FRESH HOPE OR ZOMBIE DAWN AS CLEARING FOG LIFTS?

Day 28 sounds like a bid for the latest in the zombie movie franchise but its the UCAS yearly data-release marking four weeks from A-level results day. For some UK universities the former might feel appropriate because the clearing season is nearly over and visa deadlines are coming. It’s not long before all that is left is the counting of enrolments.

This year Day 28 was 13 September with the data published a week later. These numbers give the best indication of how far the UK has come in enrolling new undergraduates for the 2018/19 academic year.  It’s a mixed bag.

The good news that the number of ‘placed’ international students (non-EU) is up 4% to 38,330 – that’s 1,500 more than last year. It’s a solid gain although slightly disappointing after double-digit applicant growth in the early part of the cycle. It looks anaemic against the growth in Canada and Australia but is likely to be better than the US.

At a subject level the biggest winners are Business and Administrative Studies (+350), Computer Sciences (+310) and Biological Sciences (+240). However, the number of Engineering students is down by 230 and at its lowest level since 2012. The five-year growth in Technologies has also been reversed with a loss of 130 students taking it to its lowest ever total.

With 6,040 students international students still holding offers the eventual enrolment outcome remains uncertain. In 2015 the number holding offers on Day 28 was 6,380 but in the past two years had fallen to 1,760 (2016) and 1,610 (2017). It is difficult to understand what is driving this fluctuation and there may still be time for a late windfall.  But the majority may just be phantoms preying on the minds of hard-pressed recruitment teams.

More good news is that EU-students ‘placed’ are also up by 2% to 30,350. This is still slightly below the number for 2016 but is some cause for encouragement. A number of universities, including De Montfort who opened an office in Portugal earlier in the year, are enhancing their physical presence in Europe. It will be interesting to see how these developments plays out with Brexit looming.

The bad news is that the total number of placed students after 28 days – counting all domiciles – is down by 10,000. At a standard UK home student fee rate that’s £277m of fee revenue over a three-year degree. Universities know that the home-student demographic dip will continue for a few years, which is one reason those that can have been building their student base. It seems to be one factor behind the growth in unconditional offers from well-ranked universities.

Table 1 – Total of All Placed Undergraduate Students 28 days After A-Level Results
Of course, undergraduate enrolments are not the only source of student income for universities and postgraduates make up the bulk of international enrolments.  But it is also difficult to see why the postgraduate enrolment picture would be much of an improvement on that for undergraduates.  And an enrolled undergraduate gives a near guarantee of three years income compared to the yearly challenge of recruiting more one year taught Masters students.

Against this background it was interesting to read Being set up to fail? The battle to save the UK’s Universities from speculative finance. The article, from May 2018, notes that ‘some £3bn has been borrowed by UK universities since 2016, over half of this in the form of private placements.’ Some of that borrowing may be based on predictions of student enrolments that look increasingly unsustainable.

This echoes WonkHE’s November 2016 report, Getting worse: HEFCE’s bleak prognosis for university finances. One recruitment related line from HEFCE was “Our financial modelling shows that removal of projected growth in overseas fee income over the next three years (2016-17 to 2018-19) would all but wipe out sector surpluses by 2018-19, with projected surpluses falling from £1,081 million (3.4 per cent of total income) to £56 million (just 0.2 per cent of total income).”

It is to be hoped that the early warning signs from HEFCE were heeded and that the long-term financial health of individual universities has been considered more carefully over ensuing years. My blog Getting To Grips With Pathways – A Thorny Subject? showed the decline in some university incomes that has already become evident as international enrolments fall. The UK demographics will not improve for several years and the battle for international students will not get any easier.

GLOBAL LEAGUE TABLES OFFER MIXED NEWS FOR THE US AND PATHWAY PROVIDERS

Credible and well publicised global comparative university rankings are one factor changing the face of international recruitment. Students and their advisers can compare and contrast between Beijing, Berlin, Boston and Birmingham at the touch of a button. The rapid growth of online courses from universities around the world has also helped to popularise the notion of ‘shopping’ for courses through the internet.

It is clear that league tables matter and that universities see them as an important part of student recruitment.  Some less welcome consequences include misleading claims and recent incidents suggest that data submitted is not always accurate.  Perhaps these incidents reflect the recognition that league tables can help build reputations that support both country and institutional desirability.

In that respect evidence suggests the US is losing its way as a global rankings leader with strength in depth.  For pathway providers it’s a double-whammy when the quality of their US partnerships, as defined by global comparisons, looks to be lagging behind their partners in other parts of the world.  At a difficult moment for US recruitment of international students it may be another indicator of harder times ahead.

US DECLINE IN GLOBAL RANKINGS
The US has traditionally been dominant at the top of global rankings and remains powerful. But The Economist (May 19th 2018) highlighted how its broader grip on the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) table has slipped over time.  Chinese and Australian universities have seen the most significant growth in the table over that period.

Table 1 - Representation of Countries in ARWU TOP 500 - 2003 to 2017

The Times Higher Education (THE) World Rankings also noted that in 2018 ‘two-fifths of the US institutions in the top 200 (29 out of 62) have dropped places.’ In contrast, two Chinese universities had risen into the top 30 for the first time.  This shift in global power reflects the growing power of China as a first choice for international students.

US PATHWAY PARTNERSHIPS BELOW TOP LEVEL
While many US universities are slipping in global rankings, pathway providers also seem to be struggling to secure partnerships with the very best universities in the country. Since April 2016 none of the partnerships announced by Study Group, Navitas, INTO or Shorelight has been in the top 200 in the QS Ranking or THE World rankings.  Only two make it into the US News and World Report (USNWR) Global top 200.

