This is probably the final blog relating to Open Doors data on 2022 enrollment of international students for US universities and the more recent data published by individual universities for fall 2023. That makes it a bit longer than usual and it includes a small diversion into some recent commentary about online being the new international!
Beavering Away Or Bellying Up?
The yearly posting of detailed information from Oregon State University (OSU) offers timely data, good detail and easy accessibility. Universities in the UK and around the world would do well to follow the model if they want to engage more effectively with the public. It is difficult to have a serious discussion about trends or for politicians to make good decisions when information is more than two years out of date.
All that said, this year’s data reflects the continuing struggles of some well-regarded US universities and their pathway partners to recover after the pandemic. The detailed numbers underline the perils of over-reliance on a single market and the reality that the US bounceback outlined by Open Doors fall 2022 data is patchy. As noted in a previous blog, the data gives clarity on why pathway partner INTO University Partnerships (INTO) didn’t mention the university in its press release suggesting a “..huge surge in international student enrollment for its US institutional partners..”.
The total of enrolled UG and graduate students shows that OSU is making no progress in recovering the volume of international students lost since the pandemic. There has been a small uptick in graduate students (+68) but undergraduate numbers continue to plummet with a decline of 16% year on year (-192). While the year-on-year decline is slowing, OSU does not appear to have benefited in 2022 or from the reported increase in international enrollments indicated by the Open Doors Fall 2023 Snapshot.
Source: Oregon State University Officer of Institutional Research
NB: INTO OSU students, excluding those on Academic English courses, are included in these totals
The driving factor for the decline is that the university was heavily reliant on Chinese students and has been unable to significantly grow numbers from India or elsewhere. In its other historically stronger recruitment markets OSU is losing ground with Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Taiwan all in decline over four years. What seems difficult to explain, given OSU’s quality and the supposed recruiting power of its private partner, is that the Open Doors state by state detail suggests two other Oregon universities – Portland State University and the University of Oregon – seem to have stabilized their overall number of international students in 2023 more effectively than OSU.
Source: Oregon State University Officer of Institutional Research
It is also clear that the pathway proposition (INTO OSU) offered by INTO is not providing much momentum with a down year in 2022 and a net increase of just seven students in 2023. Without a substantial shift in recruiting market dynamics it is difficult to see a path or a way (sic) to significant growth in the future.
Source: Oregon State University Officer of Institutional Research
The decline in INTO OSU’s numbers reflects even more clearly the past reliance on China (and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia). Taiwan now contributes more volume to the pathway than China. The aphorism “you can’t buck the market” is often attributed to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher but it’s a warning to operators around the world that changing to meet shifting market conditions is critical to long-term success.
Source: Oregon State University Officer of Institutional Research
Is Online The New International?
An interesting rider to all this is the recent blog by Glenda Morgan in Phil Hill’s On EdTech Newsletter. She asks the question, “Is Online the New International” and noted that “..by 2021 eCampus was the largest source of OSU’s tuition revenue.” The suggestion in the newsletter is that US university focus on international student recruitment might be drifting, in the context of continuing pressure on budgets at state level, towards online recruitment.
The article contains a quote from Rajika Bhandari summarizing that, “Most students coming from India are at the graduate level. This has always been the case and likely will be for the foreseeable future. Therefore, just from a recruitment and revenue perspective, they are never going to have the same impact on an institution’s bottom line as the Chinese undergraduate students.” I first speculated on this in a UK context in January 2020 and have made the point on a number of occasions that the impact on traditional pathways was likely to be even greater.
The article leads to an interesting conclusion about “..the costs involved in physical campuses.” Anyone who has worked at a university sees how the emotional ties to the institution’s location are almost as powerful as the existence of labs, lecture theatres and student housing. One suspects it will take many years (or possibly a few university insolvencies) to change that mindset.
It’s thought-provoking stuff and may mean that some universities are already accepting the constraints on globally mobile international students as a revenue source. This would leave some of the commercial operators who have no track record in either delivering or recruiting to online courses with a bleak future. There may be a particular danger where academic English courses are concerned as James Madison University noted in its consideration of failure by Study Group to recruit to an Intensive English Language program.
Do Private Providers Make A Difference?
In October 2020 a Report by NAFSA, APLU and INTO made the claim that “Institutions with third-party pathway partnerships were 1.73x more likely to experience international enrollment growth…”. The data analysed was across two historical periods – 2007-2015 and 2015-2018 – and there was a lot of weighty statistical explanation. Against that background it is interesting to apply a simple comparison to see what has happened in recent years.
The graph below takes the Open Doors state by state enrollment numbers for three of INTO’s “present” comprehensive university partners (with pathways) and places them alongside those of three “past” partners who no longer have pathways with INTO. The time series avoids the peak pandemic affected years of 2021 and 2022 but show prior performance and how the bounceback might be happening. Washington State University (WSU) and Colorado State University (CSU) ceased being pathway partners in 2021 and 2022 respectively but are direct recruitment partners. The University of South Florida claims to have terminated the pathway partnership in April 2022 but a legal battle is ongoing and is the subject of several earlier blogs.
This data appears to show that past partners WSU and CSU had declining numbers before the breakup and that being direct recruitment part has shown no benefit in terms of growing numbers post pandemic. On the other hand, the split and no ongoing direct recruitment relationship does not seem to have stopped USF from driving its international enrollments significantly higher in 2023.
The “present” comprehensive partners shown all have pathways but allow INTO to recruit directly to certain university programs. There is a satisfying upward curve to the University of Alabama – Birmingham (UAB) curve and George Mason University (GMU) also appears to have bounced back strongly in 2023. It is all the more perplexing that Oregon State University has been in decline since 2017 and looks to be the worst performer among the six.
It would seem fair to say from this data that a comprehensive partnership with a pathway is no guarantee of growing enrollments, that being a direct recruitment only partner appears to have relatively little impact on performance and that it is entirely possible for a university to drive enrollment outside of any relationship with a pathway/direct recruitment partner. While there was little doubt that INTO helped OSU make rapid progress in international recruitment for several years until about 2016 a lot has happened since then.
None of this is to suggest that the Report by NAFSA, APLU and INTO was incorrect in its analysis. However, it is reasonable to believe that the changing international student source markets, growth in competition and other factors should make institutions negotiate hard if they are looking at these relationships. Building a business or a growth strategy on data that is five years old and past glories is probably not a good idea.
Source: Open Doors State Facts and Figures
It is also increasingly clear that pathways are unlikely to be the answer, with further evidence from UAB showing that the INTO pathway courses have struggled to recover after the pandemic and that Academic English is showing almost no signs of revival at all. This reflects the situation at GMU reported in a previous blog and the minor increase of seven students for OSU shown in the graphs above. This pathway picture appears to be repeated across Study Group and Shorelight pathway partners.
Source: University of Alabama at Birmingham Office of Institutional Effectiveness
NOTES
As alway, the analysis in this blog reflects a genuine attempt to interpret and consider the implications of data from public sources. It is recognized that there may be minor underlying differences in the way the data is collected. The source of the data is given so that readers may make their own judgements and if an authoritative source makes contact the author will make appropriate amendments.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay