international enrolment – Page 6 – View From A Bridge – management, education and personal thoughts

Pathways Pivot for India?

E.M. Forster suggested we should “mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes”² but Shorelight has restyled its website and is offering aggregator type filters which reflect a change of direction. The filters help clear up what’s been going on with their portfolio and suggests that the pressures on their pathway offerings are causing them to pivot at pace. The site gives a clear sight into the dash for direct recruitment partners that looks to be the increasingly popular modus operandi for all pathway operators.

Searching suggests that a “groundbreaking new partnership”, signed with Mercer University in October 2018 who were described as “an exemplary partner for Shorelight” at the time, doesn’t even make the roster in 2022. The pathway program in the fifteen year contract with the University of Kansas signed in 2014 seems to have come to an end just eight years later. And the pathway with the University of Central Florida (UCF) heralded in 2013 as “another big win for the students of an institution that is clearly on the move” is also over.

Only nine university partners are shown offering the full service of undergraduate and postgraduate pathway option with direct recruitment in both. Leaving aside the three American Collegiate offerings there are a total of 14 undergraduate pathways and 12 postgraduate pathways. It’s a complex offering, including three which are postgraduate direct recruitment only and with some significant restrictions – the Johns Hopkins University choices appear to be for engineering programs only.

UG Direct Only	11
UG Direct and UG Pathway Option (no PG)	14
PG Direct Only	3
PG Direct and Pathway Option (no UG)	12
PG and UG Direct with Pathway Options in both	9
UG and PG Direct Only (no pathways)	12

For new readers, the American Collegiate offering is a “choice” program hosted by American University in Washington DC and with courses through UCLA Extension in Los Angeles. The goal is then to transfer to an institution that will accept the credits. American Collegiate Live offers online courses taught by UMass Boston and bearing academic credit with “full recognition” by 13 universities

The Past Is a Different Country¹

When Elizabeth Redden reviewed the US pathway scene for InsideHigher Ed in 2018 she commented, “With a few notable exceptions, both Shorelight and INTO tend to contract with large institutions, and their partnerships tend to be larger scale.” Those days seem long past with Shorelight’s burgeoning list including a long string of smaller, regional colleges. INTO’s closures at Washington State University and Colorado State University also suggest the game has changed irrevocably.

For completeness, the current state of relationships³ on major pathway operator websites shows:

	Current Total US Partners	Current US With Pathway*	Closed in US Since 2018**
Shorelight	42	18	3
INTO	11	9	3
Navitas	3	1	7
Study Group	9	5	8

*Excludes American Collegiate
**Pathway announced/operational but no longer shown

It is difficult at this point not to recall the ill-fated words of Karen Khemka, a partner with the Parthenon Group, who said in 2014, “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.” It came towards the end of a period when private equity invested over a billion dollars in pathway operators but as I asked in a 2018 blog, “..has attention to the supply side of the equation ignored the challenges of changing patterns of demand around the world?”

Unless We Remember We Cannot Understand¹

Curiously, the pathway operators inverted the equation when they were promoting the growing supply of students to meet the demand of universities in the traditional recruiting countries of the US, UK and Australia. They quoted the dubious “8 million globally mobile students by 2025” mantra and largely ignored the potential growth of inter-country competition, relatively low cost of entry for new pathways, the rising cost of acquisition as agent and student choice grew, and the threat of substitute products through technology. Ignoring one of Porter’s Five Forces seems poor business sense but shunning all five seems less than sensible when you are investing significant amounts of money.

One talented US leader, running the American portfolio of a UK-based pathway operator, posed these fundamental questions shortly after INTO celebrated its £66m investment from Leeds Equity and Shorelight’s launch. The company carried on regardless, although US losses mounted, the quality of partners declined and the UK operation stopped adding new partners. As the Trojans found, it is unwise to ignore the insights and prophecies of a truth telling Cassandra.