Table 2 – Comparative Ranking of New US Pathway Partnerships Announced Since April 2016*National rank unless noted

Looking over the total portfolio of pathway partners of the ‘big 4’ providers in the US shows that more than half are not globally ranked by the QS, THE or, even in the US News and World Report Global Top 1000.

Table 3 – Global League Table Rankings of Pathway Provider Institutions in the US

UK PATHWAY PARTNERSHIPS LOOK STRONGER IN GLOBAL RANKINGS
Three of these providers are active in the UK where their portfolios look significantly stronger in terms of global rankings. With the addition of the fourth big player in the UK – Kaplan – the overall number of partners is similar. At an aggregate level the worst performance is in the USNWR ranking but even by that measure less than a third of partners are unranked.

The UK is a more mature market for pathways but the recent emphasis of the major players seems to be on enhancing quality. Kaplan partnered with the University of Nottingham in July 2016 and Study Group announced a deal with Durham University in February 2017. Kaplan and Navitas have established new-style arrangements, including investment in infrastructure, with long-term partners Liverpool and Swansea respectively.  INTO’s last UK deal was with the University of Stirling in April 2014.

Table 4 - Comparative Global League Table Rankings of Pathway Provider Institutions in the UK

A GLOBAL LEAGUE TABLE FOR THE ERA OF THE CLICK
Some pathway groups also have strong representation in Australia (and to a lesser extent in Canada). A composite league tables to reflect this and show the ‘top 11’ pathway partner universities, according to three major global league tables, shows considerable consistency. Six universities (shaded) are in all the tables and five are in two.  It is, however, worth noting that all but one have slipped lower in their placing between THE 2018 and THE 2019.

Table 5 - Top Pathway Partner Universities In Selected Global League Tables

NB: The University referred to in the table as Alabama is the University of Alabama – Birmingham.

CONCLUSION
Most people who work in the sector have seen the growth of league tables as an imposition with occasionally perverse consequences for investment and resource allocation in the institution. It is entirely possible to argue that that the rankings are arbitrary and spurious with no particular relevant to student outcomes.  But they are increasingly offering new layers of insight to capture attention – the QS Graduate Employability Rankings is an example.

Students, parents, agents and employers look at league tables and most student recruitment marketing focuses on favourable rankings while ignoring less flattering indicators. They are far from the only factor involved in decision making but they set a tone that influences potential students and staff. It is rare to find an institutional leader who is not keenly aware of their relative performance.

In terms of international recruitment league tables are part of an institution’s ‘sales kit’ and the growth of global comparisons exposes their relative strengths and weaknesses. It is noticeable that as international student growth has stalled in the UK over the past five years the bigger and better ranked university ‘brands’ have taken a larger share of those coming to the country.  It seems inevitable that this will be the story for the future and that universities without ranking ‘power’ will need to work harder to avoid being marginalised.

NOTE:

The exact nature of pathway provider and university partnerships is not always clear but extensive efforts have been made to focus on pathway partnerships where students are taught on-campus.  The author is happy to hear from any authoritative source who has information that might improve the accuracy of the article.  Any corrections will be noted below. 

Correction and Update – 1 October 2018
The tables and commentary have been updated to reflect the publication of the THE Global Rankings 2019 during week commencing 24 September 2018 (comparative positions for individual universities are shown).  Broadly speaking the new table showed declining rankings for both US and UK universities   In addition, the tables have been corrected to show the rankings for Shorelight partner the University of Mississippi (Table 2) and INTO partner the University of Exeter (Table 5).

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD SPEAKS IN TONGUES

When the Spanish Armada sailed in May 1588 the intention was to clear the way for an invasion of England and allow direct rule by King Philip II* of Spain. Had that happened I probably would not be investing in Spanish language lessons at the Culture and Language Centre in San Diego**. Sir Francis Drake, the Dutch and the capricious winds off the English coast defeated the Armada and have a lot to answer for.

Learning a language later in life is a powerful reminder of the painful step from blissful ignorance to conscious incompetence. Whether I will ever graduate to conscious competency is difficult to say but the experience has been both humbling and energising. It is also a stark reminder of the extraordinary intelligence, desire and courage of international students.

Every year thousands of young people travel around the world to study at degree level. They endure homesickness, different foods, strange customs and, sometimes, outright hostility while trying to communicate and study in a language where they have limited ability. My weekly evisceration of the Spanish language in a safe and supportive classroom just ten minutes from home pales by comparison.

Maybe every university should ensure that anybody engaging with international students has to do a course where they learn an unfamiliar language. This would give due regard to those academics and administrators who are genuine polyglots and should build empathy for students. I can even see marketing advantages in publicising that the institution recognises the interplay between language acquisition and academic achievement.

My rationale for learning Spanish at this point in my life is that I live ten miles from the Mexican border and wanting to start coaching football in a region with many bilingual youngsters. But the greater reality is that after years of posturing I ran out of excuses not to learn a second language. Time, funds and opportunity are the ultimate cure for fear, indolence and procrastination.

The fear is real because I was terrible at languages at school. Three years of compulsory German did little more than enable me to name two of Santa’s reindeers, seek attention or demand that people move quickly***. Forced to choose a language to study at O-level (for younger readers these were the pre-antiquity form of GCSEs) I plumped for French.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t even proficient enough for that level of study and ended up in the CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education) class led by the dynamic and ever-kind Mrs Bell. Her hug of affection and delight when I secured a level 2 at CSE remains one of the most perplexing of school moments. I had merely turned up and guessed at the answer to every question compared to those who had not bothered to do either.

