Education – Page 10 – View From A Bridge – management, education and personal thoughts

Aggregator recruitment start-ups meet the old order

First printed in University World News on 01 May 2021

The developing aggregator picture has some of the hallmarks of a classic movie where the scrappy outsider working from their bedroom takes on the corporate giants with near limitless resources.

One sign is that we are seeing Yocket, a company started in 2015 by four Indian graduates for US$132, taking on ETS, founded in 1947, which had revenues of over US$1 billion in 2019.

Underneath that David versus Goliath headline there are many other factors at play, with most leading to circumstances where many universities find themselves marginalised as active recruiters.

EdAgree is a subsidiary of ETS founded with US$1 million of seed funding from ETS’s corporate investment arm, ETS Strategic Capital. It runs a free platform allowing international students to match with and apply to university with the support of an advisor.

Yocket offers an online platform which helps students find their best fit university and offers counselling along with other support services.

Yocket’s claim of more than 400,000 registered users and over 100 university ‘tie-ups’ looks impressive with EdAgree only boasting nine listed university partners on its website at the time of writing. But the website also promises university partners the benefits of synergy saying: “EdAgree, with ETS, will bring you qualified students who are ready to succeed…”.

Just for good measure, ETS Strategic Capital is also an investor in ApplyBoard, while ETS is a partner of Studyportals.

A fast-changing world

It’s a dizzying world with companies appearing, rising and disappearing in the space of a few years, driven by the hunger for edtech investments and the expectations of significant growth in globally mobile students.

Start-ups since 2015 include the three mentioned above as well as Edvoy (part of IEC Abroad), Leverage Edu and StudentApply, while SchoolApply has risen, been purchased by INTO University Partnerships and then closed in the space of five years.

Longer term stalwarts such as Studyportals, founded in 2008, have responded with ambitions to be seen as ‘the matchmaker’ in higher education.

Their April 2021 blog notes that they have historically focused on generic content, but are trying to move to more personally curated content including scholarship opportunities.

The blog mentions Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix as inspirations, but it seems likely that the new kids on the ‘university matching’ block have influenced the pace of change.

The dynamics of the sector are still working themselves out, but some trends and tensions seem evident:

• Geographical focus – India seems to be the focus of attention which is not surprising as it has been identified by everybody as the most obvious volume growth market for student mobility and the preponderance of graduate students might suggest they are more comfortable and willing to forego involvement with an agent.

• Role of agents – Several of the newer players have been vocal in suggesting they are correcting the inefficiency of a disorganised agent market. Most aggregators seem to be reaching out to the agent community and providing a new channel for getting university offers. But savvy agents have been using technology for years and it remains to be seen if the agent powerhouses in China will be easily disrupted by aggregators.

• Pathway operators – Much of the recent effort of pathway operators has been to drive revenue through providing direct recruitment to both their pathway partners and as a stand-alone service to other institutions. This route to growth could be blocked if aggregators are able to dominate with students and agents in most countries. Pathway operations may also begin to rely on aggregators – an enquiry to ApplyBoard showed 34 of 97 opportunities identified in a search for UK-based institutions were for pathways.

• Aggregating aggregators – The investments related to ETS suggest that there is plenty of potential for big, well-funded players to selectively invest in a portfolio of aggregators by picking off smaller players or investing in start-ups who might be happy to take the money and run. The ETS involvement also offers the potential of vertical integration along the student journey.

Added value

It might be that the winners and losers are those that find the secret sauce of added value which makes them the best choice for nervous students and parents considering study 5,000 miles from home.

The Studyportals model of simply providing information has morphed into a much more bespoke service but seems a long way from Leverage Edu’s claim to offer access to ‘best-matched career and higher education options’, access to 2,000+ personalised mentors, scholarship finding, education loans, accommodation options and long-term mentoring.

Several of the newer entrants also mention employment and career opportunities with the same fanfare as their links to high-quality universities.

There is no doubt that the aggregators have the financial muscle to do whatever they think will fit the bill. Craft, the enterprise intelligence company’s platform of commercial data, shows that there is a tidal wave of money flowing.

Studyportals raised US$5.4 million in 2017, Leverage Edu’s latest funding round in February 2021 was reported to be US$6.5 million taking total funding to US$9.8 million and the ApplyBoard story is well known, with the funding round in September 2020 reported to be US$53.2 million to take the total raised to US$182.4 million.

It leads to an extremely disrupted and fragmented situation for universities which do not have the will or the money to build their brand, their recruitment expertise and their marketing capability to secure students.

Packy McCormick, founder of the Not Boring Club, notes that the “biggest breakout successes created in the first two decades of the 2000s – the aggregators – started by aggregating demand and using that demand to commodify supply”. The point about a commodity is that it is interchangeable with other goods of the same type and it can be argued that degrees from many institutions are very difficult to differentiate.

A zero-sum game?

If the algorithm works, then the degree alternatives offered should all match the student’s academic capabilities with their desire for a specified qualification from a country or countries of their choice.

They will then be able to focus on factors such as cost, visas and post-study work with the security of knowing that their choices have been laid before them.

This should send a chill down the spine of institutions that have relied on the promise of ‘acres of rolling grassland’, ‘years of academic integrity’ or ‘highly regarded professors’ rather than differentiated, relevant courses leading to successful careers.

There is an inevitable and inexorable shift in the axis of power and the pandemic has accelerated the disruption of old norms. Aggregators are here to stay and the only question is the extent to which most universities find themselves caught in a zero-sum game, where attempts to distinguish themselves become more about marketing spend or data on graduate outcomes than nuances of location.

For all but a few, commodification may then be the name of the game.

Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

All recruitment agent aggregators are not created equal

Alan Preece and Louise Nicol First printed in University World News, 12 April 2021

A flood of private money into the education sector is not necessarily a bad thing. Providing students with choice and value is positive and doing so with maximum effectiveness and efficiency makes sense. When a single ship in the Suez Canal can disrupt international trade and a pandemic makes global movement risky or near impossible, there is even more reason to use technology to bring people together.

That is the siren call of the ‘aggregators’ in higher education, but there have been recent challenges questioning their transparency, efficacy and level of genuine concern for students.

The possibility of consolidation to create an ‘Amazon of aggregators’ or a ‘Weibo of wannastudy’ leaves the prospect of market manipulation that is far from the interests of applicants. Regulation, compliance, oversight and the personal link between a university and its potential students are all good questions in this brave new world.

A rapidly evolving network

A clarification about different types of aggregator in the context of this article is needed: ‘Agent aggregators’ provide a platform that allows universities and agents to interact while ‘university aggregators’ provide a means for students to search and apply for universities directly.

The two types are a simplification of a complex and rapidly developing network where the lines are already blurring as different models prove more, or less, successful.

It’s partly a recognition that in some markets and at some levels of study, agents are dominant, while in others many students feel comfortable enough to proceed without a friendly hand guiding them through the process.

Agents themselves have also been ‘aggregators’ for many years, with sub-agency networks feeding into the main players or middlemen establishing themselves and coordinating dozens of geographically separated ‘mom and pop shops’. Pathway operators and universities have become particularly familiar with this environment as the only way to extend their reach without the overhead of an army of travelling salespeople.

The need for a quality framework

The reality is that an education institution often has no idea who first advised a student on their application or whether it was done in good faith.