Other observations that were rarely heard out or given sufficient attention included:

the home of the pathways in Australia and the UK were 13-year schooling systems where the Foundation year of a pathway completed a fundamental requirement. This gave an ideal opportunity for language tuition and academic skill development. US universities already took students after 12 years schooling and those with larger international cohorts often had well developed ELIs to accommodate language needs;
recognition that the bubble created by fast-growing demand from China, particularly at undergraduate level, was coming to an end as demographics changed;
understanding that the bounty of state-sponsored language students was fading fast and unlikely to be replaced;
for many US universities the attraction of students paying out of state fees was as attractive financially as international students and seemed more accessible as a market;
the best US universities could already recruit if they wanted to and so the opportunities to have great brand names on the website was always going to be minimal.

A Room With A View?¹

While new recruitment markets are emerging they are quite different in character and nature. The growth in students from India has led to a demand at post-graduate level, often without the need for significant English language or pathway academic skills. It seems likely that Shorelight’s willingness to take on direct recruitment for less well-known institutions reflects the reality that those students are less brand conscious, looking for lower fees and are more focused on a qualification that gives them post-study work options.

It may be a model that is less stable and less lucrative than the pathway model appeared to be in the early part of the 21^st Century but INTO and Shorelight have found the going very tough at many of their US pathways and need to do something. As INTO launches its new strategy there may even be a longer term appetite for uniting forces with Shorelight in the US to become a super-dominant player. Bringing the two groups together would offer a large direct recruitment portfolio, allow some selective reduction in competing or uncompetitive institutions, fill a gap in terms of online technology for INTO and should enable significant reductions in overheads.

All of these types of potential mergers are riddled with questions about existing financial arrangements, for example Huron Consulting has $40.9 million in convertible debt in Shorelight Holdings LLC maturing in January 2024, competing institutions and cultural fit. But when the CEO of INTO is talking explicitly about “lighter touch, lower investment” (The PIE live interview, 11 July 2022) ways of having discussions with universities, it seems reasonably clear that there is a shared interest in building non-pathway relationships. The real question will be whether the new era for organizations that cut their teeth on pathways can drive enough revenue and profitability to be worthwhile and whether consolidation offers added value.

Of course, it may also be that the days of the recruitment behemoths are over. Twenty years of pathways has created some highly skilled individuals with strong in-country contacts who could simply choose to go solo with a smaller portfolio of hand-selected university names. Faced with a choice between being one of eight names in a portfolio or being in the bag of a sales team with 37, 48 or even 100 different products to promote, a smart university might choose to be in a select pack rather than a faceless herd.

Notes

Shameless use of E.M. Forster book titles and quotes throughout the article.
Apparently, Forster adapted this quote from Henry David Thoreau
It is not always easy to interpret the websites of pathway operators and I am happy to accept authoritative and evidenced corrections and note amendments where appropriate

Image by yogesh more from Pixabay

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

New Directions At INTO University Partnerships?

It’s nearly a year since INTO University Partnerships (INTO) appointed its new chief executive and there’s been an acceleration of senior changes with new heads of recruitment, product/digital and people appointed and the addition of a chief strategy officer post to the Executive Team. It seems an open secret that another of the Executive Team old guard will leave in June and the leadership in the US looks to have been tweaked with some saying there are more change to come. That’s five new faces in a year in an Executive Team of ten so thoughts turn to what happens next and what’s the state of the portfolio?

Anyone who has seen change in a corporate environment will know the Machiavelli quote and that “there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through.” They will also know the tendency of the old guard to still get together and slip around the side of the building every morning for the habitual cigarette break where they can gossip, moan and plot about the interlopers. However, Greg Shea of the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management tells us that “change is not about consensus, it is about critical mass”, so 50% may be enough.

Access All Areas?

Rumours are swirling that the company is planning to launch a new go to market strategy in Asia, probably Vietnam, where one of the much-hyped University Access Centers (UACs) already exists in Ho Chi Min City. According to the website UACs are under development in Bangkok, Bogota, Hanoi, Jakarta and New Delhi for launch by early 2022 and a further 15 planned by 2023. In one of the big student recruitment debates currently raging, INTO seems to be putting significant investment into “boots on the ground” rather than relying solely on the efficacy of online, aggregators and virtual counselling.  