One class-mate was so disinterested in his exams that he even refused to write his name at the top of the answer paper. He had heard that you were automatically given two marks for this form of self-identification and was anxious to secure a big fat zero. Having sat for the obligatory twenty minutes at the start of the exam he gave a cheery wave as he was escorted out by a rather grumpy invigilator.

The real downside of learning languages at my secondary school was that language laboratory sessions were always straight after swimming. Sopping wet hair and water-filled ears in an English winter do not go well with headphones in a dank, claustrophobic, sound-proofed booth. The danger of your teacher perforating your eardrum by screeching down the headset was only exceeded by not being able to hear the class bully sneaking up to smack you round the head.

These painful memories explain my surprise that several decades later I keep inserting French words into Spanish sentences. Their relentless pursuit of space in my brain reminds me of both the posse in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Schwarzenegger’s definitive Terminator. I say “Who are those guys?” and they say “I’ll be back” – but where have they been hiding all these years?

More interesting than that game of ‘cherchez la femme’ is my growing understanding of adult language learning and an interesting parallel to management development. Research into adult learners of second languages suggests that the two languages show little separation in triggering activity in Wernicke’s area (the part of the brain largely responsible for language comprehension). This may also explain why my mind finds a French word when it is seeking the Spanish one.

But in Broca’s area, which manages the motor activity of the mouth when speaking a language, the triggers for activity are more substantially separated. This means that speaking the second language, particularly if some sounds do not cross from one to the other, is more challenging. Those who have grown up bilingual do not show the same separation.

It seems reasonable to think that management theory learnt later in life and demanding new behaviours may also be more difficult to implement because understanding and action are not wholly aligned in the brain. The good news with languages is that focused exercise in speaking can go a long way to overcoming the deficit between comprehension and fluency of speaking. I would venture that the same is true of understanding the benefits of new ways of behaving and working on operationalising that learning.

As a relatively inexperienced but desperately keen manager I read that taking time to regularly interact informally and supportively with colleagues was important. I was very poor at remembering to do this, so for several years I wrote time into my working week to engage ‘informally’ with individuals in my team. Looking back this mechanistic approach seems forced and artificial but it was a way of turning theory into reality for someone finding their way as a leader.

Making progress in developing my second-language capability remains a struggle but has brought a new perspective on the links between knowledge, understanding and action. It demonstrates that learning is a journey with plenty of stopping off points to admire the view and smell the flowers.
Muchas gracias por leer mis amigos!

Notes

* El Rey Felipe II
** https://www.cultureandlanguagecenter.com/
*** Donner und Blitzen, achtung, schnell

Unconditional Manipulation

The latest shouting match about UK universities giving students unconditional offers is drowning out the reality that the system is broken.  It also ignores the likely reality that demographics will solve the problem in due course.  But for now, and probably in the future, the playground bullies of government and UniversitiesUK will ignore the real victims – the students.

Here are some of the main reasons.

The evidence suggests that A-level predictions have always been a poor way to select students for university.  A report, Predicted Grades: accuracy and impact based on the A-level results of 1.3 million young people over three years showed that only one in six A-level grade predictions were accurate. Three-quarters of actual grades turned out to be lower than teachers had estimated, while just one in 10 were higher.

Universities know this but have been happy to play along for many years.  Indeed, it was a very useful thing to know when they faced a cap, with financial penalties for exceeding the limit, on the number of students enrolled.  Universities could make more offers than they had places for, knowing that a significant proportion of students would miss their grades and could be rejected.

Then the game changed.

The cap was lifted and each individual student was worth more because of the introduction of fees.  Universities had been on a major spending spree to build accommodation and so the need to enrol sufficient volume was no longer just an academic matter.  And the growth in international students slowed significantly making UK students increasingly valuable.

The remorseless weight of demographics also played its part as the Office for National Statistics graph below shows.  The number of UK students of university age has been declining for several years so institutions wanted to ‘fill their boots’ with as many as possible. The need was particularly acute because the decline in university age students will continue to fall for another couple of years.

For universities the ambition was to recruit as many students as necessary to fill the gap while finding ways to ensure that they got the best students possible.  One way to manage that was to give unconditional offers to students that are in the A to B range for their A-levels while knowing that a proportion will slip to C or even lower. Students keen to get to the best quality university forsake their insurance offer and may mentally switch off on doing their best at A-level.

Worth remembering here that the first big name to go to ‘unconditional offers’ was the University of Birmingham who would be in search of top-quality students.  Also worth remembering that University planning offices are filled with terrifyingly bright people who eat statistics for breakfast.  They can predict with reasonable certainty how many students can afford to slip an A-level grade but are still likely to achieve a good degree (because the institution doesn’t want its league table position to slip).

A cynic would add that one of the points about emerging grade inflation in university awards is that the institution has the absolute power to manipulate the grades its students get.  So even if the slippage in A-level points for the intake is damaging on one league table measure it can easily be made up for by an increase in the number of students getting a 2:1 or better.  When organisations are autonomous and self-governing there is very little to prevent them making the rules up as they go along.

It’s a perfect storm of financial commitments, student scarcity, and a broken application system with poor data that the sector has consistently failed to fix. When you add to that mix the reality that universities can fix the outcomes it is no surprise they choose to game the system.  Even if it’s not in the interests of the students.

But time will change these dynamics.

