GOOD NEWS – FOR SOME – IN UK INTERNATIONAL ENROLMENT 2017/18

The latest HESA release showing enrolments in UK institutions for 2017/18 show a welcome increase in international enrolments.  Digging under the surface suggests that the trends of the past five years are getting reinforced.  The big brands are doing well and there are a couple of well organised outliers.

Table 6 of the HESA data allows us to look at total enrolments by individual institution which gives a good sense of who is able to replace students leaving the university with new enrolments as competition increases.  Looking at the total enrolments also gives a better sense of what might be happening to tuition revenue.  The table shows that total international enrolments have gone up by 3.8% from 307,540 to 319,340 – that’s 11,800 students.

Ten institutions absorbed 7,320 additional students with the Russell Group universities taking eight of the ten places. In terms of ‘branding’ the 24 Russell Group universities added 10,230 students overall.  De Montfort continues its remarkable performance in international recruitment and that’s great credit to the focus and discipline of the management team. 

The performance of the University of the Arts is also very strong.  Looking at the Annual Report the university is showing a 19.8% increase in international fee income for the year in question – from £86m to £103m.  It’s a strong and differentiated higher education brand in one of the world’s most culturally vibrant cities and looks to be leveraging those benefits

Table 1 – Top Ten Universities for Increases In Total International Enrolments (Non-EU) 2017/18

This lop-sided distribution of growth inevitably means that some universities did less well.  Those showing the largest losses may all have strategic reasons for reducing international numbers but that seems the least likely explanation.  The universities Sheffield Hallam, Hull, Sunderland and Greenwich were all identified as being in long-term decline in international enrolments in my blog Winning And Losing In Global Recruitment back in April 2018.

Table 2 – Top Ten Universities for Decreases In Total International Enrolments (Non-EU) 2017/18

While international enrolments reflect global competitiveness they should be seen in the context of wider recruitment issues in the sector.  Lower ranked universities are already being squeezed by the bigger and better placed universities when it comes to recruiting home-students.  It’s a painful double-whammy for some institutions as they face into the Augar Review and the Government’s thinking on post-school education.

Universities: ‘A Common Treasury’ For The Knowledge Economy

For several decades UK higher education has been a battleground for short-term thinking, abdication of responsibility and political point scoring.  But Phil Baty of the THE recently that the UK HE sector has been the subject of an unusually intense barrage of bad headlines.  This is often part of the softening up process before a government intervenes with its latest ideologically driven initiatives.

The ‘independent’ trigger may be the Augar Review which is part of the government’s current review of post-18 education.  The Review themes of choice, value for money, access and skills provision offer cover for significant intervention in the sector.  There are many areas where universities do each of these things well but the very notion of autonomous, self-governing institution does not give it an easy time in assembling a coherent, sector-wide response.

More worryingly, the review’s focus on ‘wage returns’ picks a battleground where universities have probably relied too long on distorted ‘average earnings of graduates’ to defend themselves.  Alongside attacks on pay levels of Vice-Chancellors, unconditional admissions and grade inflation, the sector is painted as being self-serving, complacent and out of touch with its student customers or employers’ needs.  It is painful to watch at a moment when the UK needs to defend its reputation for quality higher education against global competition rather than have a firing squad in an inward-facing circle.

In thinking about the future of the sector I was reminded of the ideas of Gerrard Winstanley, the ideological driver of the True Levellers (commonly known as the Diggers) in the late 1640s who saw the land as a ‘common treasury for all’.  Their attempt to implement his ideas of a Utopian society based on common ownership of the land and shared purpose in meeting the needs of all was suppressed by the government of the day.  But in a global knowledge economy it seems to me that universities have a strong claim to be today’s ‘common treasury for all’.

Taking this as my starting point I offer my own version of steps that might help build a better integrated and more stable higher education sector:

1.           An Independent ‘Bank Of Education’ To Oversee Quality, Relevance and Cost

Independent central banks emerged in many developed countries because the economy is too important to place all the levers in the hands of transient governments.  The same is true of education but the sector is also too important to have the rights and needs of students as the only consideration.  The Bank of England’s mission is ‘Promoting the good of the people of the United Kingdom by maintaining monetary and financial stability’ and that is the breadth required by a ‘bank of education’ freed from political interference.            

2.           If One Pays Then Everyone Should Pay

I have always believed that education is a common good and should be free.  If that cannot be the case then it seems illogical to have arbitrary cut off points to begin repaying student loans.  Every graduate should begin, on a sliding scale, to repay their student loan from the moment they begin earning a salary.  It would mean every graduate can say they are giving back – even if it is only pennies – in line with the benefit they receive.  Every graduate gets treated the same with a straight deduction from earned income without external contributions or the ability to pay the debt early. 

3.           The Beneficiaries Of An Educated Workforce Should Pay More And Get Involved

The data on pay suggests that graduates do not always get premium ‘wage returns’ but in principle employers should always benefit from a better educated workforce and the burden of funding should reflect that.  Several writers have noted that the model provided by the Apprenticeship Levy has potential for higher education and the notion of hypothecated funding seems attractive.  But a slogan from the 1700s, no taxation without representation, is a good reminder that employers should also have a right, indeed should be obliged, to support and guide university activities.

