Tag: IEE

US Rebound, Pathway Woes and A World of Opportunity

Watching the gyrations of international recruitment as the pandemic, global tensions and the rise of online opportunities work their way through the sector is enough to make anyone slightly queasy.  There is still plenty to play for and with Australia looking ready to re-enter the fray in 2022 it is going to be a fascinating ride.  But for now it’s time to digest the latest Open Doors figures and have a small look under the hood to see what might be happening in the pathway sector.

The Open Doors press release trumpeted 914,095 international students for the 2020/21 academic year which was a 15% decline year on year.  But the inclusion of OPT (203,885) and non-degree students (21,151) doesn’t make a reasonable comparison with some other countries and when you strip them out the UG and Graduate student number is 689,069 – a 13% decline on the previous year.  The 45.6% year on year decline in new student enrollment becomes a slightly more palatable 39.9% with the removal of non-degree students.

But the real excitement was around the bounceback in the 860 university snapshot survey conducted by the Institute of International Education (IIE).  This suggested that new international students enrollments grew by 68% year on year to Fall 2021.  The obvious point to make is that if 2020/21 international student enrollment (including non-degree) was 145,528 then a 68% increase would take it to 244,487 which is still a lower new student intake than any year since 2011.

It’s good news that several US universities provide open and near contemporaneous access to detailed levels of information on international student recruitment which allows us to look under the hood and down to the pathway level.  It’s a state of affairs that Canada, the UK and Australia (which goes some of the way) should think of emulating.  Meanwhile, Fall 2021 updates from INTO University Partnerships (IUP) partners Oregon State University and George Mason University show how tough some are still finding things at direct and pathway levels.

Oregon State University (OSU)

IUP’s corporate website has an encouraging graph which shows the OSU international student growth story all the way up to 2019/20 so a visual moving the picture forward to Fall 2021 seems a helpful contribution.  The deterioration in undergraduate numbers is particularly evident as the university’s total enrollment falls to near 2012 levels and 2021 shows a further decline of 10% from 2020.  A wider consideration going forward may be that if there is a shift in major source countries the balance of UG to graduate enrollments may change for all universities with significant consequences for year on year stability.

Source: Oregon State University Institutional Research Office  

The situation for the INTO pathway operation at OSU is even more stark.  From a high point in 2014 the trend has been almost wholly downwards with a 78.7% decline in enrollments to 319 in 2021.  While the early stages of decline were in Academic English the most recent shrinkage has been in the core undergraduate and postgraduate intakes.

Source: Oregon State University Institutional Research Office  

INTO George Mason University (INTO GMU)

INTO GMU saw reasonable growth in its first two years and peaked at an enrollment of 387 in 2016.  Five years of decline has seen the 2021 intake down to 96 – a 75.2% fall from the peak with graduate and undergraduate numbers following similar paths.  INTO University Partnerships (IUP) July 2020 accounts show that INTO GMU’s level of debt to IUP had grown from £566k to £1.896m so it will be interesting to see how the 2021 annual report looks.

Source: GMU Office of Institutional Research and Reporting

To be fair and reasonable the announcement of the deal between IUP and GMU anticipated that the venture would add 1,000 international students to the university over five years.  In Fall 2014 the university’s census recorded a headcount of 2,136 non-resident aliens on GMU’s US campuses and by Fall 2019 that had risen to 3,247 so the original mission was accomplished.  The numbers for the pathway suggest that direct recruitment will have helped that along and tracking what happens next will be fascinating.

It’s difficult not to note that IUP, the pioneer of joint venture pathways, has had a bumpy few years with partnerships in the UK and US falling by the wayside.  Executive chairman, John Latham left the business on 31 October after being at IUP since April 2016 and just a few months after new Chief Executive, Olivia Streatfeild, was appointed around June this year.  INTO the Great Wide Open suggested some of the strategic issues the business faces with the suggestion that it “needs to establish some renewed momentum if it is to fulfil the promise of its early days of innovation, creativity and energy.”

Outside, the CEO and Chief Recruitment Officer, the IUP leadership team has been in place for five years or longer.  It’s a period that has seen six joint ventures close, three in the US and three in the UK, with little to match the growth of Shorelight in the US, no new UK partners and the recent addition of University of Western Australia in beleaguered Australia.  There are plenty of adjustments in the financial reporting but one measure of performance might be Total Comprehensive Income at Group level which looks to have moved from £8m to £12m over the period.

With the US and UK governments setting out to support ambitious growth targets and a reawakening of student mobility there should be good opportunities for nimble operations with a good foothold in key markets to move forward.  New operators and established companies, particularly in the UK, are showing that universities are still looking for support and Shorelight’s recent announcement of partnership with Austin College suggests there are opportunities in the US.  To borrow from Sherlock Holmes “the game’s afoot” but whether the answer is “elementary” remains to be seen.

Note: The data is gathered from public sources and referenced as necessary. In the event that there is a misinterpretation or error I am always happy to make amendments if approached with appropriate, verifiable information from an authoritative source.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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