July 2022 – View From A Bridge – management, education and personal thoughts

Love Island UK or Total Wipeout for International Students

The chaos around the resignation of the UK Prime Minister saw the country have three Secretary of State for Education in as many days. While there is something deliciously ironical about someone called Cleverly holding the ball when the music stops (sic) it was less edifying to see the Under-Secretary for Education demoted to Minister of Skills, Further and Higher Education for giving the middle finger to the gathered press pack. May be the first time that higher actually means lower but as someone recently said, “them’s the breaks.”

It leaves higher education in the hands of James Cleverly who might find himself replaced under a new Prime Minister in September. He does not appear to have any previous experience of an education portfolio. He is joined by Andrea Jenkyns, who threw the hand gesture, because “I’m only human” but who also appears to have no links with education administration.

Given their inexperience they may be amenable to suggestion from outside sources and they will certainly face commercial interests who have established an inside track to Government and a powerful lobbying position. The voices they listen to could determine whether the UK becomes a beacon for international students or a place where hopes are crushed by economic and political considerations. It’s unclear who will ensure students don’t become filling in a sandwich between reduced public spending and private ambition to monetize global mobility.

When Love Comes to Town

Past experience would suggest that the voice of Lord Jo Johnson, who is usually heralded as “former universities Minister” or Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School rather than his more commercial position as Chairman of ApplyBoard International, will be among the loudest. If his views carry weight there are several indicators as to the direction of travel for international students coming to the UK. His demands in mid-2020, shortly after taking the ApplyBoard post, were a four-year post-study work visa, “a strategic push to rebalance student flows by doubling those from India”, and “cutting back the time-consuming and offputting red tape affecting overseas students.”

He is joined on ApplyBoard’s UK Advisory Board by the UK’s International Education Champion, Professor Sir Steve Smith, the Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, Nick Hillman and HEPI Trustee, Mary Curnock-Cook. With all that industry insight and connection the outcomes could help the Board achieve its stated aim to “guide and support ApplyBoard’s expansion within the United Kingdom.” It certainly begins to feel as if some other stars may be aligning.

UK universities have already been revelling in a benign recruitment environment since the introduction of a more relaxed post-study work regime in 2021. It helped reach the Government’s ludicrously low target of 600,000 international students a decade early but for some that is not enough. Vivienne Stern, the current director of Universities UK International and soon to be chief executive of Universities UK, has said universities want a review to ensure the UK had a “competitive post-study work offer” and there are other interesting synergies emerging.

Stern, a colleague of Smith’s on the UK Government’s Education Sector Advisory Group, has also started to bang the drum about the risks for universities of any deterioration of relationships with China. Added to that is the voice of Nick Hillman who said, of growing Chinese numbers, “…it does put our universities at serious risk of shifting geopolitics.” These assertions broadly mirror Johnson’s March 2021 statements about “poorly understood” risks of increasingly close collaboration between UK universities and China and his November 2021 suggestion that the financial risks were such that the government should consider making English universities over-reliant on Chinese student fees take out insurance policies.

Some might argue that the echo chamber of views warning about potential catastrophe are overstated. It seems entirely possible recruitment from China will grow post-pandemic because it is driven by strong country-based agents and local connections where the growth of aggregator and remote technology led approaches has been more of a struggle than in markets such as India. As interesting is whether the UK can go head to head with Canada for the Indian market if it means underpinning its strategy with longer-term post study visas and the Holy Grail of simple routes to citizenship, which some research suggests may be the aim of 75% of Indian students.

Another thing to watch out for might be the way that the UK International Education Strategy’s aim of, “Enhancing….the student application process for international students”, is met. In 2021, Johnson was promoting technology to verify incoming students’ documents, check English language skills and review their finances which sounded like a proposal to adopt a UK version of ApplyProof – a “standalone platform powered by ApplyBoard“.² What might the odds be on a public-private partnership bringing this technology to the UK?

Total Eclipse of the Heart

On the other hand the post-pandemic world looks to be moving increasingly towards a relatively hard economic landing and there are reasons to be wary of the UK’s position. One symbol is the, perhaps hyperbolic, sentiment that the British pound is taking on the characteristics of an ‘emerging market’ currency. Already abandoned by European workers there is some evidence that agricultural workers from around the world will be in high demand but if you are a graduate with more interest in picking stocks than strawberries the post-study work environment in the UK could be a concern.

Information on international student post-study outcomes has been notoriously hard to come by and HESA has been roundly criticised for stepping back from Government demands for more and better quality data. AGCAS has tried to step into the breach and offers the most recent insights which broadly tell us that one in three international students have not found employment of any kind. The amount of effort needed to find a job is suggested by the finding that 42% of students employed applied for over 50 jobs.