4.           A Strategy For UK Education As A Major Economic Asset

Governments around the world, particularly in recent years China, Canada and Australia, have demonstrated that a joined-up approach to higher education can be of significant economic benefit.  Even without UK government help, well-ranked institutions have shown that at both an international and country level that they can monopolise declining or static pools of potential students.  Whether the future is in building global super-brands or allowing weak players to fail a coherent, data-led and output driven, game plan for UK higher education, is important.

5.           Consider Undergraduate Study As A First Job

Young people have lots of reasons for going to university straight from school but it is difficult to understand why their experience should be seen as so removed from those who go straight to employment.  Both have to be disciplined, have to learn, want to enjoy their experience and are looking for a grounding that will allow them to progress.  As traditional undergraduate teaching is altered by blended learning, bite-sized credentials, online delivery, compressed time periods and 24/7 availability there is a moment to see work and study as part of a continuum.  I heard recently that learning ‘is a seventy year job’ – it’s a good way to think about education.     

 6.          Stress Tests and Plans For University Closures

There has been a lot of posturing around the potential for universities to fail but precious little sign that anybody has a plan for the eventuality or a way of understanding the risk level.  There should be absolute clarity around the responsibilities for understanding the potential for failure, managing/reviving a declining university and the way in which its closure or repurposing might be led.  In terms of the ‘common treasury’ there is an associated need to consider the broader interests of the sector and national/local economy by managing unfettered growth from universities unfairly advantaged by brand and financial muscle.

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD IN CHRISTMAS PRESENT (AND A BIT OF PAST)

Being in a city where the sun hardly ever sleeps makes Christmas a physical and mental challenge.  No icy streets to avoid slipping on, no blanket of sodden, fallen leaves to trudge through and none of the relentless street corner carolling from chuggers and latchkey kids on the make.  Just the sunshine, clear blue skies and refined, acoustic covers of Christmas hits in local gift shops.

Many of the traditions in the run up to Christmas are missing.  This includes the yearly favourite, inspired by betting company PR departments, around the growing chances of a white Christmas.  For a few weeks weather forecasters play along with reasonable degrees of humour before offering us reassurance that no snowflakes will fall on the big day.

There’s good news for betting people in that the old test used to be a snowflake falling on the Met Office building in London.  But the developing sophistication of the bookies means that some of them offer different odds for different parts of the country.  Paddy Power makes Aberdeen this year’s favourite – which may be the first time since Alex Ferguson’s tenure that they have been favourites for anything.

There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent in the US.  Some parts of the country seem to be fatalistically awaiting or have had several weeks thigh-deep snowdrifts, while others are blithely deciding which pair of shorts to wear.  It’s another reminder that the UK could fit, in terms of land mass, into each of the ten largest states in the US.

The other sign of changing times is the diminishing need to leave the house to shop.  On too many occasion my Christmas Eve was spent dashing around an overheated department store buying overly expensive gifts. The cost was usually proportionate to my desperation and sense of guilt about lack of planning.

The efficiency of online retailing has made the last minute dash a thing of the past. I cannot be alone in my astonishment that orders seem to arrive almost before they are made.  Perhaps the next step is that Alexa simply chooses for you what gifts are to be purchased without you even having to think about it.

My problem with that would be that Alexa has a habit of misunderstanding me.  I think it’s an accent thing and I have lost many games of Jeopardy or Pop Quiz due to answers being rejected because I have not  develop a trans-Atlantic twang.  The specific failing is that years of reminding the children ‘there’s a ‘t’ in that word’ means I don’t geddit that I should say paddio rather than patio.

Music has also become a bone of contention with the sunshine creating a slightly perverse demand amongst locals for full on Christmas cheer.  My post-ironical play-list containing the more profound but less joyful classics, ‘Christmas in February’ and ‘Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis’, has been roundly rejected.  There is a real tension between attitudes in a sunny, warm climate and those bred in the harsh reality of an English winter.

My belief in gritty realism is that I’ve always taken the view that the celebration is grounded in very difficult circumstances.  It’s about an impoverished family, bullied by a venal government, taking temporary shelter in conditions suitable only for cattle.  It seems well established that social services failed them terribly and that cutbacks to the emergency services meant they couldn’t get there in time for the birth.

In a classic Government cover up the Government of the day decided to move the news cycle on by launching a campaign to persecute infant boys.  Twitter resistance was launched under #notustoo but nobody was ever successfully prosecuted.  Over time all of the events were glossed over or denied and secret payments were made to ensure the silence of those involved.

Editor’s Note: None of the above should be taken to reflect any events or people past or present. It’s inconceivable that any of these things could happen in a well-ordered democracy where the rule of law prevails.

Looking back I was reminded that in the early 1990s I spent all night in the run-up to one Christmas in the ASDA Clapham store.  We had managed to take advantage of the changes in UK legislation to become the first major store to be open for 24-hours.  It seems so common nowadays that it feels like a different world to remember that all big stores used to shut by 10pm.