The recently published BUILA (British Universities’ International Liaison Association) and UKCISA (UK Council for International Student Affairs) report, A Partnership for Quality: A route to a UK quality framework with education agents, produced by education consultancy Edified was commissioned prior to the meteoric rise of the aggregators, but provides a strong foundation for thinking about this development in the global higher education landscape.

Given the current pace of change, it’s troubling that a ‘route’ to a quality framework is only emerging when agents have been increasingly influential for three decades.

That is really the point that emerges from consideration of the risks and challenges of a rapidly developing new approach to recruiting students. Universities are ill-prepared to engage effectively to ensure that they are not being misrepresented or that students are not being misled.

The report’s timing is a little like the United Kingdom publishing a treatise on how to do better with horse drawn artillery in the 1914-18 war just as planes are fighting out the Battle of Britain in the skies above London in 1940.

Nothing new

Having established that aggregation is not really new, it’s important to note that neither is the notion of universities allowing commercial third parties to use their brands in the hope and expectation of lucrative recruitment from international markets.

Deals signed directly with agents have been common for decades and commercial pathway operators have made significant gains in the UK, Australia and the United States, while Canada is catching up. An example on the ‘student aggregator’ side is Studyportals which has been running since 2007, has over 3,700 participating universities and has branched out from ‘Mastersportal’ to have eight portal brands.

The real question is how universities should approach the new world of ‘agent aggregators’. It is possible to build upon the framework provided by the BUILA-UKCISA report to provide some direction.

The report identifies ‘Education Giants’ – Kaplan and Navitas – who have an international network of agents as well as other education business interests, ‘Multi-Nationals’ such as UKEAS and IDP which account for 10% of agents, and ‘Market Specialists’ which account for 5% of agents, for example, TC Global, which focuses on India, and Golden Arrow, which focuses on China.

Agent aggregators might be thought of as an ‘Exchange’, a ‘One Stop’ and a ‘Pathway’.

In the Exchange approach, taken by Adventus, the aggregator behaves like the ‘Booking.com’ for international higher education where agents receive 100% commission, students get more choice and institutions more applications.

In the One Stop approach, taken by ApplyBoard, the aggregator brings an agent network together with their university partners to offer students breadth of choice, but also takes a slice of the agency commission. They have additional services like English language testing, visa applications and advice to create a ‘one stop shop’.

In the Pathway approach, aggregators have a network of agents feeding their pathway programmes into universities. This is where the best known and longest standing commercial names sit – Study Group, INTO University Partnerships and Cambridge Education Group as well as parts of the Kaplan and Navitas operations.

The Outsourcers, such as MSM Media and Sannam S4, operate offices overseas for university partners to engage more effectively by using technology and streamlining services and agent engagement.

There is, unfortunately, one more group that could be called the Pretenders, who do not have the global office infrastructure, investment in training, technology platform, network of agents or university partners that they claim. A slick website purporting to have high levels of student traffic, a comprehensive network of agents spanning the globe and a multitude of university partners does not mean this is the reality. Strong marketing ‘does not an agent aggregator make’.

The need for oversight

The next and most urgent steps for the sector are to embrace the new world, but to act cautiously and coherently to ensure that both students and financially challenged institutions are not disadvantaged.

It is self-evident that they should steer clear of organisations copying others’ marketing campaigns and dressing up to look like legitimate outfits. But a degree of oversight by the Office for Students (in the UK) and similar bodies in other countries might be helpful in creating a level, legal and equally lucrative playing field.

It may even be a good step for aggregators to be obliged to capture and publish the views of students who are placed through their services.

Technology has provided a wonderful opportunity for students to have greater transparency, accessibility and support with finding the right university than ever before.

The biggest agents have long argued that they rely on reputation and repeat business to grow their organisation and that they invest heavily in supporting applicants. It is something that aggregators should be obliged to formalise and standardise.

Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge and Louise Nicol is founder of Asia Careers Group SDN BHD.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

INTO AT WORK IN A LAND DOWN UNDER*

Rumours of INTO University Partnerships (INTO) striking a deal with the University of Western Australia (UWA) seem to be gathering pace**. It’s certainly clear that Study Group’s operation aligned with UWA, Taylor’s College, is closing in December 2021 and is currently not accepting any more students. Meanwhile UWA has announced the opening of UWA College, a new pathway institution, in February 2022 and it sounds as if this could be where INTO has landed its first ‘partnership’ in Australia.

The loss of UWA takes Study Group down to three university partners in Australia, according to its website, but it continues with its links to the top-ranked Australian National University and University of Sydney. Navitas currently lists 11 Australian partners with only one from the Go8. Just for the record that’s Adelaide which also appears on Kaplan’s list of three partners.

INTO’s entry into the Australian fray makes it the newcomer and comes some years after casting eyes at the opportunities . Discussions with La Trobe (currently a Navitas partner) were fairly advanced in the early 2010’s and there were other flirtations. The questions – why now and why Perth – would lead to an understanding of whether this is opportunism, an emerging strategy for diversification or a desperate throw of the dice.

The company’s problems with losing partners have been well rehearsed in recent months but there seemed some logic to taking joint ventures accruing debts to INTO out of the portfolio. While it is doubtful that all the decisions to close were driven by INTO, the remaining partners include some top names in the UK at a point when international recruitment is bouncing back. Almost every pathway group has had to take some pain with closures in the US so INTO’s troubles there were not uncommon.

It still seems something of a leap to take on a new partner in a country where the company has no infrastructure and limited operational experience. Even more so at a point when that country has a very uncertain path to being able to welcome international students back in the numbers it once enjoyed. It’s also reasonable to say that Perth has not historically been the epicentre for international student growth in Australia and that enrollment has lagged behind the country’s impressive upward curve to 2019.

Sources: UWA Annual Report (showing student load) and Australian Department of Education Skills and Employment

While UWA is one of the Group of 8 of top universities in Australia but is also behind some of the more illustrious names in terms of global ranking and attractiveness to international students. So, even when the borders reopen there is little to suggest that UWA will be at the front of mind for international students looking to find a top ranked university. All the while, there is also the drumbeat of Australian politicians and pundits who are keen to see the 2020 reduction in international student numbers go down even further to reduce university dependence on international fees.

	THE 2021 Global Rank	QS Global Rankings 2022	% of international students (THE measure)
University of Melbourne	31	37	48
University of Sydney	51	38	43
Australian National University	59	27	47
University of Queensland	62	47	38
Monash University	64	58	43
UNSW Sydney	67	43	44
University of Adelaide	118	108	29
University of Western Australia	139	93	29
Uni of Technology Sydney	160	133	36
University of Canberra	184	436	36

Business Insider Australia and other publications have set out the broader risks to Australia’s booming international student market as its Government struggles to find ways to allow inward mobility. UWA has taken the opportunity to roll out $40m in ‘structural cost cuts’, including ‘university-wide redundancies’ while flagging heavy investment in its campus. All of this plays out against the background of continuing tensions between the governments of Australia and China with the latest spat over the Great Barrier Reef and complaints at the World Trade Organisation being just the latest examples.

It is fair to say that the jury is out on how soon and how robustly Australia will return to the international student recruitment party. Those who have travelled the scene for many years know better than to write them off and they have overcome dips in enrollments before. But the resurgence of the UK, the Biden bounce and Canada’s continuing surge means that the competitive market they face will be more challenging than ever before.