Even if nothing else changes the demographics of the UK will change behaviours. As the ONS data (above) shows the university may not have enough places by 2030 to take all the candidates that want to go.  Faced with more students than they need universities will tighten their offer policies and the unconditional offer will become as rare as rocking horse droppings.  It’s a situation where the basics of supply and demand provide a market solution.

But that seems to me to be cold comfort to students who have little insight and no voice at all in the way the system runs.  Their plight is made worse by the constant changes in Government policy and the responses of self-interested universities.  About time somebody set about mending the underlying system and holding people to account.

Understandable Caution About Students (UCAS) As Deadline Passes

The UCAS release of June deadline undergraduate applications is a snapshot giving insights into potential international (non-European Union) enrolments in the UK for September 2018. The scenario is a bit like England reaching the World Cup semi-final stage – enough to excite and build expectation. But we all know what happened next in that story.

News to cheer is that the number of applicants is up 4,550 from last year’s figure and 75,380 applicants looks like strong growth against last year’s 70,830. But underneath the headlines there are some interesting trends and nuances. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the UK’s compound annual growth rate for applicants is only 2.24% a year over the three years since 2014/15.

The other interesting factor may be the need of UK universities to fill the gap left by declining numbers of home student applicants – over 18,000 down year on year for 2018 entry. This seems certain to drive vigorous competition for existing international applicants. And the race to convert students in the last chance saloon of clearing will equal the stress levels of any penalty shootout.

MOMENTUM HAS SLOWED
A bird in the hand may be worth two in the bush as far as applications are concerned but early momentum in the recruitment cycle has fallen away. Year-on-year percentage growth of applicants has declined with each of the four UCAS deadlines. From a high in October of 11.7% it has fallen to a solid but less exciting 6.4% at the end of June.
Source: UCAS

This follows a broad trend in the growth in volume of international applicants applying between the January deadline and the June deadline slowing. In 2014/15 there were 18,510 additional applicants while in 2017/18 it has been 16,930. That’s growth of 35.6% and 29% respectively on the January total in each year.

It seems likely that students and agents are getting better organised earlier in the year.  That would be a reasonable response to some of the changes in visa requirements and language testing in recent year.  But it places an emphasis on speed of response to applications and the strengthening of conversion campaigns early in the cycle.
Source: UCAS

EARLY APPLICATIONS STRONG BUT MEDICINE LAGGING
Nearly 30% (1,350) of the total growth in international applicants came by the October deadline for students applying for Oxbridge or courses in medicine. However, the number applying for medical courses (3,310) remains below the 2014 figure of 3,490 despite the number of new medical places in recent years. It seems possible that competition is significantly undermining the attraction of UK medical courses and we know, for example, that as long ago as 2015 eighty per cent of Indian students in China were following undergraduate clinical medical courses (Source: The Economic Times, May 25, 2015).

The rise in non-medicine applicants is a strong step forward but the drivers are unclear. HESA figures suggest that between 2013/14 and 2016/17 both Oxford and Cambridge increase their total undergraduate population by 20% or more. It is possible that they are pushing on more aggressively and stimulating interest.

Alongside this is the growing flexibility of Russell Group universities, as evidenced by the number now making unconditional offers, and their hunger for international students. International students and their advisers may believe that their chances of successfully enrolling in a well-known, highly ranked UK university have never been better. At a macro-level the rise in early applications suggests that strong, well-ranked brands will do best out of any increase in applicants this year.

Source: UCAS

RELIANCE ON CHINA CONTINUES
Overall and as expected China and India have posted the largest uplift in terms of students applying – up by 1,850 and 1,100 year on year respectively. It seems possible that the UK is partly a beneficiary of what could become a very difficult enrolment period for universities in the US. In that respect the next biggest growth in international applicants is 300 from the USA.

Despite the good omens experienced international recruitment teams will not be counting their students before they arrive. The UK government’s failure to ease the visa situation for students from India by making the country ‘low risk’ could still play badly. But there must be reasonably strong expectations of a solid year for enrolments at this point.
Source: UCAS

CLEARING LIKELY TO REMAIN IMPORTANT
Another factor is clearing which includes all students applying after the June deadline. Over the past five years the peak number of international students ‘placed’ in universities in the 28 days after A-level day was 7,260 in 2014. This fell year on year before increasing slightly to 6,500 in 2017.

There are a lot of students available and most universities have strengthened their ability to operate efficiently at home and internationally under the pressure of clearing. Making on the spot offers, converting interest and having strong teams in place, including academics, are commonplace. Again, the well-known names would expect to dominate but as they fill there is opportunity for others to compete.

Source: UCAS

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL – BUT REASONS TO BE CAUTIOUS
My previous blog  showed that growth in international enrolments over the past five years has been dominated by metropolitan, Russell Group names. It is reasonable to assume that large, globally-ranked and well-known universities will now dive even more deeply into the pool of international students than ever before.   The economic pressure and the likely shortfall in UK students over coming years will make this a priority.

And the wise will realise that the increase in their own applicant pool may be undermined by multiple applications.  My analysis of the UCAS numbers suggests that while there are 4,550 additional applicants there are an additional 21,010 applications in the system.  Over 3,600 of the additional applicants made the maximum of five applications and the majority of the rest made at least three.
Source: UCAS

Accidents Will Happen

In response to Jillian Braverman’s recent post about learning more from mistakes than successes I committed to select some examples from my own career. The whole process was a good reminder about the benefits of reflective practice. Getting better at accepting personal fallibility is a reasonable defence against being careless, neglectful or just plain stupid.

It also helps to avoid the trap of ‘unconscious competency’ where a level of mastery and familiarity encourages repeating actions without conscious evaluation. I’m grateful to Andy Green for introducing me to the notion of ‘super-competency’ where someone who is highly accomplished in a discipline continually challenges and refreshes their skill. The best people never stop learning.

Some of the greatest creative forces in history have also pointed to the danger of believing excellence in a skill or a way of thinking is an end in itself. Picasso observed that, ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.’ Leonardo da Vinci said that, “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” Throughout their lives they were involved in a relentless search for improvement.

While few can match the creativity and inventiveness of these titans my small contribution here is three occasions when errors have held valuable lessons and changed my way of thinking.

CLARIFY THE BRIEF AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
Late in the process of producing an Annual Report, I was asked by an HR Director to arrange a short version to be sent to all 70,000+ staff. Under time pressure and wanting to impress I re-drafted the text as a summary, re-purposed the existing visuals and got the design agency to do layout for free. I felt pretty good about having got the job done in budget and on-time.

But at final proof stage the HR Director said he had wanted something original and entirely focused on the employee audience. My annoyance at time and effort wasted was only exceeded by my embarrassment at failing to clarify the brief. Always understand the purpose and intended outcomes of a job before starting it and make sure that you have clarified the time and cost implications of any course of action.

Kipling is instructive:
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

(“I keep six honest serving-men.” Rudyard Kipling. First published in the Ladies’ Home Journal, April 1900)

It is also usually worth reminding budget-holders making late requests that the iron triangle comprising cost, speed and quality can usually only have two side fulfilled at the same time.

BEWARE HUBRIS AND LACK OF PREPARATION
One of my employer’s open-plan office culture led to the wearing of ‘red caps’ to indicate you were not to be disturbed. Local interest had me appearing on regional TV where, on the spur of the moment, I stated that we thought it was a great gift for the upcoming Father’s Day. Slightly carried away by my own cleverness I said that we’d be selling them in one of our local stores that Saturday.

The scramble to source red caps, at anything like a reasonable cost, involved the whole team for the next two days. Particularly when I decided that they needed to have a big D, for Dad, emblazoned on them. But I took delivery of the caps late one night and found myself in a nearby store early the next morning.

Given a prime spot near the entrance and alongside the clothing section I was confident that I would be sold out and back home by noon. 12 hours later I had not sold one, despite the asking price plummeting from a fiver (which was at cost) to 50p. I could not bring myself to just give them away but had learnt many lessons.

Making a claim without thinking it through is not a good place to start. Compounding the situation by adding specifications, something akin to ‘mission drift’, is equally unwise. But most importantly I learnt at first hand and on my own time how hard it is to make money by selling things. It was an early step on a long road from being in public relations to leading a £100m turnover commercial organisation.

MUTUAL APPRECIATION AND ENTHUSIASM ARE RARELY ENOUGH
After several years in one job I was slightly restless and applying for anything that looked interesting. When the call came it was welcome, the process rapid and it felt like love at first sight. The lure of global opportunity and building a team from a low base seemed too good to miss.

Sadly, I had missed that what attracted the company to me were things I had done earlier in my career but were not my intended direction of development. An early visit to the parent company disabused me of my belief that I would be able to spread my wings internationally. And the ‘low base’ was destined to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

In relationships it is in the interests of both parties to temper good rapport with critical thinking. I was flattered by the attention and I did not ask enough questions to understand their situation. As importantly, I was not wholly transparent about my expectations.

Whether it’s a new job, a business partner or a personal friend there is not enough goodwill or money in the world to make it work long term unless aspirations, values and practicalities are honestly shared. And you have to be prepared to walk away however much you like people and want things to work out.

*****

Mistakes are part of learning and it is reasonable to expect that if you are pushing hard and on the edges of your ability or experience you will make more of them. As long as you have not staked what you or your company cannot afford to lose, every error brings insight and few are terminal. It’s always good advice to believe that what matters is what you do next.

WORLD CUP WAR OF WORDS FOR AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD

There was something of a relief in not being in the UK during the build up to the World Cup. Every four years since 1966 I have been part of a ritual that involves unreasonable hope followed by crushing disappointment. At least I started this tournament with bragging rights for my country having qualified which is more than the US team managed.

Having the opportunity to watch three games a day before the pace slows for the round of sixteen is one of the great binge-watching experiences. The fashion for a high press, excellent coaching and high levels of fitness have already made it an enthralling competition. Sadly, the commentators are not performing to the same levels and their plodding search for new similes, metaphors and descriptive words is plumbing unparalleled depths.

I am not averse to new words entering the sport’s vocabulary but it always seems better if it has the flourish of another language. We have learnt the ‘gegenpress’ in recent years, just as we learnt ‘catenaccio’ and ‘libero’ in years gone by. And if English is involved it needs to be associated with era-defining players – the Maradona-spin, the Cruyff-turn, Rivelino’s ‘flip-flap’ – who invented new ways of thrilling us.

But far too much from the commentators is average, unhelpful and annoyingly nonsensical. My first warning came with the phrase ‘double combination’ which I am still scratching my head about. It was used three times in different circumstances but appeared to mean two consecutive passes between team-mates.

The problem with the phrase is that it opens up the possibility of ‘triple combination’ and ‘quadruple combination’. With possession football the norm I wonder if we end up with ‘combination to the power twelve.’ ‘Double combination’ probably has a place in commentating on competitive drinking – a sport I think deserves a place in the Olympics – but it is not needed in football.

More ubiquitous and even more annoying is talking about play at the ‘top of the box’. It’s totally unacceptable after I spent decades organising defensive lines on the ‘edge of the box’ and reason is on my side. There’s a line that defines the penalty area – the ‘box’ in question – and it does not have a top or bottom.

I would accept the notion of an incident at ‘the top of the D’ although its curvature makes its ‘top’ a problematic concept. Trivia point, for those who have ever wondered, is that the arc of the D adjoining the penalty box ensures no player encroaches closer than ten yards at a penalty kick. I am reasonably sure Euclid was a Sunday league referee in ancient Greece who was inspired to write his mathematical treatise ‘Elements’ to show how ‘a closed segment of a differentiable curve’ could support the laws of the game.

Next point of contention was an analyst banging on about passing to players ‘in the seam’. Tailoring metaphors have their place in the game and we can all accept the long history of a ‘pin-point’ pass or ‘threading the ball through’. But the demise of hand-stitched clothing and the common acceptance of ‘in the channel’ means that a further clothes-making reference is superfluous to requirements.

We have to call a halt because there is something very wrong about a ragged defensive line being called a ‘dropped hem’. A skilful but less than whole hearted player who is more ornament than use to the team should not be known as ‘gimp’ – a narrow ornamental trim used in sewing or embroidery. And the mind would truly boggle if a substitution to strengthen the defence became known as ‘introducing a gusset’

My annoyance at the butchering of the language came to boiling point in the game where, in quick succession, the goal was called ‘the frame’, the crossbar was on defined as ‘the upper post’ and the shorter of the four lines enclosing the pitch was called the ‘end line’. No, no and thrice no. I quote from the 17 Laws of Soccer recognised by the International Football Association ‘At each end of the field is an eight-yard-wide goal centred along the goal line’.

A ‘frame’ is, generally speaking, what you use to enhance a favoured picture and does not do justify to the 192 sq ft ‘goal’ of every attacking move. A ball crossed to the near post or far post is common but ‘Upper Post’ is a lake in Wisconsin and even if the striker leaps like a salmon the term will never replace the staunchly prosaic ‘crossbar’. And while the ‘end line’ exists in American Football, it is at the end of the ‘end zone’ which should be an end to its use.

I have read that Fox, who hold comprehensive screening rights in the US, chose not to invest in the very best commentators when it became clear that the US team would not feature. One consequence is having Warren Barton, a journeyman midfielder/defender in his day, suggesting how Uruguay’s world-class strikers Cavani and Suarez can improve their attacking prowess. Such a shame because the rich vernacular of the game has developed over many years and the finest exponents of commentating bring real texture and insight to a match.

Exclude from all the above is the wonderful Jorge Perez-Navarro whose breathless enthusiasm defies all cynicism and, on some occasions, all understanding. He never uses one word when three will do – a recent game was ‘nil-nil, zero-zero, scoreless’ – and his magnificent prelude to a free-kick attempt on goal – ‘ready, aim, fire’ – is the work of a real fan. But it is his lung-bursting exclamation of any ‘Goooooooaaaaaalllll’ that captures the sheer happiness and exuberance of being a fan as well as a commentator.

FURTHER NOTES (AND TRIVIA)

I am reminded that the D on the edge of the penalty box is an arc of a full circle of 10 yards diameter centred on the penalty spot. In that sense the D is a segment of the circle. A full circle of ten yards diameter is also centred on the centre spot to ensure players are 10 yards distant when a kick-off is taken. A football pitch is a thing of symettrical beauty which plays host to all the tensions and truths of both mathematics and human nature. I am grateful to the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (1700BCE), Plato’s Seventh Letter (353BCE) and Book 3 of Euclid’s Elements (300BCE) for their seminal work on circles. Also, thanks to Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann for his proof that π (pi) is a transcendental number.

An Englishman Abroad Does Improv(isation)

There is always something new to learn and we should all try to be the best that we can become. So with a little time to spare in San Diego I decided to try my hand at Improvisation classes. Sounds simple enough but, as always, it’s what you learn about yourself that counts.

As it happens I may be the only person in the world who calls them Improvisation classes. Everyone else says Improv but that sounds to me like a new-age health drink full of strange bacteria. I can imagine an advert where some lean and glowing couple extol the virtues of the product before signing off with the tag-line – ‘Improv – for those in search of enlightenment and regularity’.

My motivations for taking the class were not entirely pure in terms of personal development. I’ve always fancied the notion that this type of performance is just messing about and making stuff up. And like many men I have built a reasonable amount of my life around those behaviours while characterising myself as lovably spontaneous rather than hopelessly disorganised.

It’s not that men can’t be professional, cultured and focused – just look at George Clooney. Neither do we find it impossible to listen, empathise and respond sensitively – consider Roger Federer. But for most of us their urbanity is as hard to emulate consistently just as their talent and looks are impossible to replicate even once.

I put it down to the wiring of the cerebral cortex over hundreds of years of pre-history when men were left to their own devices on hunting trips. After a night of enjoying fermented fruit picked up from the forest floor they would daub themselves in mud then sit around telling tall tales. Some of the more creative might try their hand at graffiti on the cave wall until everyone all dozed off and woke with a cracking hangover.

When their partners discovered the trip had not resulted in any food for the table and asked why the bearskin cape was shedding mud on the freshly swept hearth men had to think on their feet. So they would just make stuff up and talk about how close they had come to bagging a mastodon. If necessary there would be play acting, animal noises and, at a push, tears.

It’s not too different to going on a quick trip to the supermarket for some bread, meeting some mates and ending up in the pub. Arriving home several hours later without bread but carrying some wilted daffodils picked randomly from the neighbours’ front garden brings some questions. It’s difficult to link a brush with mortal danger to a missing loaf of bread, the smell of alcohol, and stolen flowers, but most men will give it a go.

So, all in all, it was a bit of a shock when my wife chose to take Improvisation classes. There seemed to be games, fun and mental agility but more worryingly there was structure, skill and technique. Having spent my life as a minimally talented amateur in the martial art of extemporisation I felt like the Incas must have done when the Conquistadores pitted cavalry, steel swords, crossbows and harquebus against wooden clubs, bows, arrows and slingshot.

At the heart of my rising disquiet were questions that no man ever wants to ask himself. What if this became yet another thing my wife does better than me and would she use her growing powers for evil rather than good? I began to have dreams that mirrored the story about the Emperor’s new clothes – and I was the one parading around in my birthday suit – so I signed up for class.

The first thing I found was that everybody is overwhelmingly positive. Don’t get me wrong – I am a firm believer in enthusiasm and energy. But I grew up with an Englishman’s ingrained belief that upper lips were made to be stiff, backbones were made to be straight and the only response to ‘how are you?’ was to say ‘how are you’.

So it took me a bit of time to get used to greeting any errors in the games with a virtual group hug and a shared chant that sounded suspiciously like ‘arugula’. I also realised that when people are looking at you it becomes very difficult to do a physical movement that does not look and feel totally weird. This means I may never dance again which has already given my children cause to worship the Gods of improvisation forever.

One of the first ice-breakers was to take your name, preface it with a noun or adjective of the same initial and make a physical movement to go with the description. I am now immortalised as Antlers Alan whose persona is partly defined by putting my thumbs on my temple and waggling my fingers. What was interesting is that after we had run through the group’s various monikers and movements a few times I could remember every one of the thirteen names.

After years leading carefully structured meetings I found that there is no bullet point agenda to follow when the audience wants you to act as an interviewee who is the world leading expert on waffles. Neither is it possible to try to direct the conversation when you are one of three people playing ‘Dr Know It All’. The game involves the audience asking a question then each of the three sequentially saying one word until an answer has emerged.

As the evening progressed my brain kept taking me back to things I could have said if I had been smarter and faster. That’s common enough for most of us but the good lesson here was that regrets were just clutter that prevented me being responsive to the next scenario. One of my favourite mantras has been ‘what matters is what you do next’ and this was a place that confronted my ability to live that belief.

I am sure that many enlightened leaders and companies use techniques from improvisation classes as a way to build and develop their teams but if they don’t it’s worth considering. I’d strongly recommend it as an investment for any individual who wants a sense check of their ability to listen actively, support sympathetically and respond relevantly. It’s exhausting but great fun.

I suspect that I am going to keep on grasping for briefings, talking points, purposes and outcomes for most of the lessons and exercises. Those are the tools that I have used throughout my working life and they are deeply ingrained. But hopefully I am going to better understand the way that empathetic selflessness – my summary of what the highly talented and personable class leader said it was about – can lead to magical moments.

NOTE: The course is one of many run by the National Comedy Theatre in San Diego http://NationalComedy.com

US University Pathways – Build It And They Will Come?

In 2014 Karen Khemka, a partner with the Parthenon Group, said “The U.S. third-party/outsourced pathway market is less than half the size of the Australian market despite having a higher education system that is 10 times the size.We anticipate that growth will be constrained only by the pace at which private providers can develop the market.” (Inside Higher Education, Bridge or Back Door? 30 April, 2014).  With reports recently indicating that two leading providers in the US, Study Group and INTO, are for sale it’s a good moment to see what has happened.

Khemka’s statement came towards the tail end of a period when more than a billion dollars was invested in private pathway providers with the potential for pathway development in the US a strong incentive.  But the next billion-dollar question facing potential investors may be whether US pathways were really a field of dreams where you could, to borrow loosely from the film, ‘build it and they will come’.  Or has attention to the supply side of the equation ignored the challenges of changing patterns of demand around the world?

To size the growth in capacity in the US I took the NAFSA publication Landscape of Third-Party Pathway Partnerships in the United States (NAFSA, 2017) as a starting point. The publication identified eight providers who were partnering with 45 institutions on 1 April 2016. The criteria was that these partnerships had to be ‘contractual agreements between universities and third-party entities to provide English language courses along with academic credit.’

I revisited each of the third-party entities listed to determine what relationships they have added. It is reasonable to say that the wording of some media statements and the content of web-sites is, either by accident or design, unclear about the exact nature of the relationship or offering. However, Table 1 summarises my understanding of new partnerships that meet the original criteria and notes the dates they were announced.

Table 1 – New US Pathways of Eight Providers Announced 2016 to 2018

* Source: Landscape of Third-Party Pathway Partnerships in the United States (NAFSA, 2017)
**I can find no public announcement of the Shorelight partnership with Utah but it is reflected on the web-site of each organisation

Table 2 shows arrangements listed on the providers’ websites but which I have omitted. I am happy to accept any authoritative corrections in my understanding of the nature of the partnerships or courses provided and to add any partners I have missed.  I have not gone beyond the original group of providers although a number of additional providers, such as EC Higher Education, have also developed pathway courses in recent years.

Table 2 – Partnerships listed on provider websites but not meeting criteria

The eight providers have added 21 new partnerships to the 45 shown in the original study – a growth of 47%. This suggests that the private providers have set about growing their businesses in the US with a good deal of vigour and some degree of success. At the time of Khemka’s quote in 2014 Shorelight was a new player but they have moved on to secure the most partnerships just four years later.

That growth in pathway capacity comes at a time when the global balance between supply and demand is in a state of flux and the future is somewhat less certain. The expanding availability of degrees taught in English and the ambitious targets of both traditional recruiting countries and emerging destinations has radically changed the competitive environment. While much of the world is adding rocket fuel to its recruiting engines the US looks to have loaded its unleaded petrol engine with diesel.

In the US a decline in non-degree new enrolments in 2015/16 was followed a year later by both graduate and undergraduate new enrolments declining. And non-degree enrolments continued to fall in 2016/17 which may be a leading edge indicator of further decline. The IEE Fall 2017 International Student Enrollment Hot Topics Survey says ‘Responding institutions report a 6.9 percent decline of international students enrolling for the first time at a U.S. institution, continuing the declines first seen in Fall 2016.’ (IEE, November 2017)

Table 3 – US New International Student Enrollment, 2006/07-2016/17
Source: Institute of International Education (2017). Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange. Retrieved from http://www.iee.org/opendoors

Like many sectors higher education is being obliged to rethink the fundamentals of supply and demand as demographics, competition and disruptive technologies undermine the old certainties.  It is a challenging moment to be launching new initiatives and building capacity based on past performance.

NOTES AND CORRECTIONS

This post was updated on 24 September 2017 to include Lynn University as a Study Group partner announced in May 2017.  Other related statistics have been updated.  At the time of announcement it was billed as ‘is set to open in January’ – presumably 2018.  As of the date of this correction the partner is billed on the Study Group site as ‘Launching Soon’.

UNIVERSITY PATHWAYS – INTO THE VALLEY

The potential sale of INTO University Partnerships has created a lot of interest with a particular focus on the Joint Venture (JV) model it pioneered and how they are performing.    A sharp-eyed and smart ex-colleague pointed me to Companies House, the United Kingdom’s registrar of companies, which offers access to annual reports for every JV as well as the wholly owned entities INTO Manchester and INTO London World Education Centre.  They make for interesting reading.

No doubt the wonks, analysts and number crunchers will comb these reports over the coming months as part of their due diligence and financial interrogation. As The Skids minor-hit of 1979, Into The Valley said – its ‘time for the audit, the gathering trial.’ But for this blog I am going to focus on enrolments because that is the area where most pathway providers claim they bring expertise, investment, global reach and commercial nous which add up to student recruitment that universities cannot match.

The individual filings appear to be consistent in reporting the average number of students in each Centre during the year. Table one shows these for ten entities operating in the 2013/14 Financial Year and still operating in 2016/17. This excludes the now closed St George’s University JV and the INTO Newcastle University London JV established in 2015.

Table 1: Yearly Average Enrolments at INTO Centres

*Manchester and London are not joint ventures.  Their parent company is INTO University Partnerships
Source: Annual Reports 2013/14 to 2016/17

The average enrolments in 2013/14 across all Centres was 4284 while in 2016/17 it was 4016 – a decline of -6.3%. The peak year for enrolment was 2014/15 when an average of 4293 enrolments are shown. As a comparator HESA reports that the UK HE sector’s first year international enrolments declined from 179,250 in 2013/14 to 172,275 in 2016/17 – a fall of 3.9%.

There will be many drivers for enrolment performance and as my previous blogs have indicated there have been winners and losers amongst universities over the past few years. Many in-house international offices have secured outstanding results and some universities have received strong support from the performance of their pathway partners. The picture for INTO looks mixed with only the Queen’s and Stirling JVs showing an increase in average numbers enrolled.

What also interested me was that I once heard a pathway leader explaining to a worried Vice-Chancellor that the period from start up to profitability for a pathway was ‘deepening and widening’. Both Gloucestershire and Stirling JVs were in start-up mode in this period having been incorporated in 2013. But their fortunes seem to have taken different directions with the latter forging ahead as the former has fallen back. It would be no surprise if pathways at more lowly-ranked universities were finding it harder to make progress under increasingly competitive conditions.

We can also see that even some of the pathways at well-known top 30 universities, Newcastle and East Anglia, have had a pretty torrid time in terms of enrolments. Newcastle enrolments fell by 24.3% from their peak in 2014/15 and East Anglia by 17.5% in the same period. City, a relatively well-known university with strong international intakes and a London advantage, saw numbers fall by 25.5%.  This suggests that even well-established partnerships with big name partners are not a guarantee of successful enrolment.

The university partners are, of course, still securing students who progress from these pathways but this scale of decline is unlikely to be made up for by improved progression rates or increased fee levels. My recent blogs have demonstrated that both Newcastle and UEA have seen their overall international student fee income declining over recent years. And while INTO University Partnerships’ share of the JV profits is not the only stream of income to its business it is reasonable to assume that the company would prefer operating profits to losses.

For INTO, and the pathway sector more generally, in both the UK and the US the challenges are not going away any time soon. These include the growth of favoured locations such as Canada, Australia and Europe, the emergence of new destinations and particularly those in Asia, and the ever-present spectre of improving on-line delivery and in-country tuition improving English-language levels.

Tennyson’s poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, provides an apt metaphor. He wrote that as the cavalry charged ‘into the valley of Death’ there were ‘cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them, cannon in front of them’. There were survivors but of the original 600 Light Dragoons, Lancers and Hussars in the charge fewer than 200 were able to re-assemble with their horses.

Over a billion dollars has been invested in private pathway providers since 2010 as the prospects for growth in the US and UK seemed bright. If there is a next round of deals for those providers – Study Group have also been for sale recently –  it seems likely that the price must reflect the market challenges. If not we may recall that, as French Marshal Pierre Bosquet reportedly said of the Charge, “C’est de la folie” — “It is madness.”