Christmas in the aisles was punctuated by the PR specials we had imported to enliven proceedings.  The man on the bed of nails certainly made an incongruous addition to the non-food aisles as was the sight of the company’s CEO carrying out bag-packing duties at 3am in the morning.  The next day’s coverage was spectacular and the face of late-night shopping in the UK was changed forever.

This will also my second year without a traditional works Christmas party.  High kicking to ‘New York New York’ has happened, inappropriate behaviour that has brewed all year between colleagues has occurred, and the trousers of a board director have fallen down. A lot of alcohol has been taken and hangover breakfasts consumed.

The partner of a work-mate has phoned at 4am to say the boyfriend isn’t home and that Find Friends is locating his phone in the middle of Albert Dock.  People have cried, shouted, argued and cried some more.  There has been a lot of laughter and high jinks that have made Christmas Day feel like the last mile in a marathon of celebration.   

No such dramas this year.  The tree is up and decorated, the dogs have their Christmas sweaters and there will be beef and Yorkshire puddings as we pull the crackers for lunch on the 25th.  And I will have the best excuse to continue my personal tradition of never watching the Queen’s (God Bless Her) speech.

Thanks to all those who have read any of my musings during 2018. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a joyous New Year.  All the best for 2019.

From Deal to Delivery With Pathways

After the champagne has been drunk and lawyers have left the building the respective teams of the pathway provider and the university face ‘operationalising’ the arrangement.  57% of College and University Admissions Directors believe ‘pathways programs will become more important to US higher education in the current environment’ (IHE/Gallup Survey, 2018) so it’s a good moment to consider how that can work.  Here are a few thoughts and things to consider based on experience from both sides of the fence.   

Most deals are driven by senior management who want to meet strategic needs including more students, revenue and diversity.  Work groups, steering boards and workshop sessions are often held in the context of political will from the top down to get a deal done.  But once they believe the international recruitment issue is resolved the top team moves on to other priorities.

The failure of many pathways to deliver the expected results can be traced back to this moment because there is no perfect preparation for the day to day engagement between two culturally different organisations.  Caution, disorientation and lack of empathy quickly become frustration, blame and mistrust.  As Mike Tyson memorably put it, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”.

Personal relationships between key decisionmakers can help and one example will serve. One pathway provider wanted to take over all communication with agents, a plan that was being resisted wholeheartedly within the university.  It became a symbol of resistance in the international office but a sign of naivety and bloody mindedness by the provider. 

Over a couple of Long Island Iced Teas in a Malaysian bar the universities head of international recruitment explained the insecurities, egos and justifications to the provider’s Global Sales Director.  After a pause he simply said, “OK.  You carry on communicating directly.  As long as you promise that we can review in six months and if it isn’t working we try my way.”

It allowed the head of international a ‘victory’ but also the chance to give a clear warning to the internal team that they had to deliver.  Having conceded without rancour the provider was able to leverage goodwill on other issues. A year or so later both the main protagonists agreed that it was never that important an issue in the first place.

But personal relationships are the result of hard work, respect, regular engagement and transparency.  There will always be decisions to make, changes to consider and strong views to manage. Below are a few things that will almost certainly come up in the first year or so and some possible responses.  

  • Entry requirements will need reconsidering.  Most pathway providers will, at some point, say that recruitment or progression is being hindered by unrealistic academic standards.  Every university with a few years of successful recruitment will want to raise grades and then gets surprised when applications drop off. 

Be realistic and conduct ongoing research into what is happening in the market – not just in your country but around the world. Too many universities fail to fully understand international equivalencies or the difference between school systems in other countries.

  • Cost of acquisition is going up and universities should invest. Competition is tough and commission deals are a complex range of standard, special, emergency and wrapped in deals for marketing, trips and exhibition slots.  The suspicion is always that higher costs are simply an excuse to cover poor recruitment planning.

Understand the providers commercial plan for engaging with agents and why they believe it works for your university.  Then keep asking how it is going and what evidence exists – term sheets are relatively easy to get from friendly agents.  Consider the lifetime value of the student to the university and work with the provider to consider that return holistically. 

  • Academics should travel to support recruitment.  Some academics have been global road warriors with great success and some senior management teams spend weeks on the road at key times.  Some try never to leave the university campus because it interferes with their research or they don’t have budget.    

In the battle for students an academic title can make a real difference and overtime the winners will have academics who travel regularly.  Get used to it and build an internal team that is willing to trot the globe and work hard to recruit. Also, make sure there is a budget to support international travel – time in country is never wasted.

  • Admissions times are rarely fast enough.  This usually become a running sore and it needs to be dealt with quickly. Standards should be agreed before the deal is signed but even then the provider will want to move the goalposts.     

Admissions processes are part of the recruitment arms race and sometimes responses are needed very quickly to optimise enrollments.  Work with the provider to make the internal investment case for improved systems, people and processes.  Start from the point that admissions is a bridge not a gate – the objective should be to secure every student who has a reasonable chance of completing their academic programme. 

  • Targets will be missed.  In the heat of deal making the pressure to close is intense and people, on both sides, sometimes get greedy and fearful in equal degree. Too many partnerships then work under a fog of misunderstanding and misinformation about target, stretch target, baseline, quotas etc.  Even worse can be a lack of realism and prompt feedback about changing market conditions.