There is also talk of direct recruitment options maturing and becoming a key part of the sales strategy which seems a no brainer given INTO’s reduced number of pathway partners over the past few years. Shorelight heard the starting pistol on the direct recruitment race in the US more than six months ago so there is ground to make up. The UACs may, however, offer differentiation from Shorelight’s increasingly strident pitch as a “technology-enabled” business – when the word “technology” appears seven times in a three paragraph news announcement it must matter to them.

It also seems possible that INTO could be making a play for the ground that “global expansion experts” Sannam S4 Group has filled so well with its approach that makes “personal our number one priority”. The UACs could make useful physical locations to pitch for market entry and expansion opportunities and the notion of “internationalisation strategies from concept to delivery”. Having in country presence and a sales team on the ground was always core to the pathway operator model so it’s a logical extension to turn that into a full service pitch based on country expertise, where everything from market launch initiatives, TNE and campus management to returning graduate employability can be up for discussion with resource-constrained universities.

The Great Divide?

Time will tell how those possibilities play out but it is intriguing to think that INTO may also be taking a more radical look at how its UK portfolio* is managed to best effect by differentiating Russell Group institutions from the rest. One potential reason for considering the Russell Group institutions (including the wholly owned Manchester operation which primarily serves the University of Manchester) as a separate entity is that their performance offers the best chance for recruitment growth. Taking the pre-pandemic period the total enrollment growth of all eight INTO operations from 2016 to 2020 was 547 with the four Russell Group related pathway operations increasing by 672 while four non-Russell Group operations (which include the wholly owned World Education Centre) had an aggregate loss of 125.

Source: INTO Center Annual Reports

A direct comparison between INTO University of East Anglia and Queen’s University Belfast in the five years pre-COVID emphasises the point. It is startling to see the decline of INTO’s first ever joint venture and reflect that when 2021 reporting becomes available INTO Queen’s may have overtaken it in enrollments. Taking the five years from 2016 to 2020 INTO Queen’s increased enrollments over 63% while INTO UEA declined by 25%. Enrollment at INTO UEA has been declining almost every single year since 2015.

Source: INTO UEA and INTO Queen’s Annual Reports

While the University of East Anglia does not report its own international student enrollments separately, the impact of a declining pathway and no obvious direct enrollment growth to balance it can be seen by the fall of around £3m in international tuition fee revenue from 2018 to 2020. The joint venture drew down a loan from the UK Governments CLBILS Scheme to mitigate cash shortages during the pandemic and the University’s annual financial statements for 2020/21 tell us each partner guaranteed 50% of the loan up to a maximum of £7m. More chilling for the future is that the statements indicate that there “will be no distribution in respect of 2020/21 nor for the next three years whilst the joint venture recovers and builds up surpluses for distribution.”

Source: UEA Financial Reports and INTO UEA Annual Reports

End of the long-term Joint Venture?

The big differentiator for INTO in its early days was the notion that it signed long-term (usually thirty year) joint venture partnership deals with equal start-up investment and a 50% share in profits and losses with the university. The UK portfolio now falls some way short of that vision with INTO Newcastle becoming majority owned (51%) by IUP and INTO City having a distribution that goes 85% to Newincco 921 Ltd (an INTO subsidiary) and 15% to City Foundation Limited. Closure of INTO St Georges, INTO UEA (London), INTO Gloucestershire, INTO GCU and INTO Newcastle (London) have long rendered the multi-decade, higher education altering principles obsolete.

Even “The INTO Story” element of the company’s corporate web-site has lost the tale of founder Andrew Colin and, then, vice chancellor of the University of East Anglia, Professor David Eastwood, cooking up the joint-venture model as a mould-breaking idea. Professor Sir David Eastwood (now knighted) has become Chairman of IUP’s Board and sits alongside two representatives from Leeds Equity Partners who described IUP’s “transformational…industry-leading, relationship-driven model” when they invested £66m in 2013 to become 25% equity stake holders. At the time IUP claimed 16 university partnerships but nearly a decade later it is difficult to see more than 14 which fit with the original concept.