All in all the link up, if it is confirmed, seems out of context for a business that has focused so heavily on the US for the past five years. The geopolitics of the enrollment potential are also difficult to divine at this stage and may make the partnership a harder sell. It’s going to be interesting to watch and see if INTO find it the “land of plenty” or whether those making the decision will think they’d “better run…better take cover.”*

NOTES

* It’s sometimes irresistible to allude to the mighty Men At Work and their song Down Under which topped charts around the world between 1981 and 1983. In September 1983 it was adopted as the theme song by the crew of Australia II in their successful challenge for the America’s Cup yacht trophy.

** As always, I would welcome any clarification or correction from an authoritative source at the University of Western Australia or INTO University Partnerships and amend the copy accordingly.

Image by Katrina_S from Pixabay

INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN*

It’s always difficult to know when news is official and when it’s a false start and a case in point is the appearance then disappearance of a new Chief Executive Officer for INTO University Partnerships (INTO) over the course of a few days last week. It would be invidious to name names publicly at this point but one day the INTO corporate website had a picture and biography then a day later it was gone. It all happened so quickly that I was pleased to have a conversation with a colleague who had seen the website and could also name the individual.

There doesn’t appear to have been a press announcement about the appointment, but on Wednesday 16 June, the site also had INTO’s co-founder John Sykes listed as Deputy Chief Executive and VP of UK Operations so there seemed to be a nascent structure in place. More curious is that all of INTO’s pages related to people – and they were extensive – went missing and remain so on Wednesday 23 June. If you click on the link to Our People it takes you to a bland page about Global Reach – Global Impact, the Leadership Team area on Corporate Information is a desert and the Meet Our North American Development Team section is as blank as untrodden snow.

Any official and authoritative explanation is welcome and I’m happy to provide an update if it is forthcoming. Perhaps the wider site needed a major refreshing but if so it would be reasonable to see the Marshall Student Center and Colorado State University imagery coming down because those joint ventures have closed. Anyone who has had responsibility for keeping websites up to date know that it is not for the faint-hearted and requires constant vigilance. Using collateral from partnerships that have ended feels a little like the corporate equivalent of carrying a torch for a childhood sweetheart.

The claim of 30 university partnerships in the UK and US also does not square with the logos of nine US partners and nine UK partners. The relationship with Chinese universities appears to have disappeared from the corporate site but the INTO student site still has opportunities for study at Nankai University. It’s all pretty confusing.

Only time will tell if the lack of information about leadership reflects a new approach to privacy, a major update or a pending restructure of significant proportions but it’s a good moment to review the task facing a new CEO if or when they are appointed. Partnership growth has stalled, online capability appears to be behind the curve and the main competition has forged ahead in both areas. It seems a long way from the growth proposition that encouraged Leeds Equity Partners to invest £66m ($105.8m) for a 25% stake in the business back in 2013.

Over the past two years INTO has seen the end of joint ventures at the University of Gloucestershire, Newcastle University London and Glasgow Caledonian University in the UK as well as Marshall University, Colorado State University and Washington State University in the USA. The company invested in School Apply in early 2020 and closed it a year or so later.

The INTO Annual Report for the year ended 31 July 2020 was for a year before the full impact of the pandemic was felt on 2020/21 enrolments and suggested little growth. Adjusted turnover (which removes discontinued operations) was up 3% to £202k while adjusted EBITDA fell 9.1% to £26m. Overall, the intercompany debt from joint ventures to INTO had increased by around £8m to £44m with the Centre’s closing listed as debtors to the tune of around £11m.

After entering the pathway market with a ground-breaking joint-venture model at the University of East Anglia in 2006, INTO leveraged its model with great initial success in the US at Oregon State University from 2008. There have been no new partners in the UK since the University of Stirling in 2014 and the most recent pathway additions in the US was Hofstra University announced in January 2019. Shorelight adopted many aspects of the INTO model and has forged ahead to be the dominant partner of American universities since its founding in 2013. Long-term players like Kaplan, CEG, Navitas and Study Group and upstarts like QA Higher Education and Oxford International have scooped up the most recent UK university pathway partnerships.

INTO’s purchase of SchoolApply may have been the start of a foray into the world of online delivery but it is no longer active and there is little evidence of significant advances in this area. This is at a point where Study Group is moving forward with Insendi, Kaplan Open Learning has online partnerships with Essex and Liverpool, CEG Digital has an established stable of partners and even Oxford International has been making waves with its Digital Institute. In the US, Shorelight has made a great deal of its delivery through the Shorelight Live platform and appears to be repositioning as a business delivering technological solutions to student problems.

One way of looking at things might be to suggest that the reduction in partnerships has been a deliberate step by INTO to clean up some joint ventures that had struggled to make headway in a competitive market. The growing level of indebtedness from these joint ventures to INTO might suggest that they were not making adequate progress but it does seem as if several decisions were university driven. The latest closures are part of history that includes the closures of partnerships with St George’s, University of London, and UEA London which undermines the original notion of long-term joint ventures providing greater stability than third-party pathway providers.

It’s something of a strategic head-scratcher and the loss of academic ‘supply’ comes at a tipping point where both the US and UK are demonstrably back in the game as far as international student demand is concerned. The lack of a viable online option seems to put INTO at a disadvantage in delivering to a market where increased flexibility and option has become the norm and is likely to grow in future years.

Perhaps there is a mega-deal on its way and one might guess that Leeds Equity Partner would be pleased to find a way to realise some return after eight years of a holding position. A possible merger with Shorelight to become a demonstrable lead player in the US seems a long shot but the operating models have some similarities and the online expertise may bring energy to INTO’s portfolio. Or maybe this is the moment where a stable group generating solid if unspectacular EBITDA could be taken back into 100% ownership by INTO’s founder, Andrew Colin.

It’s all speculation but for an outside observer INTO needs to establish some renewed momentum if it is to fulfil the promise of its early days of innovation, creativity and energy. There’s been substantial investment in talent at the top level and perhaps a new CEO is the final piece in the jigsaw. Only time will tell.

Image by Anemone123 from Pixabay

* Fans of the mighty Tom Petty will know that Into The Great Wide Open is co-written with Jeff Lynne and charts the progress of Eddie as he “went to Hollywood, got a tattoo”, “made a record and it went in the charts” to the time “their A&R man said, ‘I don’t hear a single”. It’s the old story of “rebel without a clue”, to overnight success, to uncertainty when “the future was wide open”.

Amendment on 1 May 2023: The earlier version of this blog suggested that Andrew Colin, founder of INTO, might take the business “private”. It has been amended to clarify that this was intended to suggest he might choose to take it 100% back into his sole ownership

THE Big Issue

A picture of the Board of Times Higher Education (THE) has been doing the Twitter rounds and attracting attention because of its lack of diversity*. THE has been part of the higher education landscape since 1973 but since 2012 has developed its role as a provider of league tables on a plethora of issues. It’s developing combination of data services, branding and hiring services saw it bought by Inflexion Private Equity in 2019.

Much of the chatter on Twitter has simply posted the picture and danced around the implications for a business that claims to generate 320,000 online page views and visits from 2.8m “…academics, university leaders, students and their families” each month. These are big numbers and THE’s intention to exploit the data generated was made clear by its Chief Development Officer in recent reporting in the PIE and elsewhere. For an organization holding that much potential power and authority in higher education there is arguably a responsibility to consider positive steps on diversity, equity and inclusion at Board level.