Start by presuming that first-year recruitment may be well below target (and that it is not necessarily the providers fault).  Make sure university budgets, assuming progressing students, have a reasonable buffer.  Do the work to review second year and third year targets as early as possible in the light of experience.  Understand what can and will change to make ensuing years better.   

  • Universities expect the provider to do it all.  It can seem reasonable to hand the controls to the ‘experts’ and sit back to watch the students roll in.  And there is always a get-out clause or a contractual stick to beat them with if targets are missed.

That is not partnership and universities should want to be involved in anything that involves their reputation.  It’s not just about money because students and staff have a stake in the outcomes.  University staff know their institution better than any external provider ever will – the more generous and helpful they can be the better for everyone.  And providers need to socialise new thinking carefully rather than launching a new plan that is seen as counter-cultural.

  • Senior people and champions will leave.  A partnership deal is often partly the result of a meeting of minds and ambitions.  But it is rare for the original movers and shakers to be as regularly involved after three years.  Incomers will have different understandings and motivations and the glow of ‘mutual benefit’ can be tarnished by competing interests.

Providers need to be alert to changing University personnel and work hard at relationships– not just at senior level but by embedding themselves at several levels.  Taking time to understand new thinking while establishing a common knowledge of history pays off.  Universities need to make sure they are allowing good access and taking time to keep their internal audiences informed.

This list is not intended to be exhaustive and there is plenty more that could be said about building long-term, productive partnerships in student recruitment.  Neither partner should expect to have it all their own way but the search for optimal outcomes should be ceaseless.  Perhaps the best advice is to have ‘the qualities of an old political fighter’ as Boris Yeltsin once ascribed to a colleague – ”patience and flexibility, always searching for intelligent compromise.  

2018 Surge in UK Student Record of Prior Acceptance

This may be one for aficionados of the nuances of UK Higher Education admissions trends.  A lot of attention has been paid to the rapid growth of unconditional offers as a way of inducing undergraduate students to go firm with a university.  But there seems to have been no comment on last year’s near 38% rise in Record of Prior Acceptance (RPA) applications registered by UK students.

For the uninitiated the RPA allows a student and university to deal directly to make/accept an offer rather than going through the UCAS system.  To ensure that the UCAS reporting captures all students universities then report the RPA students to UCAS.  Once the student completes the RPA form they are not able to make any other applications.  

After a period of relative stability the number of RPAs registered increased by 7870 year on year for UK students.  This was in a cycle where the number of UK applicants overall fell.  Both Other-EU and International students using RPAs increased – the former by 43.6% – but from a lower base.  

It seems plausible that the driver is that students have decided to start using RPAs more often during the clearing process.  But it seems a stretch to believe that they know about this route for applications before engaging directly with a university.  For the university it allows them to help the student while reducing the chance of that individual shopping around for options.

In the scheme of things, the numbers involved are still relatively small.  Just over 6% of the total number of students used the RPA route in 2018.  But that’s up from 3.9% in 2014 and just 4.8% in 2017.  As the demographics make UK students increasingly sought after it’s another dynamic to consider.

 

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD AND THE MUSIC OF THE 1970s

The arrival of my vinyl records in San Diego after several years in storage reminded me that the 1970s has a good claim to be the most dynamic, diverse and distinctive periods in music history.  It’s difficult to explain to Americans what the UK was like in the era of the three-day week, mass industrial pickets, two elections in a year and a bail out from the IMF. For teenagers it was a time of entertainment poverty with just three TV channels, pocket money running to one single a fortnight and the Odeon cinema chain offering lumpy seats and tacky floors.

The great British music wave of the 1960s had sold out with the Beatles and the Stones leading the pursuit of the mighty dollar, then Led Zeppelin and the Who following in hot pursuit.  Eric Clapton, once the blues guitar ‘God’ of Islington graffiti legend, was pursuing heroin, alcohol and Patti Boyd.  And the dubious home-grown ‘folk rock’ was as derivative and limp as any movement spearheaded by a band called Fairport Convention could be.

The US musical response to Vietnam and Watergate was Album Oriented Rock (AOR), with noted DJ “Kid Leo” Travagliante confirming in 1975, ‘the emphasis is shifting back to entertainment instead of being ‘relevant”. But the intersection of social circumstances, lack of commercial radio and the need to re-find a musical identity made the UK more fertile territory for invention.  Gender identity, feminism, anti-racism and social justice became the battlegrounds with music providing the soundtrack.

In the early 1970s ‘glam rock’ may have looked like an effort to put tinsel on the increasingly sputtering and stalling UK economy.  But its glimpse of gender fluidity and theatrics opened a door which could never be closed.  The Sweet, Slade, Marc Bolan didn’t make it across the Atlantic but without them there might have been no global behemoths like Bowie, Queen or Elton John.

With a starting output of seven albums David Bowie bestrode the decade like a colussus.  He started 1971 wearing a dress on the Marlene Dietrich influenced cover of Hunky Dory, occupied, the bodies of Ziggy Stardust and Alladin Sane, then became the Thin White Duke.  And he still had time to complete his Berlin trilogy and offer us Sound and Vision, Heroes and Boys Keep Swinging.