There has been a similar tale in the US where joint ventures at Colorado State, Washington State and West Virginia have closed in recent years and IUP has become the 100% stakeholder in its venture with St Louis University. It seems likely that, as the market has matured, the limitations of the model have become increasingly clear with competitors able to offer more agile, flexible or advantageous terms to institutions. It is also arguable that, for the pathway operator, being tied to less attractive institutions in a fiercely competitive market for international students does not offer the growth prospects that so attracted private equity a decade ago.

For INTO, the pandemic may have provided the moment for a rethink and a pause for breath where the opportunities from a resurgent UK drive for international student enrollment could be assessed. Fresh thinking on recruitment and delivery as well as a recognition that the portfolio is, if not sheep and goats, more a potpourri than a bunch of roses could bring results in the new environment. Despite launching into a highly competitive world, it probably can’t be any less productive than the past few years.

Notes

*The US environment was considered in depth in China Crisis for US Pathways and Pathways to the Future for US Big Two

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Matryoshka Dolls for THE and Study Portals

The Times Higher Education made a big play about “solidarity with Ukraine, and our rejection of Russia’s aggression” back on 2 March, 2022 and said they will keep the situation under constant review. Despite all that has happened since then nothing seems to have changed in the THE response and they continue to promote Russian universities in their current league tables. They seem to have taken no action at all to reduce the THE Student promotion of Russian universities with detailed information about the institutions being routed through their partner in inaction Study Portals.

It’s a little like a Matryoshka (commonly known as Russian) Doll where the parts are nested inside each other so you can’t see the entire thing at once. The start is when a student searches on the THE Student site and finds that there are 359 courses in the Russian Federation and they are all given equal prominence to any other course.

The curious student clicks a specific course, say on Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and finds that they can study this in Russia. The neat trick is that they have to go off to the Study Portals site to pursue their enquiries so THE can presumably say it is not having specific publicity about the institution on its site.

A month or so ago Study Portals said it was “terrified and upset at our core seeing the war in Ukraine unfold” but was cautious to not say anything about taking action to even reduce the prominence of Russian universities on its website. So here is the link from THE Student promoting study at Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU).

It probably goes without saying that Andrey I. Rudskoy, Rector of the University is one of the signatories to the infamous statement from the Russian Union of Rectors saying it is “..very important these days to support our country, our army, which defends our security, to support our President…”

Rector Rudskoy also comments in an interview that league table rankings are “a marketing tool for attracting external audiences and working with academic reputation”. His position echoes that of the Russian government in their desire for credibility and prestige through rankings. So it is no real surprise to see Study Portals focus on its rankings position.

And then the whole circle becomes complete with the list of league table rankings which Study Portals will be able to continue even if the Ukraine war goes on until next year because the THE are doing nothing to suspend Russian universities from their rankings. QS and US News and World Report also continue to promote the institutions.

To compound matters Study Portals has no compunction about promoting Russia as a study destination.

The page goes on to tell us about Russians who have become globally famous. “From athletes like Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova, to composers like Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, or Shostakovich, to great authors like Nabokov, and Dostoyevsky (and all other “-evsky”s, and “-ov”s and “-ova”s), Russia gave us of the most influential people in history.”

Sharp eyed observers will note that of the two living people one became a US citizen in 2010 and the other has lived in the US since she was seven. The others are all dead and there is a conspicuous failure to mention the Russian who is the most globally influential and notorious at the current time. The word omission in the sentence probably reflects the care and attention to detail but does nothing to hide the flimsiness of the insight.

That’s it really. There are no notes on any of the pages to suggest that students might be wary of attending a country where they can be carted off to jail for using the world “war”. No reflection of the “assault on academic freedom” in Russia has accelerated in recent years with universities having their licenses suspended, students expelled, Government control of foreign academic collaboration and prevented academics attending international conferences.

Matryoshka dolls are often carved to reflect a theme and embody the concept of an idea within an idea. The idea that THE Student and Study Portals seem to be capturing is that everything is normal and there is no reason to raise realities or suggest that anything is amiss. That seems quite wrong.

CHINA CRISIS FOR US PATHWAYS?