Views on the Graduate Route suggest that graduates feel some employers have “poor knowledge of post-study work visas”, others “openly refused to accept applications from international graduates” and that the cost of the Route was a barrier. On top of this Office for Students research suggests that “less than half of students at some English universities can expect to find graduate level jobs or further study shortly after graduation.”

Even more troubling are the recent revelations that student visas to UK universities may be providing cover for human trafficking. If abuses can happen when a university is meant to be aware of the way the student is engaging with their course, this may be the tip of the iceberg of exploitation under post-study work visas. As the number of students staying in country grows the potential for this to become a big issue seems clear.

While things may turn out right, a great deal will hinge on the economic prosperity of the UK. As survivors of the global recession of 2007 to 2009 will recall there was significant growth in unemployment among young people. It was one factor that may have contributed to the decision in 2011 to remove post study work rights for international students.

Announcing the decision in March 2011 then Home Secretary Theresa May said, “We had too many people coming here to work and not to study. We had too many foreign graduates staying on in the UK to work in unskilled jobs. And we had too many institutions selling immigration, not education.” If the number of students deciding to stay and work goes up at a time when the UK is struggling with recession and unemployment it is difficult to see why a future Government would not make a similar decision. Total wipeout of post-study work visas is only ever a political step away.

NOTES

Love Island is a popular but controversial reality TV show in the UK, involving strangers meeting up and being obliged to pair up or be ejected from the competition. Total Wipeout ran from 2009-12 and involved competitors taking on an obstacle course and other challenges until the one who is fastest around the Wipeout Zone course wins. Both have similarities with the challenges facing international students.
It is unclear to me what “standalone” means. ApplyBoard and ApplyProof share the same logo colorways, have headquarters in the same building, and the head of ApplyProof is a standing member of ApplyBoard’s information governance committee. The Head of ApplyProof’s LinkedIn profile places the ApplyProof role under his ApplyBoard experience and its Director of Engineering’s profile suggests he also works for Apply Board.
Colleagues of a certain age will recognize that the sub-headings are taken directly from 1980s songs by U2 (When Love Comes to Town) and Bonnie Tyler (Total Eclipse of the Heart). Guilty pleasures:)

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Pathways Pivot for India?

E.M. Forster suggested we should “mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes”² but Shorelight has restyled its website and is offering aggregator type filters which reflect a change of direction. The filters help clear up what’s been going on with their portfolio and suggests that the pressures on their pathway offerings are causing them to pivot at pace. The site gives a clear sight into the dash for direct recruitment partners that looks to be the increasingly popular modus operandi for all pathway operators.

Searching suggests that a “groundbreaking new partnership”, signed with Mercer University in October 2018 who were described as “an exemplary partner for Shorelight” at the time, doesn’t even make the roster in 2022. The pathway program in the fifteen year contract with the University of Kansas signed in 2014 seems to have come to an end just eight years later. And the pathway with the University of Central Florida (UCF) heralded in 2013 as “another big win for the students of an institution that is clearly on the move” is also over.

Only nine university partners are shown offering the full service of undergraduate and postgraduate pathway option with direct recruitment in both. Leaving aside the three American Collegiate offerings there are a total of 14 undergraduate pathways and 12 postgraduate pathways. It’s a complex offering, including three which are postgraduate direct recruitment only and with some significant restrictions – the Johns Hopkins University choices appear to be for engineering programs only.

UG Direct Only	11
UG Direct and UG Pathway Option (no PG)	14
PG Direct Only	3
PG Direct and Pathway Option (no UG)	12
PG and UG Direct with Pathway Options in both	9
UG and PG Direct Only (no pathways)	12

For new readers, the American Collegiate offering is a “choice” program hosted by American University in Washington DC and with courses through UCLA Extension in Los Angeles. The goal is then to transfer to an institution that will accept the credits. American Collegiate Live offers online courses taught by UMass Boston and bearing academic credit with “full recognition” by 13 universities

The Past Is a Different Country¹

When Elizabeth Redden reviewed the US pathway scene for InsideHigher Ed in 2018 she commented, “With a few notable exceptions, both Shorelight and INTO tend to contract with large institutions, and their partnerships tend to be larger scale.” Those days seem long past with Shorelight’s burgeoning list including a long string of smaller, regional colleges. INTO’s closures at Washington State University and Colorado State University also suggest the game has changed irrevocably.

