aggregators – View From A Bridge – management, education and personal thoughts

International Student Heartland or Schitt’s Creek?

Aggregators, pathways, universities and Governments tend to be relentlessly upbeat in their promotional material for international students but its worth considering things from the other end of the telescope. A sceptic might include information suggesting which countries have a record of over-promising, whose ability to assimilate students is coming unravelled or where are the warning signs of exploitation. What you can bet is that this information is not concentrated in an aggregators top five list in their sales pitch or the “Why Choose….” website page of a college that has been investigated for “questionable recruitment practices”.

Canada has had a period of unrivalled growth and has consistently bucked the trend of most traditional international student destinations by having, at the end of 2021, more than twice as many students from India than from China (217k versus 105k). At the end of 2020 commentators claimed it had become the third largest recruiter of international students in the world after a tripling of international students in a decade. There were some obvious concentrations – Ontario had nearly 50% of the numbers with British Columbia and Quebec trailing at 23% and 14% respectively.

It’s popularity seems undeniable but there has been a drip feed of less palatable news which seems to be gathering pace. The confluence of cash-strapped public universities and profit motivated private entities seems to be leading to students being poorly informed and having little recourse when their time, money or health is under threat. There is no doubt that there are some fine institutions and well meaning authorities in Canada but the collection of news items suggests problems that need urgent attention.

‘The Just Society’?

John Stuart Mills’ famous question was borrowed in 1968 by new Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to outline his vision for the country. But international students may be beginning to wonder ‘just what?’. Are we just in a place where a route to a permanent visa is promised, just in a place that makes it easy to get work post study or just in a place where private money has taken advantage of a system which can’t cope? ^{(note 2)}

Getting a job while studying is not easy and there are suggestions that this is why in Windsor, Ontario 90% of food bank visitors are Indian students. Getting a visa in the first place may be harder for students from certain countries as a Canadian Parliament Committee found evidence of “racism within the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.” International student deaths were a cause for concern before the pandemic and more recent reports suggest the situation may have worsened.

Quebec has recently closed the immigration pathway provided by unsubsidized private colleges, New Brunswick has closed its express entry route for new immigrants with some arguing, “the number of applications, is just far more than can possibly be taken in” and a commentator in the Toronto Star accuses Canada of a “decades-old tradition of exploiting Punjab’s working class.”

Quebec’s latest efforts are not the first time they have taken action to restrict the activities of some of the colleges in question because back in 2020 the province suspended the ability of ten designated learning institutions (DLIs) to issue Quebec Acceptance Certificates (CAQ) enabling international students to study in Quebec. A DLI is an institution approved by the Quebec government to welcome international students and such students are then eligible to obtain post-graduation work permits. The suspension was for “questionable recruitment practices.”

Canada was also the starting point for one of the stars of the aggregator firmament, ApplyBoard, which became the poster child for private investment with $475mUSD raised and a post-money valuation of $3.2bn in 2021. Lead investor in the latest round was Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (Ontario Teachers’), through its Teachers’ Innovation Platform (TIP), who believe that the platform is “…creating greater opportunities for education globally.” Several of the private colleges featured on ApplyBoard’s site are among those subject to the action in Quebec and it would be interesting to know if the Ontario Teachers’ are in favor of their approach to recruitment.

This may be important because some commentators have argued that aggregators have reduced the accountability institutions feel they have for fully informing potential students as well as encouraging an unregulated sub-agent culture which is less committed to student service and support than longer standing agencies. Another reasonable question may be whether coming from a relatively low and possibly inexperienced base has left Canada unprepared for some of the problems that can come with such rapid international student growth. Overshadowing or perhaps underpinning this is the possibility that “the entire system in Canada is built around the false premise that education, not work and immigration, is the primary aim for most students.”

Added to all this are the reported backlogs in processing visas with the inevitable stress this places on applicants. Put together it seems reasonable to conclude that there is a lot of clearing up to do. It will be interesting to see if more draconian action is required to root out the underlying causes and whether universities and their recruiting partners will take some responsibility for the issues.

For now, Canada may be the country that should come with the biggest health warning to unwary students.(note 3)

Notes

The title of this piece is a reference to the two Canadian TV series Heartland and Schitt’s Creek which outperformed the global behemoth Squid Game on American TVs in 2021.
For the sharp eyed and politically aware this sentence does have a small pun relating to current Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau who is the eldest son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.
It is reasonable to note that other countries have issues which rarely make it into the promotional material. If time permits a future blog will take a look at some of other contenders.
This blog draws on publicly available information and provides links where this has been sourced. The author welcomes authoritative feedback if there are factual inaccuracies and will note these in amendments to this page.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Return to normality: Is it crunch time for aggregators?

