them: Our non-traditional student recruitment ebook: Quality. Cost. Convenience. The extended edition on Intead Plus gives you marketing planning insights, sample personas along with case studies from nine very different institutions.

Next week we'll be talking about long-term vision and growth. But before we get there, we need to understand a bit more about where we are now.

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?

(Read on)

Budget year is wrapping up and once again, you’ve been informed that you won’t get the level of funding you said you needed to truly move the needle. We get it. We’ve been there. Resources are always scarce. And yes, it can be extremely frustrating.

But you are a professional and you know how this goes. You do your moment of Zen and break out your trusty strategic planning process that you keep tucked away in that part of your brain. What are your true priorities? Where can you use your limited resources to push hard and fast? The goal! Keep the real business goal in mind.

And don’t forget to bring the positive energy to your team along with the plan. We all need that spirited lift that brings the team together and makes everyone feel the common purpose.

And there’s one more thing you’re going to want to have with you: a deep and powerful resource library that guides your strategy and execution when the inevitable obstacles arise along the way.

We got you covered. Read on...

NPR Marketplace fans may have heard a familiar voice on last Tuesday’s episode. Ben was happy to join the show’s ever-engaging economic reporters as they quickly reviewed the latest numbers from IIE’s Open Doors data and considered the issues at play.

Those of us working in international student enrollment in the U.S. have monitored enrollment data even more carefully than usual over the past few years. In a time of political upheaval in the U.S. and globally, the impact on enrollment has been a nail-biter. How have anti-immigrant rhetoric, changes in visa policies, and rising violence affected enrollment? How will these trends affect us in the future? And how can universities counteract the negative messages and perceptions with positive ones?

This is complicated work, and one that regular readers of our blog engage with vigor. And not for nuthin, but our market research with FPPEDUMedia predicted this turn of events eight months prior to the 2016 election. Our blog subscribers saw the storm clouds coming and had our tips and reports in hand. 

But even those who follow these issues closely would be forgiven for scratching their heads about the latest headlines about the new 2017/2018 Open Doors numbers.

“Number of International Students in United States Reaches New High of 1.09 Million” says IIE’s own announcement. “New International Enrollments Decline Again” says Inside Higher Ed.

Huh?

If you plan to be in Florida for AIRC or ICEF next month, reach out so that we can connect in person. Ben and Patricia will be there presenting workshops, sessions and generally sharing our research and strategic marketing approach with anyone willing to listen ;-)

Now, Let’s break down the latest data...