Bowie voguing for the cover of Hunky Dory 

Queen was formed in 1970 with their first top ten single Seven Seas of Rye hitting the top ten in 1974. Surely, one of the greatest places in music history must have been Montreux in 1981 as Bowie and Mercury collaborated and competed to produce Under Pressure.  Bowie’s judgement, and status as the coolest person on the planet, was re-confirmed when Coldplay sent him their best effort and suggested collaboration – he declined with the line ‘it’s not a very good song, is it’.

The 1970s was the musical decade where women moved decisively, both individually and collectively, from lead singers to leaders of the gang.  Fictional, all-female rock band, The Carrie Nations, had to be created for the 1970 film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) and Suzie Quatro, despite her long-term garage band pedigree, was an oddity at the start of the decade. But by 1979 Patti Smith, Siouxsie Sue and Chrissie Hynde reflected the changed circumstances  

And in terms of feminist anthems and icons it is hard to get beyond Poly Styrene of X-Ray Specs.  Mixed race (Somali and Scottish), dental-braces and bipolar might have seemed unpromising material when she started her own punk band at the age of 18.  But Oh Bondage Up Yours was a primal response to the challenge that ‘some people think that little girls should be seen and not heard’. 

Poly Styrene was given the space to perform by the musical equivalent of Martin Luther hammering his 95 theses to the castle door in Wittenberg.  Punk was born in 1976, a year when inflation hit 24%, Britain went cap in hand for a bail out from the International Monetary Fund, and youth unemployment was rampant.  The musical opposition was the nurdling, self-indulgent prog-rock of ELP, Yes, Genesis and Jethro Tull and the attitude was reminiscent of Marlon Brando’s response, in the Wild Ones (1953) to the question “What are you rebelling against?” – “whadda you got?”.

Punk may have borrowed from the riffs and attitudes of the Ramones, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop but, perhaps because the UK is a small island, its musical and social influence was electrifying.  It defined the schism between the baby boomers and Generation-X, injected energy into a moribund music industry and opened the door for individuality.  It’s inclusivity included the ska revival, reggae’s rise and opened the door for everybody to sing Glad to Be Gay in pubs, on marches and at parties. 

But everything that has ever been written about punk can be ignored.  Just find an old-fashionedrecord player, turn it to maximum volume and play Pretty Vacant, followed by White Riot and Oh Bondage Up Yours.  Look at contemporary pictures of skinheads, right wing thugs and teddy boys trying to beat the crap out of bondage-trousered, spike haired, spotty kids.

That is the sound and vision of the new order replacing the old sensibilities.  It’s also the look ofyoung people standing up against racism and social injustice while being scorned by their Government and frowned on by their parents.  The disempowerment of what had become known as the blank generation was converted into a belief that chutzpah and energywere enough to make a difference.

Even as I spin the vinyl I realise that music alone never makes a difference and that youth movements are rapidly appropriated bycorporate interests.  But for a brief period the youth of the UK took control, in a way that encouraged and celebrated diversity, valued integrity and effort above virtuosity, and changed the direction of travel.  Order was eventually restored but only after new icons and values had crept through the gaps.

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD GOES BACK TO BLIGHTY

Visiting England after more than a year away is like putting shoes on after a year in flip-flops. In fact it really did mean putting on proper, all encasing shoes after months of fearlessly baring my toes to the world. I guess it’s how a four-year old feels when they are fitted with their first pair of school shoes.

I’d expected to be a somewhat changed person on my return but as the wonderful Rupert Brooke wrote, ‘If I should die, think only this of me That there’s some corner of a foreign field, that is forever England’. However far you stray from your beginnings some things are too deeply embedded to change. And at this time of year his words carry an even greater poignancy.

Travelling near Remembrance Sunday, I found myself buying a poppy a day – they seem to break with startling regularity – and being sorry to miss being in England to commemorate the 100th year of the Armistice. The two World Wars are written large in the heart of every child who grew up with parents in the Forces and I have stood quietly and respectfully on many sombre early November Sunday mornings. With age I have stood with increasing thanks – it remains the greatest gift and good fortune to have grown up in a period of relative peace and economic stability.

I have always been able to survive the first verse and refrain of the Last Post but there is something that happens after that which is too heart-breaking to endure. And Bunyan’s magnificent verse is a memorial to everyone I have known and loved – ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them. Permission to lose control of stiff upper lip, sir.

The trip was six whirlwind days with three cities, five hotels and multiple modes of travel. My arrival at Heathrow was marked by a cool, overcast English day – it was absolutely perfect. Keats’ ‘seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness’ are missing from California but the English late autumn was a reminder that seasons are built into my blood.

Needless to say the trains were terrible. How it is possible to take longer and to have more changes to get from Liverpool Street to Norwich than to go via Cambridge is a warping of the time-space continuum. Hawkwind’s long neglected song ‘Quark, Strangeness and Charm’ gets close to the experience with the line ‘All that, doesn’t not anti-matter now, we’ve found ourselves a black hole out in space.’