This is particularly so when THE has made a great deal of its latest Impact Rankings league table judging universities around the world on their commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It may be worth the Board considering Goal 5 – Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Target 5.5 sums it up by saying – “ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life”

Several other Development Goals imply a wider consideration of equity, diversity and inclusion but Goal 10 focuses on reducing inequality within and among countries. Specifically, target 10.2 says “..empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.” Even Blackrock, possibly the world’s largest asset manager, has commented “..we expect companies in all countries to have a talent strategy that allows them to draw on the fullest set of talent possible,”

THE operates as part of Bologna Topco Limited which may be a slightly inside joke about the University of Bologna’s claim to being Europe’s oldest university having been founded in 1088. Or possibly the Bologna Process signed in 1999 to ensure comparability in the standards and quality of higher-education qualifications across Europe. It’s worth considering the Statement of the Fifth Bologna Policy Forum to see the commitment to fair access both in higher education and employment.

As one would expect of any company Bologna Topco Limited the Director’s Report contains some fine words on issues of equal opportunities. However, they are placed, even in the revised version of the Annual Report under the heading – Employment of Disabled Persons – which might suggest that insufficient attention is being paid to what this might really mean. None of this is intended to suggest a lack of sincerity in the Board’s thinking but attention to detail and action are equally important.

Good intentions may have been captured in the inaugural THE Live session with HSBC UK that asked: “What action do we need to take to ensure that every voice is represented at a senior level?”. For reference the HSBC UK board membership is available and people can make up their own mind about it but their policies and targets on inclusion and diversity seem clear. But searching the THE site does not provide much detail on their own approach or ambitions in this area.

Universities have come under significant pressure to increase diversity in their senior academic and administrative ranks for many years. It is particularly ironic in the current context that the THE Student noted on International Women’s Day this year that “It is striking that still only a few of the world’s top universities are led by women.” It’s World University Rankings showed that only 41 of the top 200 universities were run by women.

It may be time for universities to do their own due diligence on the way that THE is reflecting the need for greater diversity and inclusivity. There is the potential for a powerful, united approach, perhaps led by UUK and the NUS, to put pressure on THE to begin to reflect at Board level the drive for equity, inclusion and diversity that is holding so much of the world’s attention. It is the brands, reputation and attention of universities that hold the key to THE’s future and that power should be exercised for good purposes.

*For colleagues not on Twitter this is the picture that was circulating. I would be happy to credit the copyright holder if provided with authoritative details. The Board membership is the same as the Active Director list for Bologna Topco Limited at Companies House in the UK.

It is reasonable to note that Ms Fabrizia Rizzi was a non-executive director of THE for three months (according to her LinkedIn profile) from February 2021 until her resignation in April 2021. At the time she was an Assistant Director of Inflexion but moved on to another company in May 2021.

Title image by Joshua Woroniecki from Pixabay

Brass in Yocket for Aggregator Founders*

Having recently delved into ApplyBoard and Study Portals it was Yocket’s turn to go under the computer mouse. Reportedly, started in 2012 with $136USD (less than £100GBP) the company claimed over $1m revenue in 2020 and a plan to get to over $10m in three years. Various internet searches have not found references to other external funding in support of the company, so it looks like the founders are backing themselves.

Described as a ‘one stop study abroad solution’ Yocket focuses on candidates from India and suggests it has registered more than 400,000 since 2015. The company name is a word play on the company being a ‘rocket’ for students to meet their aspiration. It claims to have ‘tied-up’ with over 100 universities in the UK, US, Canada and Australia although the nature of the engagement and the split by country are not transparent. Yocket is part of Avocation Education Services Private Limited (Avocation) which also owns Stupidsid** which was also started by the founders.

Yocket’s model would appear to be focused on being a ‘student aggregator’ making money by selling added value services rather than an ‘agent aggregator’ trying to attract recruitment agents. There is a clear attempt to build a revenue stream from universities but this appears to have had limited success with only 42 in the ‘Apply through Yocket’ list and limited institutional activity on the site. Before universities go rushing in to fill that void they may want to consider some features of the site and what their brand will be associated with.

Data Management and Use

One of the emerging concerns about aggregator sites is their use of data and Yocket’s site demands an email as the price of doing any search and engages the user in giving more personal details at every opportunity. An email, phone number and other details allows you to set up an account and “By creating an account you agree to Yocket’s Terms of use and Privacy policy. Attempts to click on the links to read these take the user on a circular route back to the initial sign on page which may be a glitch but is unhelpful.

However, the Privacy Policy is available through an internet search and is the same as that of Avocation in giving broad opportunities for the use of data, such as making it available to ‘third party service providers’ as well as to advertisers including financial services. It notes that ‘Avocation Educational Services Private Limited’ reserves the right to update, change or modify this policy at any time.’ The Terms of Use can also be found and note that, “It cannot be guaranteed that the material, information, links, and content presented on and by this website is comprehensive, complete, accurate, sufficient, timely, or up to date for any particular purpose or use.”

Given that students going to the site are expecting accurate and comprehensive information about any country that they hope to study in this seems problematic. The information provides the basis for the potential student spending money on other services, such as Yocket Premium or finding a loan, so there should at least be some sense of responsibility. As the test searches outlined below suggest, there is some way to go before the information available provides full confidence.

In Search of Substance

A search for universities in the UK provided a list of 124 institutions – well short of the number of degree-awarding institutions in the country. The opportunity to search by private universities only provided information on Ecole de Management de Normandie, Oxford and Arden University. There was no mention at all of sector notables such as BPP and the University of Law (one of Arden’s siblings in the Global University Systems family).

Oddities in the UK public university listings included:

– Northumbria (Amsterdam) listed as one of the three for the institution.

– Nottingham Trent, Aston and Birmingham each having two locations listed

– University of Buckingham, a private university, appears in the list of public universities

The listing of each institution comprised a fuzzy photo of something that looks like a university with the university logo superimposed on top of it. Adding to the general sense of low-resolution and compromise on detail is that 12 of the universities had no logo shown and 47 of the universities had no indicative tuition fee shown. That might be a blessing for anyone interested in accuracy and quality of information.

There is a feature which allows a search by Low, Medium or High Price and this has several anomalies. The most obvious shows Kings College London as having an international tuition fee of £9,250. A fee of £20,790 for classroom based international undergraduate students appears to be the starting point at this venerable London institution.

Thirty institutions are listed in the Medium price sector but only one makes it to be shown as High Price. The University of Bristol occupies this category with a tuition fee that the site suggests is £72,000 when the university’s published undergraduate classroom based BSc is 20,100 and an MSc in Management at £26,500.

The low-priced list did not include the University of Chester which has a rate of £12,750 for international students which is lower than the £13,000 shown (correctly) for Teeside University. All of this suggests that AI or machine learning is being used to find information on university sites it needs some fine tuning. If it’s human research then the quality control needs to be stepped up. It’s currently misleading to students and potentially damaging to university recruitment hopes.

Going to North America

The search for top universities in the USA offered up 242 universities with Harvard, MIT and Stanford at the top but one for “popular universities” listed 659 with Northeastern, Texas A&M and University of Texas at Dallas at the top. The first two are among those among the 42 listed on the Apply to Universities via Yocket page which suggests there may be a closer relationship between institution and aggregator.

Perhaps surprisingly given the world rankings, Canada has 194 ‘top universities’ listed which is exactly the same as the number shown as ‘popular’. The University of British Columbia Vancouver and the University of Western Ontario are at the top of both lists but there is no description of how a university gets on one or the other list. Neither university is on the 42 listed on the “Apply to Universities via Yocket” page.

Generally speaking, the pictures and the logos for the USA and Canada are in better shape than those for the UK. The site also provides further counselling if you are “Confused about which country to pick?” but this requires upgrading to Yocket Premium. The paucity of filters to offer comparisons make it difficult to make any sort of well-informed choice without taking that step.

Clicking through to the university page from the search does give the added information about how many ‘Yocketers’ have applied and how many have been accepted as well as their average GRE quant score. There’s also some information on scholarships available. Just out of interest the claim is that 99 have applied to Harvard’s School of Engineering with 17 admitted and 222 have applied to MIT’s School of Engineering with 14 admitted. Whether or not they chose to use Yocket’s other services or counselling is not made clear.

Further Insights

The application to universities service is currently limited to 42 institutions with only the universities of Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Huddersfield and Essex listed for the UK. These universities do not appear to receive special treatment in other search facilities on the site and the nature of the relationship is unclear. A 5 May 2020 blog post on the site in the Applying to Universities section indicates a session with University of Essex where participants may receive an “on the spot offer” depending on eligibility.

In answering the question Why Should I Choose Yocket? the company says that it has “..been a helpful companion to 300,000+ study abroad aspirants since 2016. Through a powerful network of students and machine learning algorithms, yocket empowers you to make informed decisions to your educational pursuits.” The critical question for many observers might be whether or not the platform and its current capabilities is enabling sufficient information for an informed decision.

An interesting feature and highly relevant given the power of peer-to-peer recommendations is the ‘Trending Yocketers’ section which allows direct connection to a candidate who is looking to study at a specific university. This is supplemented by a Discussions thread where candidates can pose questions in the hope that a peer will respond.

Yocket may be planning to upgrade the site in the near future. A blog on 27 April invites interest from users willing to participate in the Yocket Hydrogen Beta version. It is described as “an upgraded platform that is better in design, experience and features”. With the anticipated growth in India students travelling abroad to study this would seem a reasonable investment.

Some Thoughts

Yocket’s story is well known and it has recently announced plans to recruit 300 more staff in 2021 and a further 1,000 over three years. It has presented itself as enhancing student services in a disorganized market dominated by agents, where students were often misguided. It is reasonable to believe that the development of an online service provides access to more people but this, in itself, does not mean that students are better advised or informed.

It is difficult to know how the information about universities is being gathered and the extent to which it is verified to allow reasonable comparisons. Whether the other Yocket services – such as premium service at a reported £500 per student – gives well-founded counselling is also hard to know. The company’s 7^th Annual Virtual Meet Up in March 2021 claims to have gathered 40 universities from the US, UK, France and New Zealand and over 4,000 students, so the demand would seem to be there.

From the point of view of institutions news stories have indicated that universities can get directly involved for between $1,000 and $10,000 dollars. This gets access to services that reach out to students in a growing market and may be tempting. Institutions who choose to engage might consider learning how data is used and the terms under which additional services, particularly loans, are being offered.

There are also questions about the levels of transparency, the comprehensiveness of coverage and the quality of information available. For universities who have not given permission for their brands to be used it may be time to consider whether the format and presentation is acceptable and they should certainly check the details given about them. Aggregators are using university names and logos as bait for students and then selling other services so it would be reasonable to take an assertive stance.

The overall impression is that Yocket started as a page allowing students to exchange information about universities and has become a business operating in one of the fastest growing student recruiting markets in the world. The founders have commented extensively on their desire to ensure a more accessible and better organized service for students than they believe many recruitment agents have offered. These are fine principles but operationalizing them probably requires more attention to detail than is currently evident on the site.

NOTES

1. *For those unfamiliar with popular music “Brass in Pocket” is a 1979 single by The Pretenders. Apparently, lead singer Chrissie Hynde overheard someone enquiring if anyone had, “Picked up dry cleaning? Any brass in pocket?” Brass is Northern English slang for money but is used idiomatically in several other ways including “brass neck” to mean showing a lot of nerve.

** Stupidsid.com started in February 2010 as a college review website with students’ opinions on colleges, courses and universities. It has developed to provide Study Resources (including solved question papers, university syllabuses and previous questions) and Knowledge Hub (claimed to be the “largest database of engineering-related information you’ll ever come across.”)

2. Searches were carried out on various browsers over the period from 13 to 17 May.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

Do Aggregators Match Up?

There’s significant interest in the higher education community about the rise of websites claiming to match students to degree programmes and what they might mean for student choice. The websites and public comments of these aggregators are strong on claims about transparency, choice and putting the interests of students first. This blog gets close and personal with a couple of websites of main players and gets granular enough to suggest that there might be room for improvement.

As a disclaimer I should note that, despite a philosophical preference for all education to be free, I appreciate the value that private investment can bring to expanding choice and opportunity. If investors can employ people and make a return while offering good value to students, it seems to me to be an acceptable trade off. I also have no reason to disbelieve the claim of aggregators that they aim to make global student choice easier and more accessible.

To ease the flow of the blog I have put a note of search terms used at the bottom of the text. As with all research there is an element of subjectivity in my choices but they serve to explore some points about the way the system works. The two operators chosen reflect their scale and profile rather than any value judgement about their quality compared to other operators in this increasingly crowded space.

Before plunging into that detail there are a couple of general points that emerge from looking at several aggregator websites:

– The word ‘partner’ occurs often without a full explanation of what the relationship is or what due diligence has been done to ensure quality or appropriateness. There is usually even less insight into the nature of the commercial relationship with their partners and the ways that this might skew presentation of information.

An example of that the Studyportals Bachelorportal top level search* produced 839 courses on the ‘Our Picks’ list. The first 10 were the University of Lincoln and the first 253 were flagged as ‘Featured’. The site says, “the university partners with us for this programme to reach students like you”. Studyportals have confirmed that being featured represents ‘paid exposure services’ for the universities in question.

It is common for internet search engines to tell the user which results are adverts. But when an aggregator lists ‘Our Picks’ it might be taken to imply that they take some responsibility (other than being paid) for the selection. While Studyportals gives details about its organizational partners and its student partners it does not do so about university partners.

– There are many claims intended to satisfy students about the choice the site offers and the lure of counselling about those options. For example, ApplyBoard claims to have “built partnerships with over 1,500 primary, secondary, and post-secondary educational institutions, and work with 5,000+ recruitment partners”. It’s difficult to know the breakdown of these and the website gives no indication of how many universities in each of the four countries – Canada, USA, UK and Australia – can be searched on the site.

Using the ApplyBoard Quick Search and asking a broad query to study Business in the United Kingdom offered 10,000+ programs in 100+ “schools”. My count was of only 70 institutions named with the 100 being achieved through branch campuses – including the most, eight, from University of Law. At least 40 of the 100+ links led to pathway operations from Study Group, Kaplan, INTO, Navitas or CEG.

With over 140 degree bearing institutions in the United Kingdom it seems arguable that ApplyBoard is some way short of offering a critical mass of choice for students using the service. One of the arguments levelled against student recruitment agents has been that their choice is restricted to institutions who they have commercial terms with. The strength of this may be that they usually have the benefit of familiarization trips and visits from university or pathway staff to enhance the advice they give students. The extent to which an aggregator offers counselling advice based on direct personal knowledge of an institution may be an area for development.