Co-authored article featured in University World News on 28 May 2022.

If anyone doubts the determination of the international recruitment specialists to get back to business as usual, they are not paying much attention to their LinkedIn feed.

Every day brings a new outpouring of gratitude to be in an airport, in a hotel and in an agent’s office. All the things that had been workaday and vaguely dull are suddenly born anew as if a winter of cold comfort has given way to a recruitment spring of enormous promise.

With the first in-person NAFSA (Association of International Educators) annual conference of the new era starting this week, the international community will be out in force and willing to share stories about the value of personal engagement and the important role it plays in differentiating one institution from another.

They will reflect that a parent about to send a sheltered 18-year-old across oceans, thousands of miles away, is likely to need a little personal reassurance as to their offspring’s well-being. Talk will turn to whether the aggregators are really adding enough value to lead the way in the post-pandemic world.

For the aggregators, the return of in-person activity has been a little like Count Dracula encountering the sunrise. In Bram Stoker’s original novel, the Count was not destroyed by the light but it significantly reduced his powers to shapeshift, to appear to defy gravity and to convert others into his helpless vampire followers with a single bite.

It may be that the sunlight of personal contact, renewed travel and a good working knowledge of the limitations of technology has made the aggregators look less like the best game in town.

Second best?

Aggregators, virtual study portals, algorithms, artificial intelligence, blockchain and machine learning are also suffering the same fate as masks and social distancing: they were essential and sometimes mandated during the early part of the pandemic, but are now in many cases matters of choice and in some countries have become very much second best to personal contact.

The other problem is that some of the promises made about streamlining, reach and volume enrolments are looking increasingly like strategies to lure venture capitalists into investments under the edtech buzzword.

Universities, admissions experts and experienced recruiters are well aware that applications overload has become a significant problem despite aggregator efforts to sift initial interest.

They realise that agents and students are increasingly encouraged to play the field because aggregators make it easy to load multiple applications to dozens of universities. They have even worked out that the search function on the portal is of no use to an institution if they end up on page 15, as one of hundreds of similar options thrown up by broad search terms.

The thing is that technology can always be purchased, improved and-or replicated, and a glance through the aggregator and study portals does little to suggest that any of them have created a product that offers a sustainable differentiation or competitive edge.

On the other hand, personal relationships have been the bedrock of international recruitment for several decades and it is easier to bolt on technology than recreate a road warrior with a well-earned reputation for delivering, for students. Larger agents have also invested for years in building a presence that is physically close to and trusted by generations of entire families.

The competition

The future will necessitate investment in ‘high touch’ as much as ‘high tech’ and we have already seen aggregators trumpeting their moves into new countries with associated offices to try to reinforce their local credibility and accountability.

But infrastructure and good people are expensive, not to mention hard to find and they are coming from behind compared to the many long-term players who have already built their organisations around the globe.

One example is the way INTO launched three University Access Centres before the pandemic and is planning up to 25 by the end of 2023 to supplement its 25 regional offices around the globe.

There is nothing to suggest that INTO and other pathway operators can’t ramp up their ‘common apps’, partner portals and automated admissions processes to a point where they have the technology to complement their long term in-market strength.

The pathways also have the proven ability to engage with universities, negotiate terms and have been through familiarisation visits that give them real credibility when talking to parents, students and agents.

Over the past couple of years there has been a rush to supplement pathway recruitment with direct recruitment and it may be that the post-pandemic era sees this maturing as a full-service offer.

Employability support

A significant differentiator for the aggregators and the wider edtech ecosystem could be international employability.

We have already seen the pathway operators taking the first steps in responding to the demonstrable international student demand with some offering paid for ‘employability support’ in addition to the fees they charge for the pathway programmes. Plus, the big players in commercial education as far back as 2018 were referring to employability as the next frontier.

Andrew Barkla, CEO of international higher education consultants IDP, was interviewed by The PIE and said: “From a counselling and guidance point of view, we are already having career conversations with students at the very beginning of their journey.”

The smartest are already looking at ways of demonstrating the efficacy of their operation and the way their university partners are considering successful graduate outcomes, as much as the initial recruitment of bums on seats.