My own theory is that the London to Norwich line is part of a black-arts operation by CERN where the stranger particles from the Large Hadron Collider are diverted for investigation. Passengers are used as substitutes for Schrodinger’s Cat and so whether they existence or are comfortable is unknown (and certainly not cared about). Scientists run the railways as a cosmic experiment and while Einstein wanted trains travelling at the speed of light he is losing out to Lord Kelvin’s views that they should terminate like the heat death of the universe.

To make matters worse Planck’s Constant has been replaced by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to build the timetable. Higg’s Bosun is a grumpy ex-naval man who was the lucky mascot of the Irish Rover, the Flying Dutchman and the Titanic before deciding that he preferred to drive a train. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg summed it up when he used quantum mechanics as a metaphor for the railway system in saying, “There is now, in my opinion, no entirely satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics.”

Enough about the trains though because it is the people that make the difference. Some very amusing evenings of drinking and snooker and late-night burgers and Indian meals. And most of all conversations that would only make half-sense to an outsider because they are framed in the context of shared experiences, disagreements and understanding of each other’s values and views. It was great fun and I was humbled that so many people made an effort to meet up during their busy lives.

I also caught up with my older sister for the first time in eight years. It’s a good reminder that when your parents are no longer around there is usually nobody but family who remembers your earliest years. In our case it was a peripatetic first ten years full of different schools, a father disappearing to trouble spots at short notice and a reliance on a very small family unit.

It was a delight to be able to talk about our family, about the misunderstandings we have had with each other and reflect upon all the ways in which life might have been different. But as importantly to share the good things that happened in the period when connections were lost. People say that you can never make up for lost time but we had a pretty good go at it.

I’ve noticed that throughout this blog I have talked about England and when asked that is where I say I am from. For me the United Kingdom has always been a ‘community’ where the squabbles of Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England have been largely suborned to a belief that there is strength in unity. Respecting and believing in each other’s right to a national identity within that house is as important as respecting and regarding a person’s individuality.

In that context the potential for a botched exit from the European Union to drive an irreversible wedge and create four countries is depressing. It would be a strange future if the territorial certainties, secure since the effective partition of the Republic of Ireland with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, were to change. But I guess that previous generations probably felt the same as the Empire disappeared in a flurry of declarations of independence.

It confirms that change is the only constant of the human condition and Remembrance Sunday was a timely reminder that there is much to be grateful for. After a week back in San Diego I particularly realise that I am fortunate to have roots and friends on both sides of the Atlantic. It is certainly something to think about as Thanksgiving approaches.

Open Doors and Outliers – Looking For Rubies in a Mountain of Rocks

Open Doors data, published by the Institute of International Education (IIE) on 13 November, confirms the much-anticipated decline in international student enrollments in the US. But delving into the detail demonstrates that there are also outliers with significant growth in international students year on year. It is always interesting to dig down to see who is bucking the trend – but more importantly how they are doing it.

At the headline level there is unmitigated gloom with the total number of enrolled international students in 2017/18 down by 11,797 (1.3%) on the prior year. There are also signs of a fractured pipeline for Fall 2018 with non-degree student starters down 9.7% year on year (4,868 students) and down 23.8% (14,135 students) from the 2014/15 peak. Since a 2015/16 high-point undergraduate and postgraduate new-enrollments are down by 9% (10,723) and 6.8% (8,556) respectively.

Table 1 – New International Student Enrollment in the US 2007-08 to 2016-17
Source: Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange. Retrieved from http://www.iie.org/opendoors

Against that background the state of Kentucky was eye-catching for two reasons. It posted a 26.9% increase in international students – an exceptional performance for a state that was, in 2016/17, 31st in overall popularity in terms of volume of students enrolled. Within the state Campbellsville University was the only one of the top five (by volume enrollments) to grow and became the leading recruiter with a year on year increase of nearly 2800 students.

Table 2 – Year on Year Change in Foreign Students in Kentucky (Source: Open Doors Fact Sheets 2017 and 2018)
IPEDS data shows that across all domestic and international, full and part-time enrollments Campbellsville grew by 96% year on year to Fall 2017. A time series shows that growth at the institution accelerated very significantly in the past year. Graduate part-time has been the primary engine of growth with graduate full-time and undergraduate part-time also contributing.

Table 3 – Campbellsville University Total Graduate and Undergraduate Enrollments 2014-2017
NB: 2017 data is listed as Provisional Release data by IPEDS

International student enrollments (as per non-resident aliens in IPEDS reporting) have been the driving force for the significant growth over the past year. Full-time international graduates grew by more than 600 year on year and part-time international graduates by over 1700.

Table 4 – Campbellsville Full and Part Time Graduate Enrollments
The graduate growth appears to be almost entirely driven by students from India. In 2016 Open Doors reported the proportion of students from China and India in Kentucky as being equal at 18.9% of the total. By 2017 students from India leapt to 43.1% of the total as China fell to 13.1%.

This is supported by the Quartz news website which published, in May 2018, an article reviewing the courses offered by Campbellsville and another Kentucky-based institution, the University of the Cumberlands . The article quotes Shanon Garrison, the vice president for enrollment services at the University of Campbellsville, as saying that “99% of the students in the course are native to India but live in and work for companies based in the US.” Most students are enrolled in the Masters of Science in Information Technology and Management (MSITM).  which, according to Quartz, is ‘designed to allow international students to work full-time jobs while enrolled.’.