To an extent none of that would matter if the much-vaunted machine learning, artificial intelligence and algorithms were providing good matching between the student and the university. A student would put their information into the system and it would throw out carefully calibrated responses that reflected the student’s personal needs as well as their academic capability. Testing across the aggregators is complex and cannot be consistent because search terms are rarely the same but a look at Apply Board and Studyportals gives some indication of what the student experience looks like. The analysis took place between 8 and 11 May.

Apply Board

Even for a native English speaker the process is tough to navigate so I decided to go with being a US citizen who had studied in the UK to A-level. After my experiment with a top-level query (discussed above) I filled out both the eligibility and school filters on the page to give a more precise search for a UK university**. It provided 1000+ programs at 45 schools but the results were less than inspiring.

As I wanted to go direct to a university BA degree programme it was unhelpful to find the Relevance list populating only with pathway operations or foundation courses offered by a university through another route. The top option on the list was “2-Semester Pathway – International Year One in Business and Management – Bachelor of Science – Business and Management (Year in Business)” at Royal Holloway’s International Study Centre run by Study Group. This suggests that the algorithm does its best but may not always reflect what students are searching for.

When I tried to view the list by the “school rank” option I presumed it would be indicative of university rankings although there was no source indicated. Given this expectation it was surprising to find the universities of Manchester, Durham and Lancaster further down the list than Anglia Ruskin University. There would be merit in clarifying what the ranking system is and also, what the progression rate to the university is if a pathway option is shown.

When I entered the same search terms for study in Canada (changing my visa status to Canadian Study Permit or Visitor Visa and the duration to a four-year bachelors) I got 25 schools and 139 programs with direct entry options at universities at the top. Presumably, this reflects the lower number of pathway operations in Canada or the strength of ApplyBoard connections in the country.

For the USA (visa status F1 and as a UK national) it was 91 schools and 1000+ programs but with INTO’s Undergraduate Pathway at George Mason University at the top and their two-semester business pathway at Suffolk University third on the list. Digging further down the list it became clear that the pathway operations were featured relatively heavily rather than the ‘direct admission’ I had searched for. This, couple with the UK experience, might suggest that pathway operators are early investors in the aggregator model in countries where they have a foothold.

Studyportals

The recent linking of Studyportals with Times Higher Education Student is one of the most apparent signs of league table compilers looking for ways to exercise their aggregator power over student interest. Studyportals pages currently appears to favour the QS World University Rankings as a yardstick for university ranking and it will be interesting to see if the allegiance shifts. It’s the sort of decision that reflects the impetus behind deciding what information to present to students and how transparent an aggregator is about who is paying to be represented.

A helpful feature is the ability to adjust the information received to reflect a currency of your choice and also the actual rate being charged for your nationality. This is particularly important for EU students who, in 2021, will be charged Home tuition fees by some UK universities rather than international fee rates. This is available on the home page but it might be better if elevated to make this more apparent – I totally missed it in my original analysis.³

I signed up and completed most of my profile in the Mastersportal*** (there is some personal information I preferred not to share). When I looked at the ‘Recommended for You’ section of my profile I was offered 18 programmes of which all 10 in the UK were through online delivery. This seemed to ignore my stated preference for on campus study.

There was no explanation of how these had been selected or favoured but three were from Nottingham Trent University. So, I returned to the main Masters portal to search for Business and Management at the top level and found that Nottingham Trent University was a ‘featured’ university. When I searched at this level with ‘on campus learning’ enabled the online NTU options disappeared.

Some Thoughts

The mystery shopping was not comprehensive or even exhaustive but serves to highlight some of the issues that emerge in a complex and dynamic sector where nuance can mean a lot. My insights are likely to be better informed than a non-native English-speaking student encountering the systems for the first time and the world of HE as a newcomer. My contention would be that the limitations of the systems and their biases could be made clearer to users.

On the upside, both sites were relatively easy to use and the links to information about the universities were generally well managed. I did not research aspects of the service that students pay for and it is possible that these would remedy some of the points I have highlighted. The volume of information on the sites is overwhelming and there would seem to be scope for agents to offer a service that moderates the information on behalf of students.

The sector is becoming familiar with operators showing quotes and testimonials from students who have done well through using the sites but this is a drop in the bucket compared to the volumes looking at them. It might be more interesting to know the extent to which they are mystery shopping their own sites (rather than drinking their own bathwater) with non-native English speakers. Students who have succeeded are a much more forgiving audience than those who did not make it through the system.

The march of the aggregators will not be disrupted and probably does bring benefits in offering greater accessibility to students. But the potential to overclaim coverage, distort perceptions of quality and act as a limiter of student choice rather than an enabler is obvious. As this part of the sector matures it is to be hoped that, as with recruitment agents, the best operators prevail and become the choice of most potential students.

It is also to be hoped that universities recognise that they have responsibilities when lending their brand names to third parties and that their very presence as part of an aggregator portfolio lends credibility to the entire endeavour. They may prefer the word ‘featured’ to something like ‘promoted’ or ‘advertised’ but they should accept that honesty and integrity in the way they are represented is their decision rather than that of the aggregator. For universities in the United Kingdom the option of making UCAS a wholly-owned, comprehensive and managed service for students remains an option that could become an exemplar of responsible self-regulation.

NOTES

1. As with all my blogs I am happy to have authoritative comment on the outcomes and where these add value or correct a clear error will reflect any resulting changes. The purpose of doing the work and writing it up is to try and improve things for students while making observations that colleagues in the sector might consider.

2. Search Terms Used

*Business and management in the UK, 3-year, full-time on campus, Bachelor of Arts.

**US Citizen, educated to high school level in the UK with B/C GCE A-level grades, with a Tier 4 UK student visa and 9 IELTS in all categories. I confirmed my interest was direct admission to UK universities for a three-year bachelors in business, management or economics starting between August and November 2021. I placed no constraints on tuition, living costs or admission fee.

***UK citizen resident in the US. Interested in Masters level study in Business and Management in the UK starting in between 6 months and one year. Preference for attendance on campus. Tuition fee and living cost budget set at 150,000 (so not a barrier). Bachelor’s degree in Business and Management securing a 2:1. With 5 years of work experience. Native speaker English level.

3. In the original of this piece it was indicated that rates on the Portal were quoted in Euros and showed international rates and that this might have particular implications for EU students looking to study in the UK (where some institutions have chosen to offer EU students lower tuition fees than other international students in 2021). This has been removed to recognize that at the base of the home page of the Portal you are able to adjust your results to reflect the actual rate being charged and can do so in a denomination of your choice. If this information is put into your individual account it is also adjusted.

Image by Hier und jetzt endet leider meine Reise auf Pixabay aber from Pixabay

LEAGUE TABLE CLICK-BAIT COMPLICATION FOR UNIVERSITIES

It is standard to hear a manager in the English Premier League say “the table doesn’t lie” as they bemoan their lowly position or celebrate their success. By contrast it has been equally standard to hear university recruiters put the case that various league tables are wanting in terms of nuance, specificity or even veracity. But it may become even more complicated if university league table compilers have a direct, commercial interest in the outcome of the table and its impact on students.

In a recent article in The PIE, the Chief Development Officer of Times Higher Education (THE) outlined plans for millions of international students who consult its rankings website each year. He said, “We want to stay top of the funnel and maximise the number of students coming to the site. What we will then do is identify a network of complementary, trusted partners that we will send those students to.” The potential for universities to find themselves excluded or obliged to pay large sums for access seem obvious.