Where technology can really add value is in collecting international employability data in ways that are vastly superior and more cost-effective than the tired old questionnaire approaches that have fallen into disrepute.

High quality graduate outcomes data will also allow career opportunities to be developed in source countries, help place students with internships and study experiences and ultimately get them connections to pursue a career when they go home.

No-one has yet seized the nettle and invested significantly to deliver the golden triad of a great recruitment experience, a great education and a great job, but there are signs that many of the major players realise that this is the moment to act.

This all takes place against the backdrop of some commentators, including The Sunday Times, recently suggesting that “the great tech revaluation has only just begun”.

It quoted Airbnb chief Brian Chesky tweeting that the moment “feels similar to late 2008”, and Uber boss, Dara Khosrowshahi, saying: “We will absolutely have to do more with less.”

The article concludes that there could be “two years yet to run of falling values, imploding companies and desperation mergers”.

An uncertain future

This comes at a time when the momentum of face-to-face engagement is developing and everyone has had the opportunity to size up whether the excitement around aggregators was a symptom of the pandemic rather than a long-term cure for recruitment.

If the flow of money to continue investing in technology businesses slows and investors find more attractive options elsewhere, some may find themselves near the end of their runway.

There are a lot of questions to consider.

Will the aggregators be able to use their financial muscle and existing platforms as a ticket to more funding that allows them to compete, or will bricks and mortar businesses that have been around for years steal their thunder?

Will the underlying strength of businesses based on personal contact enable them to accelerate their use of technology in a way that takes away the aggregator point of differentiation and advantage? Or will the answer be a flurry of acquisitions and mergers that attempt to deliver real synergy to the advantage of students and universities?

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

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

There is more to student recruitment than edtechs offer

Louise Nicol and Alan Preece First published in University World News 04 August 2021

We probably all remember the big reveal in The Wizard of Oz (recently in the news again) when Oscar Zoroaster is revealed as a conman who had used clever props and magic tricks to maintain his place as Supreme Ruler of the Kingdom of Oz. Universities might consider this when they hear industry pundits eulogising the power of the aggregators and the Emerald City of big data. The smartest of them know that there is a place for brains, heart and courage in finding alternative solutions to meet challenging international student recruitment targets during a global pandemic.

It’s no surprise that, to date, due to lockdowns and border closures, universities have felt powerless to make an impact on international recruitment. Stuck in their back bedrooms while working from home, aggregators must have seemed like the answer to their prayers for a quick technology fix to match their new-found obsession with Zoom. This thinking was supported by the suggestion that they were low cost, simplified agent relationships and could improve student accessibility.The glamour of eye-watering valuations and bold investments by venture capital and private equity cash looking to ride the latest edtech wave seems very persuasive.

There is slick marketing, even slicker websites and the ubiquitous use of the word algorithm to confirm that artificial intelligence and machine learning can solve all problems. Anyone blinded by the hype could be easily persuaded to “follow the yellow brick road” and commit the lion’s share of next year’s recruitment budget to the Wizard.

Blinded by algorithms

But, before budgets are committed and valuable university brands handed over, it is worth taking a step back, looking behind the curtain and considering the future in a more measured way. Dorothy trusted the Wizard and did battle with a Wicked Witch on his behalf before finding he wasn’t all he appeared to be. He wasn’t evil, but it turned out that her first impressions were wrong and her true friends were really the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion.

In the case of the aggregators, those that have joined early are likely to see the best returns on their initial investment because the aggregators’ client lists remain manageable and the choices for students limited. As more universities pile in, convinced by the returns of those that have gone before them, those that have brands with limited reach or are less able to pay for placement and influence are likely to sink to the bottom. As aggregators gain clients, their revenues will grow while returns for institutions are likely to diminish over time.

Relying on an algorithm to place you in front of a student is all well and good but, just as has become accepted with Google searches, it only works out if you are on page one and preferably between one and three on the list. Showing how manipulated this can be can be seen in recent research on Studyportals where a search gave 839 courses on their ‘Our Picks’ list, with the first 10 being the University of Lincoln and the top 253 shown as ‘Featured’, indicating that they had paid to be near the top. It is debatable whether this method works in the interests of the student or the paying university.