For completeness, the current state of relationships³ on major pathway operator websites shows:

	Current Total US Partners	Current US With Pathway*	Closed in US Since 2018**
Shorelight	42	18	3
INTO	11	9	3
Navitas	3	1	7
Study Group	9	5	8

*Excludes American Collegiate
**Pathway announced/operational but no longer shown

It is difficult at this point not to recall the ill-fated words of Karen Khemka, a partner with the Parthenon Group, who said in 2014, “The U.S. third-party/outsourced pathway market is less than half the size of the Australian market despite having a higher education system that is 10 times the size. We anticipate that growth will be constrained only by the pace at which private providers can develop the market.” It came towards the end of a period when private equity invested over a billion dollars in pathway operators but as I asked in a 2018 blog, “..has attention to the supply side of the equation ignored the challenges of changing patterns of demand around the world?”

Unless We Remember We Cannot Understand¹

Curiously, the pathway operators inverted the equation when they were promoting the growing supply of students to meet the demand of universities in the traditional recruiting countries of the US, UK and Australia. They quoted the dubious “8 million globally mobile students by 2025” mantra and largely ignored the potential growth of inter-country competition, relatively low cost of entry for new pathways, the rising cost of acquisition as agent and student choice grew, and the threat of substitute products through technology. Ignoring one of Porter’s Five Forces seems poor business sense but shunning all five seems less than sensible when you are investing significant amounts of money.

One talented US leader, running the American portfolio of a UK-based pathway operator, posed these fundamental questions shortly after INTO celebrated its £66m investment from Leeds Equity and Shorelight’s launch. The company carried on regardless, although US losses mounted, the quality of partners declined and the UK operation stopped adding new partners. As the Trojans found, it is unwise to ignore the insights and prophecies of a truth telling Cassandra.

Other observations that were rarely heard out or given sufficient attention included:

the home of the pathways in Australia and the UK were 13-year schooling systems where the Foundation year of a pathway completed a fundamental requirement. This gave an ideal opportunity for language tuition and academic skill development. US universities already took students after 12 years schooling and those with larger international cohorts often had well developed ELIs to accommodate language needs;
recognition that the bubble created by fast-growing demand from China, particularly at undergraduate level, was coming to an end as demographics changed;
understanding that the bounty of state-sponsored language students was fading fast and unlikely to be replaced;
for many US universities the attraction of students paying out of state fees was as attractive financially as international students and seemed more accessible as a market;
the best US universities could already recruit if they wanted to and so the opportunities to have great brand names on the website was always going to be minimal.

A Room With A View?¹

While new recruitment markets are emerging they are quite different in character and nature. The growth in students from India has led to a demand at post-graduate level, often without the need for significant English language or pathway academic skills. It seems likely that Shorelight’s willingness to take on direct recruitment for less well-known institutions reflects the reality that those students are less brand conscious, looking for lower fees and are more focused on a qualification that gives them post-study work options.

It may be a model that is less stable and less lucrative than the pathway model appeared to be in the early part of the 21^st Century but INTO and Shorelight have found the going very tough at many of their US pathways and need to do something. As INTO launches its new strategy there may even be a longer term appetite for uniting forces with Shorelight in the US to become a super-dominant player. Bringing the two groups together would offer a large direct recruitment portfolio, allow some selective reduction in competing or uncompetitive institutions, fill a gap in terms of online technology for INTO and should enable significant reductions in overheads.

All of these types of potential mergers are riddled with questions about existing financial arrangements, for example Huron Consulting has $40.9 million in convertible debt in Shorelight Holdings LLC maturing in January 2024, competing institutions and cultural fit. But when the CEO of INTO is talking explicitly about “lighter touch, lower investment” (The PIE live interview, 11 July 2022) ways of having discussions with universities, it seems reasonably clear that there is a shared interest in building non-pathway relationships. The real question will be whether the new era for organizations that cut their teeth on pathways can drive enough revenue and profitability to be worthwhile and whether consolidation offers added value.

Of course, it may also be that the days of the recruitment behemoths are over. Twenty years of pathways has created some highly skilled individuals with strong in-country contacts who could simply choose to go solo with a smaller portfolio of hand-selected university names. Faced with a choice between being one of eight names in a portfolio or being in the bag of a sales team with 37, 48 or even 100 different products to promote, a smart university might choose to be in a select pack rather than a faceless herd.

Notes

Shameless use of E.M. Forster book titles and quotes throughout the article.
Apparently, Forster adapted this quote from Henry David Thoreau
It is not always easy to interpret the websites of pathway operators and I am happy to accept authoritative and evidenced corrections and note amendments where appropriate

Image by yogesh more from Pixabay