Regulators, governments and the sector’s networking bodies would do well to consider whether this manipulation of the recruitment process through commercially driven league tables is in the interests of the institutions and the students. Back in October 2018 the Office for Students Director of External Relations wrote of the “challenge for policymakers….providing information responsibly and well as accessibly” but it is difficult to see any action to head off the private sector. Allowing brands that have been built with substantial public funding to be used as click-bait providing a return to private money certainly does not seem the best way forward.

Selective, Subjective and Subject to Manipulation

It is equally troubling to think that students may find themselves railroaded into choices by an organization that decides how the league table is compiled and has commercial partners who may have more than a passing interest in the result. Elsevier have quoted Lydia Snover, director of institutional research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as saying, “every ranking is based on the available, comparable data, and is built on the subjective judgement (over indicators and weightings) of its compilers.”. Even when league tables are independently audited, consulted upon and done with good intentions they are about choices.

UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education has suggested that “universities with frequent QS-related contracts experienced much greater upward mobility in both overall rankings and in faculty-student ratio scores over five years in the QS World Rankings”. HEPI’s president, Bahram Bekhradnia, did not find this a surprise and noted, “QS is a commercial organisation. They’re there to make money and their rankings are not objective.” The higher education sector, while complicit in working with rankings media, is aware that this is a double-edged sword, and it may be that commercial imperative is sharpening one side.

Those factors are made worse by the documented cases of universities deliberately manipulating the data they submit in order to secure a place higher up the ranking. A University World News article in 2019 highlighted how the University of Oklahoma had been supplying US News and World Report rankings with incorrect information for nearly two decades. Occasional errors seem forgivable but the more complex and wide ranging the tables the more scope there would seem to be for manipulation.

Legitimization and Lost Perspective

It seems a long time ago that in the late 1990s a few national UK newspapers would produce university league tables once a year as part of their wider agenda of news coverage. But since the early 2000s league table compilation and publication has become increasingly central to the activity and business model of some HE sector-oriented media organisations. Universities have played their own part in legitimizing the ranking races that may undermine their reputation and their ability to compete for students.

Many university planning offices have also spent hundreds of hours analysing league table performance and working to advise their senior colleagues on the levers that can elevate the institution’s position. It would be difficult to believe any Vice Chancellor who says their university’s league table performance is not considered in strategic discussions. League tables have become silent and increasingly oppressive enforcers influencing decision making, reputations and student experience.

It is certainly plausible that one of the factors influencing grade inflation at UK universities has been the weighting of a ‘good degree’ in the league tables. When one university sees a perceived competitor getting league table marks for awarding a higher proportion of ‘good degrees’ the argument to amend marking criteria can be positioned as not disadvantaging students. Almost without realising it institutions and academics may find their autonomy compromised by external factors.

Methodology, Misalignment and Misunderstanding

Over and above that, the dizzying array of league tables has become a way for compilers to open new routes for advertising income and securing influence. Universities under 50 years old may welcome the chance to trumpet their performance against similar institutions and it allows the sector to applaud its own achievements. But when high placings are used as advertising and marketing fodder to attract students the institutions are validating a process which is almost entirely out of their control and where interests may not be aligned.

In 2004 the Times Higher Education (THE) began its University World Rankings but that has now been joined by 18 other main categories including World Reputation Rankings, Young University Rankings, Emerging Economy Rankings, Subject and Teaching Rankings. The latest addition of Impact Ranking assesses universities against the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The accompanying launch events, announcements and conferences drive substantial content, which may be the purpose of media organizations but that is not the same as the purpose of universities.

The QS Rankings also began in 2004 and now covers 11 main categories, with several similar to THE but some noticeable differences such as Employability and System Strength. They have built a student-facing event series – the QS World Tours – to bring students together with admissions directors at events. Conferences and consultancy services also build out of the rankings as a source of revenue.

The variability of methodology that universities are trying to deal with shows in the league table results. The THE and QS most recent “top 10 global universities” and “top 10 under 50 years old” show seven as being the same in each category but three different. It’s a discrepancy which seems unhelpful if you are a student really wanting to know which were the best of breed in either category.

So, even when compilers are gauging similar categories they are making subjective choices about what to include, how to weight it and whether it will be important to their readers. But in what is largely a game of statistical musical chairs there is some evidence that there are also fundamental misunderstandings about what is driving the performance of institutions. Research by QS has suggested, for example, that students believe that a university’s ranking is substantially linked to employability of graduates when this only makes up a small element of the overall score.

It seems indisputable that league tables have become very big business for organizations that compile them and are influential enough to be a source of power over university decision making. The prospect of them being leveraged to influence student choice and the recruitment potential of institutions has been made clear. An informed, open discussion leading to collective action by the sector would be a step towards restoring balance.

Image by Firmbee from Pixabay

Canadian Pathway Drive – Back to the Future?

Interesting times in Canada as Navitas and others try to muscle in on international student interest in the country’s lure of immigration and citizenship. The latest to cross my desk is in Newfoundland and Labrador where Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) looks to be in discussions with Navitas. A response to the proposition from the university’s alumni network is a little like being transported back to the union and faculty resistance to UK pathways in the early 2000s.

It’s also a good moment to look at the prospects for pathway growth in Canada over the coming years. This is about the likelihood of resistance by faculty being successful and the possibility that the private operators may get diverted. History has also shown that, for either side, short term gains and potential may not always convert into long term success.

A Canadian Problem or Opportunity?

The scant MUN’s Minutes of Vice President’s Council from October 2020 confirm that a Pathway Proposal feasibility with Navitas has been ‘endorsed’ by the Council. A response by the MUN Faculty Association Executive (MUNFA) at the end of March 2021 highlights seven ‘concerns’ as a sighting shot. To borrow from a son of Canada one side of the discussion might be “rockin’ in the free world” but the other are suggesting “there’s a warnin’ sign on the road ahead”¹.

Drivers behind MUN’s interest may be varied but the economic case for international recruitment is likely to be high on the list. From 2012/13 to 2019/20 it saw operating budget cuts of $39.5m along with further capital budgets being lost. Since 1999 the provincial government has had a tuition fee freeze for students from the province but out of province and international students can be charged more.

Reports suggest this is a scenario that is also being played out in Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba as provincial government’s reduce funding for higher education. The conditions are ripe for pathway operators to find partnerships from hard-pressed institutions. Magnifying this attraction is the benevolent visa, work rights and immigration policies that has driven international student interest in Canada over recent years.

The Past In A Different Country

The MUNFA arguments are all very familiar to anyone who followed the progress of INTO University Partnerships (IUP) in the UK as it took its new 50/50 partnership model into discussions with potential partners in the early days. Much of the debate is played out in the media but another good source is the website of the University and College Union (UCU). There may be something for all sides to consider in the arguments made and what eventually happened.

The campaign against IUP at the University of Essex is well documented and laid out in a triumphant Fighting Privatisation Toolkit summary. It charts the story (from the UCU point of view) from first skirmishes in December 2007 to a university announcement in October that the teaching would be kept in-house. But as American baseball legend Yogi Berra told us, “It ain’t over till it’s over” and in 2017 the University announced a partnership for a ‘pathway college for international students’ with Kaplan.

Defences were also mounted at other institutions and some university management, for example at De Montfort, even expressed trenchant views about the potential dangers of private providers becoming partners. It was, however, only two years later (in 2013) that De Montfort, under ex-Vice Chancellor Dominic Shellard, teamed up with Oxford International Education Group for an international pathway college on campus.

It may be that INTO’s 50/50 partnership model with its associated terms was the real problem and later deals were modified to make them more acceptable to universities. But it is also true that some institutions in the UK have successfully developed alternative approaches to providing pathways for international students. Institutions that have moved so rapidly to deliver universal online education in the past year might care to consider how they apply that agility to accepting international students who are short of requisite language skills.

Lessons from the US and UK for Canada

UK universities have, to a greater extent, fully embraced the pathway model with long established groups Kaplan, Study Group, Navitas and Cambridge Education Group having around 50 universities in their portfolio. Newer players such as QA Higher Education, GUS and Oxford International are growing and well ranked universities continue to gravitate towards private partners with Aberdeen, Cardiff, Aston, Southampton and Queen Mary all finding pathway partners in the past two years.

In the US, however, the story is quite different with many pathway closures in recent years from Navitas (5), Study Group (6), Cambridge Education Group (4) and INTO (3) more than counter-balancing Shorelight’s slowing growth in new partnerships. It’s always difficult to be certain from the outside what is driving a closure but it’s reasonable to assume that the decline in international students going to the US has made it less viable for the commercial partner to continue. At its worst that exit leaves a university with no infrastructure, no foothold in the market for international students and potentially a poor reputation overseas that will be difficult to overcome.

There are material differences in the number of institutions and the private/public make up of the university sectors in the two countries. It’s arguable that Canada is more like the UK in terms of numbers of institutions, it has a degree system that offers flexibility, and it is relatively inexpensive. But the progress for the pathway providers has been very slow and success may not come quickly enough to ensure rewards.

Riding the Roller Coaster

As the world emerges from the pandemic there is almost certainly going to be a renewed appetite for student mobility but it is a quite different higher education landscape to just two years ago. The US administration has changed, the UK has seen growth from India outpacing that from China, and Australia, while wounded, is looking for ways to recover. Past performance is no guarantee of future results should be a watchword for pathways looking to Canada as much as caveat emptor should be a guide for Canadian universities talking to private providers.

Colleagues have speculated on Canada as being in the ‘squeezed middle’ as the US and UK open their doors more widely to students. It may also be of interest that while the numbers of scholars in the US from China were lower in 2015/16 than 2019/20 the number from India was slightly higher. There is also every reason to believe that the attractiveness of the US has already increased amongst potential students and this could pay big dividends as the country’s vaccination program increases pace.

The historical evidence from the UK, and to a lesser extent from the dash for growth of pathways in the US, is that resistance from faculty and friends of MUN may succeed in the short term but is futile over the longer term. It could, however, be enough for them to delay the seemingly inevitable because the private providers will turn their attention to other opportunities if the attraction of Canada begins to fade. Universities that have already signed on the dotted line may find that, as happened in the US, pathways are as willing to walk away as they were to sign up in the first place.

Notes

2. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Divergent EU Enrollments Create Opportunity and Risk

My recent blog on the significant underlying shifts in recruitment from China and India provoked some interest in what might be happening in other markets. Generally speaking, the traditional international student markets are too small to move the needle in quite the same way as the big two. But the main European Union (EU) markets throw up some interesting trends.

It shows what is at stake for some UK universities, particularly financially, if they begin to lose students from countries where they have made substantial gains in recent years. This may be, at least in part, an explanation for some of the decisions being taken to discriminate in favour of EU students against other international students by allowing them to continue with home student fees. It will be interesting to see if there is a legal challenge to this activity or whether such arrangements move from transitional to permanent after 2021.

According to HESA data, Poland, Romania, Portugal and Spain have shown the largest growth in enrollments from EU countries over the past five years. Numbers from Germany, Ireland and Cyprus have been in decline over that period while Italy and France have seen growing numbers at a lower level. The January 2021 UCAS data shows a 40% year on year decrease in EU undergraduate applications for entry in Autumn 2021 which is largely driven by the reality of most universities charging them international fees.

TABLE 1: Total Enrollments – Largest Growth Countries

Source: HESA

But as Table 2 shows the overall numbers do not reflect the pattern of growth from each country with Spain, while remaining the top overall sender of the four, seeing its year-on-year growth rate decline for each of the past four years. Poland has also seen its growth slowing each year during the same period. Portugal has grown most strongly for the past three years and Romania has had robust growth for the past two reported cycles.

TABLE 2: Year on Year Increase in Enrollments – Largest Growth Countries

Source: HESA

The most interesting thing is where the growth has occurred. Total UK enrollments from Romania grew by 2025 students between 2017/18 and 2019/20 with 76% of the increase going to the universities of Bedfordshire and Suffolk. It is worth noting that in both universities the overwhelming majority of enrolled Romanian students are full-time, undergraduates which brings significant benefits in terms of stability and income.

Over the five years Bedfordshire’s enrollment of home students has declined by 600 while EU numbers have increased by 1330. European enrollments have meant that the university’s tuition fee income from combined home and EU students rose by £20m (27%) between 2018 and 2020. It is a major achievement for a university ranked 123^rd of 130 by the Complete University Guide in 2021.

TABLE 3 – Enrollments from Romania – UK Total and Top Two Universities

Source: HESA

A similar but less extreme situation occurs with enrollments from Portugal where Coventry and Anglia Ruskin have taken 35% of additional enrollments in the past two years.

TABLE 4 – Enrollments from Portugal – UK Total and Top Two Universities

Source: HESA

Enrollments from Poland, where total growth has been declining for each of the past four reported cycles shows a less distinct pattern. Taken over five years, Coventry and De Montfort have grown their Polish contingent more rapidly than any other universities. Their combined share of the growth both over the full period and in the last two years is around 23%.

TABLE 5 – Enrollments from Poland – UK Total and Top Two Universities

Source: HESA

Enrollments from Spain appear to be much more evenly distributed with well-ranked universities being to the fore but notable exceptions are Anglia Ruskin and University College Birmingham over the five-year period. No university in the UK has lost more than 50 students in their enrolled numbers of Spanish students in that time despite the slowing growth.

TABLE 6 – Growth in Enrollments from Spain – Top Ten Universities

	Enrollment 2019/20	Increase 2015/16 to 2019/20
Anglia Ruskin	240	190
Warwick	285	165
Edinburgh	360	150
Sussex	200	130
Manchester	325	125
University College Birmingham	140	110
King’s College London	340	110
UCL	375	110
Imperial	420	105
Lancaster	225	105

Source: HESA

The impact of growth from European Union countries may well be a driver of decisions to continue to offer favourable terms to EU students over other international students in 2021. However, it seems short-sighted and even counter-productive financially to offer blanket discounts if the main sending markets are limited to one or two countries. Over the longer term it seems inevitable that less economically advantaged areas of Europe will continue to see advantageous tuition fee discounts if UK universities want to maintain enrollments.

Another factor that may be worthy of consideration is that changes to post-work study visas may prove attractive to some European Union students even after Brexit. Portugal and Romania remain below the European average in terms of GDP while Poland and Spain are above it and the opportunity to find work in the UK may continue to support growth. But we may also have to place that potential against rising unemployment for 16-24 year old’s in the UK (up to 14.3% in February 2021 compared to 11.3% in February 2020) and the economic uncertainties post-Brexit and post-pandemic in summer of 2021.

It seems likely that the story of recruitment from the European Union has several more cycles to play out. With rising numbers of 18-year-olds in the UK the political nuances of allowing EU students to take places at the same fee as home students while not expanding provision for home students may also bring rising tensions. There are no easy choices here.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

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