What’s the future of international recruitment?
While Covid-19 isn’t fully in the rearview mirror, international-student interest in studying overseas is rebounding. The Chronicle recently assembled a group of seasoned international-enrollment experts and practitioners for a virtual event on forging ahead in this still-volatile environment. We talked about the lessons they learned from the pandemic, key priorities as they resume overseas recruitment trips, and what forces could shape global-student mobility in the future.
I wanted to share a few takeaways:
The pandemic was one shock. More could be coming. Covid has dominated discussions of international students for more than two years, but other forces could also disrupt student flows, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and continued tensions between the United States and China, said Samba Dieng, senior internationalization officer and executive director of international programs at Louisiana State University. “We should probably be preparing for future geopolitical shocks that will likely limit our ability to attract and retain international students from certain parts of the world.”
Dieng, who first came to the United States as an international student, said the American political climate could dissuade some students from studying here. “I idolized this country as the beacon of the world, and so for tribalism to suddenly take hold really does concern me,” he said. “The current climate could likely undermine international students’ trust in our nation.”
Colleges need to get serious about diversifying the international-enrollment pipeline. Half of the international students on American campuses come from China or India, and Dieng called the reliance on just two countries a “liability” for colleges. Africa should be an important focus, given its “explosive” growth, he said. Sixty percent of the continent’s population is under 25.
At the University of California at Riverside, Jun Wang, assistant provost for strategic initiatives and international recruitment, sends admissions staff members to 42 countries on just about every continent, although he said he was prioritizing outreach to the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Those regions also have large young populations, and Riverside’s lower tuition costs could be a selling point.
Colleges have been flying blind. Enrollment management is heavily data-driven. But how do you calculate yield when emerging from a pandemic? Among the variables are continued visa-issuance slowdowns, the impact of Covid on perceptions of American safety, and the move by many colleges to, at least temporarily, waive the requirement for applicants to submit SAT or ACT test scores. “We don’t have historical data available to us right now, so it’s so hard to predict,” said Megan Mankerian-Stem, director of international enrollment at Creighton University.
“Students are applying to more institutions than they have been in previous years, which really means at the end of the day, yields are going to be smaller because there’s still only a certain number of students that are going to enroll in the U.S.”
The Great Resignation is hitting international admissions. Higher education lost an unprecedented number of workers during the pandemic, and the admissions office wasn’t immune to layoffs and resignations. As I’ve written, many international educators struggled in their roles. That’s left admissions offices short-handed as recruitment picks up. Compounding the problem, colleges are retaining many of the virtual strategies they embraced during Covid, on top of their existing in-person efforts.
“There’s been a huge turnover,” said Evelyn Levinson, director of international admissions at American University. “One challenge is to continue to be successful, the right people have to be in place.”
That’s right, colleges are not jettisoning virtual recruitment. Online recruitment fairs and other forms of virtual outreach helped colleges connect with new groups of applicants, often in countries or regions they didn’t typically visit on admissions trips, panelists said. This makes them too valuable to give up.
Mankerian-Stem said online options stretch her money and her time as a one-person office. Wang noted the environmental benefits of less travel, as well as the ability to reach greater numbers of prospective students virtually. Still, he said, important relationships are formed through one-on-one meetings with students and families that can’t be replicated online. “We’re in an education business,” he said. “In-person conversation is very important. People need to build up that trust. It’s not just strictly delivering information.”
Before the pandemic, Levinson would return to the same countries and the same schools again and again. American also uses current students, parents, and alumni in its recruitment efforts. Now it’s about rebuilding connections. Of parents, she said, we need to “make them feel comfortable about sending their sons and daughters to a school like ours.”
Want to hear more insights from our virtual event on the future of international enrollments? You can still register to watch The Chronicle webinar on demand.