That’s why, despite all the hype around aggregators, 46% of universities polled in a recent UK Education Advisory Service survey have not taken the plunge. They will be looking at the options and ways in which they can manage their risk while optimising any benefits that the new technology can bring. We return to Dorothy on her journey through Oz to suggest some valuable allies that might form part of a comprehensive strategy.

The Scarecrow is a model for having the brains to develop strategic thinking. Any university putting together their international recruitment strategy for next year should consider this checklist:

• Aggregators. Negotiate hard for the best deal. It is all about market share and brand for them, so they want you more than you think.
• Review direct recruitment. If you get it right, it can dramatically lower your cost of sale by building strategic relationships with international schools in target markets. Look beyond ‘Tier One’ schools which may have high numbers of expatriates who may want home fee status to ‘Tier Two’ schools to attract more international students.
• Think aggressively about meaningful engagement. Nobody needs another talk on “filling out a UCAS form” or “writing a personal statement”. Involve academic colleagues, set challenges and remember to personalise ongoing contact with schools and individual students after a first presentation.
• Get a handle on social media, networkers and influencers. Just one example is to join prospective international student groups in your target markets and search for your university name and respond to the various comments and requests for advice and guidance.
• Look to your TNE partners. They can be a route for progression, but may also add value in other ways. Examples include careers advice supporting students returning to the region or using existing employer relationships to create new revenue streams for Continuing Professional Development and-or applied research.
• Put international employability at the heart of your messaging. It is the reason students, and their parents, invest in international education. Ensure your institution has access to top graduate destinations by key international markets. Get robust, representative data to demonstrate graduate outcomes and be able to tell your ‘employability story’. Whether it’s through direct recruitment, pathways, aggregators or agents, a student’s decision will directly be influenced by their ability to get a good job and be able to progress in their career.

The Tin Man reminds us to have a heart. Do not be lured by the aggregators into abandoning pre-existing and new relationships with agents, institutions, schools and key overseas stakeholders. As the list of those on aggregator sites become longer, it is the personal touch that will end up paying dividends when it comes to recruitment.

Visiting agents’ offices, international schools and speaking to prospective students will never be a waste of time, and that personal touch is likely to be a far stronger incentive for a student to apply than their scrolling through a long list of possible study options.

Where the Lion comes in is in emphasising that universities need courage to make strategic decisions that they will stick with.

That means seeing past the possible short-term bump in recruitment that aggregators will claim and remaining focused on a game plan that both mitigates risk and builds flexible, scalable and meaningful engagement with students now and in the future. Aggregators may be a part of that strategy, but they are unlikely to be the only option or always the best solution.

Some will survive and others will fall by the wayside like the Wicked Witches of the East and the West. They will not own the student recruitment ecosystem unless universities let them.

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

Image by Please Don’t sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay

Go compare – the emerging threat to higher education

Louise Nicol and Alan Preece First published in University World News on 22 May 2021

Commodification is increasingly likely to be a word that universities need to recognise, understand and apply to their business planning as technology levels the playing field for international student recruitment.

Investopedia tells us that it means ‘a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other goods of the same type’. When you put it alongside Clayton Christensen’s ‘jobs to be done’ and the growing availability of university comparison or application sites, it’s easy to see emerging comparisons with the marketplace for car insurance.

The point about the ‘jobs to be done’ approach is that it highlights that the purpose of buying a particular good or service is to ‘make progress in specific circumstances’. For most international students (and increasingly home students) the purpose of getting a degree is to get a job and to have decent career prospects.

Higher education may want students to study for love of a subject, but the harsh reality for a generation that is poorer than its parents is that this does not seem to be leading to what they need.

A world where outcome is all that counts

A 2013 report by Oliver Wyman shows that, in the United Kingdom, price comparison websites (PCWs) were securing 60% of new motor insurance policies after starting up just a decade before. It suggests that many people were content to make their purchasing decision in this way rather than studiously interrogate the terms and conditions of every company individually.

There is no doubt that the ability to consider price alongside any other factors was vital in the rise of such sites. Moreover, the report found that the reality was that many of the insurance products were virtually indistinguishable.

Choosing a university may not be exactly the same as choosing car insurance, but aggregator sites could present dozens of business and finance courses that all end with a degree from an institution.

In the case of the UK these are accredited by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). The QAA Quality Mark or Review Graphic shows that the provider has “met or exceeded the UK expectations for quality and standards in their QAA review”. In principle, every UK university with this seal of approval has degrees with equal status, but they offer them at significantly different prices.

The great and the good of higher education may be shaking their heads at this and thinking of Lord Darlington’s quote from Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windemere’s Fan about ‘a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’. But, in a situation where the customer has access to alternatives at the touch of a button, they have the means to determine the price they are willing to pay for the outcome they want.

Lord Darlington’s remark was about the nature of a cynic and it is arguable that young people are increasingly sceptical about the value of higher education.

Price, grades and rankings as differentiators

Institutions will undoubtedly look for ways of distinguishing themselves, but there are very few that have the financial muscle or marketing wit to be able to do so on a global scale.

It was not unknown before the internet for lowly institutions to inflate the tuition fees of their courses to international students on the basis that ‘price is a proxy for quality’. Better accessibility to information and ubiquitous university rankings have put a halt to that ploy so there will be a need for different tactics.

Entry qualifications, which are often seen as a signal of a quality institution, could become a way of communicating quality. But it has become clear that, with the number of universities going SATs free in the United States and the propensity for UK universities to be very flexible with international students, this is shaky ground.

It’s made even more complex by pathway operations that will offer international students a route to entry based on getting the required language level and passing the pathway’s own academic tests.

It would also seem counterproductive for most institutions to try to distinguish themselves by having high tariff entry points on a comparison site. Student matching may be sophisticated, but there is limited scope for nuance about such a defining piece of information and losing volume is not something that most institutions can afford to do.

Trying to impress with output grades is an equally risky business given the potential for grade inflation and the ability of institutions to decide how many of their students get ‘good degrees’.

University ranking may offer a different sort of quality test for students and, whether you love them or hate them, they have become a popular measure of distinction. However, research from the 2020 QS International Student Survey, recently presented at the Universities UK International Higher Education Forum, showed that there is a significant mismatch between the way rankings are compiled and the perceptions of students.

Prospective international students were asked to rank, in order of importance, what they thought a university’s good ranking indicated about the institution.

The top result was that 72% believe graduate employment rate is the most important factor. This was even above the 69% mark for the qualification level of staff members at the institution and 64% for student satisfaction. How a university is perceived by employers was deemed important by 49%, above the 48% for the number of citations in academic journals.

In short, students believed that employment outcomes and employer views were more important than staff quality, student satisfaction and research publications.

Price, ranking and employability

In that context it is disappointing that no current rankings include international student graduate employment as an input.

Within the QS World University Rankings, “employer reputation”, which is not the same as graduate employment rate but could provide some indication, accounts for just 10% of the measure. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 methodology did not include any element related to international employability or graduate outcomes.

Government-mandated graduate outcomes data collected in the majority of countries are usually only published with responses from domestic students. As the vast majority of international students – in the UK the estimate is 85% or more – still return to their home country, it would be inaccurate and misleading to use them as a guide to international student employability.

With rankings publishers forming partnerships with agents, aggregators and other interested parties to gain international student eyeballs, it is important for them to pay more attention to this important area.

International student graduate outcomes are being collected by private organisations and would bring real added value that is demonstrably aligned with the aspirations of students willing to invest to study abroad.

Without incorporating this key metric, the rankings will remain more of a vanity contest between institutions than a relevant and useful guide to applicants.

Price, ranking and international student employability are likely to become the key measures of a university’s value proposition when degree information is simple to compare and most institutions are obliged to engage with the aggregator sites.

Being a commodity product means a race to the bottom on price if that is where the institution chooses to compete.

Rankings are fickle, difficult to manage and leave the institution’s fate in the hands of publishers looking to satisfy their own ends. This is a good moment to really focus on providing the student customer with what they want and find ways to enhance value by proving that the institution provides a route to employability.

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

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Aggregator recruitment start-ups meet the old order

First printed in University World News on 01 May 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A fast-changing world

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Added value

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A zero-sum game?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

All recruitment agent aggregators are not created equal

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

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

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

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

A rapidly evolving network

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

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

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

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

The need for a quality framework

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing new

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The need for oversight

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

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

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

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

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

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Brass in Yocket for Aggregator Founders*

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

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

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

Data Management and Use

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

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

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

In Search of Substance

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

Oddities in the UK public university listings included:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going to North America

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

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

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

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

Further Insights

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

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

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

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

Some Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

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

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

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

Do Aggregators Match Up?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apply Board

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

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

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

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

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

Studyportals

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

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

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

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

Some Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

2. Search Terms Used

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

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

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

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

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