The report suggests that students are required to attend the campus for three days of face-to-face classes at the beginning of each term and that the degree costs around $17,000. Flexibility, affordability and the opportunity to work appear to be key factors in the popularity of the course. It is a powerful combination which appears to have turbo-charged growth at Campbellsville.

International recruitment has always been a space where intelligent minds consider ways to develop creative programming that works productively within the legal, visa and competitive environment. Large institutions can often be relatively slow in adapting to new circumstances or may rely on their reputations to see them through the bad times. Innovation and boldness are usually the hallmarks of smaller, more nimble institutions and their successes are often worth considering.

The purpose of looking more closely at the University of Campbellsville is to illustrate possibilities and is not intended to advocate for or against the model. The Quartz article outlines some of the potential challenges and it is not unusual for innovation to appear in specific niches that are inaccessible or out of scope for other institutions. But at a difficult time for US international student recruitment it’s interesting to see opportunities that are still being discovered and exploited.

 

An Englishman Abroad In Cactus Alley

Tending your own patch of land is as much part of the English psyche as talking about the weather, queuing in an orderly fashion and having fifty ways of saying ‘sorry’. Ever since encountering the overgrown wilderness behind my first house I have been a keen gardener. Four distinct seasons provided the setting for a year of planning, tilling, planting and reaping.

The country’s love-affair with its gardens drove the song, English Country Garden, to number five the charts in 1962. It was based on an English-folk song, Country Gardens, which married the whimsy of Morris-dancing to the pagan, earth revering influence of the druids and spawned many parodies. It is from that background that I came to tend the semi-arid, almost season-less, badlands of San Diego.

Americans don’t really even have ‘gardens’ because they have yards. The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon “geard” (pronounced YAY-ard) and is a good reminder why prisons have yards while country houses have gardens. One word is Proto-Germanic with overtones of efficiency and sparseness while the other comes from the Gallo-Romance language of Picardy and Flanders.

In the new environment everything has to be placed and considered in the context of hours of sun or shade, lack of moisture and relative danger to humans and animals. Rocks, dirt and pebbles are home to relatively slow growing plants that have evolved to be as tough as their setting. It’s a harsh, alien, unforgiving and strangers need to beware.

I’d never been allergic to a plant until I tangled with the toxic sap of the Euphorbia tiruccalli, which goes by the common name of Fire Sticks. Waking up with a face that looked like I had gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson was an early sign that I’d always need to wear gloves in the garden. But that was only a precursor to my duel with the Cactaceae.

Euphorbia tiruccalli

It is no mistake that the family group name for the cactus has echoes of a Mediterranean-based crime family. They are tough, aggressive, impassive plants that never tell, never forgive and always take revenge. The biblical warning “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks” (Acts 9.5 and Acts 26:14 of the King James Version of the Bible) could have been written to remind us of the challenge they bring.

Engaging with a cactus and not taking appropriate precautions is like inviting Hannibal Lecter to dinner in a private room. One of you enjoys the potential of sharp objects to inflict pain and misery while the other will end up on the receiving end of a miserable evening. Even the slightest brush against one of these beasts can bring several dozen tiny shards of agony.

But through the allergic reactions and hours of picking cactus spines from my arms the year has seen a pleasing sense of order emerge. The reshaping of the garden has allowed for Cactus Alley and Succulent Corner to become landmarks while individual plants have been able to thrive after being moved to better locations. And I have learnt lessons in caution after indiscriminate digging cut through carefully buried irrigation lines which led the arid earth to resemble the Somme for several days.

Cactus Alley – Jeffe, Bobby, The Succulent with No Name and  Sneaky Pete

Because I am unfamiliar with the names of the plants many of them have emerged with personal nicknames. We have the barrel cactuses Billy, Bobby and Betsy as well as the handsome and rapidly growing Jeffe. Sneaky Pete is aptly named as the prickly pear has tiny, needle-sharp bristles that embed themselves with just a touch. Gomez is as sharp, squat and evil-looking as any bandit from a spaghetti western.

In the open ground Fellaini is the bargain bin asparagus fern with a habit to match the Manchester Uniter and Belgium footballer or his alter-ego from The Simpson’s, Sideshow Bob. Alongside him Spike, the yucca, has moved to luxuriant growth in full sun after being a weedy and ailing specimen in the shade. These are plants with individual characters that are forged by their resilience and robustness.

I’ve introduced some flowering plants but have learnt to paint pictures in the garden with the varying pinks, greys and subtle variegations which seem the natural palette of the desert. From similar climes we have Australian visitor ‘kangaroo paws’ (Anigozanthos), Asteriscus maritimus from the Mediterranean, and Didiereaceae from Madagascar. It is a global garden that is united by the challenging combination of glaring sun and water and soil poverty.

As a United Nations of plants it co-exists in a climate that is under increasing stress and facing enormous challenges from progressively worsening climate conditions. Disproportionate application of resources allows traditional Western plants to grow but plants used to living more frugally demand their rights and can thrive without pampering. It’s a little like the economic lessons of the real world.

After living with the land for a year I have begun to understand the raw materials. The variation of temperature, daylight and precipitation are more subtle than the English seasons. The growth patterns of the plants move to a rhythm which is less easy to understand but which can result in moments of extraordinary flowering and unexpected beauty.

While I have dabbled with herbs, tomatoes and peppers this year I am hankering after developing a vegetable patch. There is little more satisfying than pulling a broad bean or a new potato from the earth and eating it a few minutes later. But the planning involves thinking about ways of conserving even more water over the winter season to support this ambition.

It’s been a steep learning curve but whether semi-desert or temperate the garden offers similar lessons and insights. Patience and perseverance, the determination of living things to survive and the belief in planting today however uncertain the future might be. It is captured nicely by American author, journalist, activist Michael Pollan who writes, “The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. ” (The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals)

SEEING GREATNESS, RADICAL CANDOR AND GETTING PERSONAL

It was a good time of year to be introduced to ‘How I Got Into College’, an edition of This American Life from September 2013. It tells the tale of a student – Emir Kamenica – and how a stolen library book got him into his dream school. Emir is a Bosnian refugee who is now the Richard O. Ryan Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The narrator and interviewer is Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball (2003), The Big Short (2010) and The Undoing Project (2016). His introductory chapter in Liar’s Poker (1989) is among the most riveting piece of writing I have ever read. He is a marvellous teller of stories and this is no exception.

My interest was particularly taken by Emir’s memory of a single incident where a teacher took a personal interest in him. He tells how that moment changed his life and set him on the road to a doctorate from Harvard. The programme carries a surprise revelation that makes it a complex tale about belief, truth and memory.

When I read a quote attributed to Edmund Lee a few days later it seemed serendipitous. The end of the quote runs, ‘most of all surround yourself with those who see greatness within you even when you don’t see it yourself’. That does not mean people who show blind loyalty or supine agreement but those who care enough to challenge you and show you new ways of being.

The best leaders are able to see the ‘greatness’ within their colleagues. They recognise what people around them are capable of and have the personal courage and management skill to back their judgement. In doing this they usually give the individuals increased self-awareness and the confidence to more fully realise their potential.

Even in these self-revelatory days people are sometimes shy about telling the stories of how they were inspired, or which moments transformed their life. But these are tales worth recounting and sharing because they can help guide behaviour and are a good way of suggesting why looking for the potential in our friends and colleagues is a responsibility we should take seriously.

Without aspiring to compete with Emir’s extraordinary tale of struggle and achievement I recall my own pivotal moment at school with equal clarity (the irony of that statement will not be lost on those who have heard the programme). As a totally aimless and academically under-achieving 18-year-old I had decided to go to polytechnic to take a business studies course. In those pre-1992 days polytechnics in the UK were decidedly second-class to universities and my ‘choice’ was based upon having no better ideas for avoiding unemployment.

Shortly afterwards an unmistakeable New Zealand accent at full volume cut through the noise of several hundred children changing classes at my large comprehensive school in Essex. My English teacher had spotted me half-way down the stairs and had a point to make. ‘Alan Preece,’ she hollered. ‘You are not going to do business studies. You are going to be a journalist. See me later.’

Yvonne Cull, the English teacher, felt that young people needed to be treated like adults but required intervention, direction and unflinching honesty. Her classes were bracing sessions where the themes of power, manipulation, lust and love in Shakespeare were reinforced by making us interrogate our own teenage desires and passions. Lessons were often provocative and seldom comfortable, but she never stopped trying to help us understand that the stories were about the human condition and people just like us.

When she confronted me with the possibility of becoming a journalist she did not spare my blushes. She was candid about the need to overcome my lack of application, my mistaken belief that native wit was a substitute for research, and my tendency to continue defending positions long after they had been overrun by better arguments.  But she filled me with a belief, based on her personal opinions, that I had the skills to do a job which involved enquiry, balancing opinions, and writing.

Mrs Cull went even further. She had researched the options and found a suitable course run by the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ). She made me sit in her home one evening to complete the application, she posted it, wrote a letter of recommendation and prepared me for the interview. Having secured a place, I failed my A-levels, but she pushed me to re-take them so I could join the course a year later.

Nowadays, I might consider this moment in my history as an example of radical candor – ‘the ability to challenge directly and show you care personally at the same time’. Kim Scott’s 2017 book on the subject is a good read and captures the subject well. As well as developing the theory it recounts a terrific example involving Sheryl Sandberg who was her boss at Google.

I didn’t go on to be the investigative journalist that Mrs Cull thought I could become. Armed with my NCTJ course award I secured a place in the press office of Tesco which became the stepping stone to public relations, marketing and eventually board level roles as COO and CEO. Throughout those years I was armed with the knowledge that, despite their own busy life, someone had thought well enough of me to share their belief in my potential.

There have, of course, been other ‘sliding door’ moments in my career when senior colleagues have made a firm intervention to show me a different way of being. Most of these occasions have been intensely personal, very direct and driven by their belief that I could do better and be more. For those leaders there was a role for training courses, theories and structure but there were also times when vivid, focused, personal engagement was their way of making a difference.