My early January blog on the two big US pathway operators focused on specific examples of INTO University Partnership’s (INTO) pathway problems without similar insights into some of Shorelight’s major partners. There had been some insights into lacklustre performance at Louisiana State University, Auburn University and the University of Kansas back in October 2019 (Shine a Light on Shorelight) but an update is overdue. There is also some news from INTO as it confirms new faces in senior management* and some fundamental changes in its relationship with university partners.

In the US the most significant point is that INTO has become the sole owner of what was established as a joint-venture with St Louis University. This follows the closure of joint venture operations at Marshall, Washington State and Colorado state over the past two years. INTO’s annual report does not list any shareholding in the pathway at Hofstra University so it now has only seven joint-venture partnerships in the US.

The big question, given that all of the most recent US announcement from both INTO and Shorelight have been for direct entry partnerships, is whether the bubble has totally burst on pathways. Without a significant return of students from China it is difficult to see that predominantly graduate growth from India is going to sustain them. Looking at the way enrollments have panned out in Fall 2021 suggests this could be the direction of travel.

Shorelight Stumble at Auburn And American

American University is generally reputed to be one of the star performers in the Shorelight portfolio but the enrollments reflect the harsh realities of the pandemic. The numbers indicate that enrollments in Accelerator/Collegiate/PSE courses were already in decline before Fall 2019. Despite the limited bounceback in overall enrollments to the US reported by Open Doors in Fall 2021 there is no evidence the Shorelight pathways are seeing an upturn.

Source: American University Office of Institutional Research and Assessment

The story continues when American University’s total Fall enrollments are reviewed. Separate axis are used to reflect the significant difference in volume between Chinese an Indian students and the only upturn in Fall 2021 was in Indian graduate students (about 10 students more year on year). The decline in Chinese undergraduates begins the year after the fall in Accelerator/Collegiate decline and suggests the longer term vulnerability that American University has to declining Chinese numbers.

Source: American University Office of Institutional Research and Assessment

The combined enrollments in the first and second term Global Masters Accelerator at Auburn University shows similar characteristics but with even more significant declines in volume. Total enrollment has fallen from a peak of 87 in 2017 to just 11 in Fall 2021 with the decline in Chinese students driving the outcome. Attracting students from India to pathway programs seems unlikely to make up the shortfall.

Source: Auburn University Office of Institutional Research

Less Spirit at INTO Saint Louis University

Saint Louis University has seen a significant shift in direct enrollment graduate numbers in 2021 with Indian students outnumbering those from China. This does not, however, go far enough to counterbalance the decline in Chinese undergraduates over the past five enrollment years. Evidence from other INTO pathway operations has shown that this plays out even more dramatically at pathway level because Indian graduate students generally have less need of the services provided.

Source: Saint Louis University Office of Institutional Research

INTO St Louis (INTO SLU) was first established as a joint venture in September 2017, becoming, at the time, the seventh INTO partner in the US. Between the financial reporting in 2018 and 2020 the debt owed by the joint venture to INTO had grown from £1.8m to £3.5m and the current circumstances suggest there is little likelihood of it being repaid in the near future. If pathways are not enrolling sufficient students they quickly become unviable and need significant financial support from parent organizations.

INTO’s most recent Annual Report is coy on the matter and simply reports that “subsequent to the year end INTO’s shareholding in INTO SLU LLC increased to 100%”. Having lost three pathways in recent years there was probably little appetite for losing another partner. The upswing in interest from Indian students may have tipped the balance to continue a pathway while getting exclusive rights for direct enrollment of international students.

Overall, INTO’s US operations all appear to be increasingly indebted to them with even USF slipping from creditor to debtor in the most recent report and accounts. While it is reasonable to expect new businesses to take a while to get into profit INTO hasn’t opened a joint venture in the US since Illinois State University in 2018 since when the total level of indebtedness across all US operations has nearly doubled from £18m to £35m.

Source: INTO University Partnership Annual Reports***

The most recent accounts for INTO Illinois State University LLC (INTO ISU) make quite interesting reading with the financial deal including a Promissory Note with INTO North America which allows borrowing up to $6m in operating capital with an interest rate of 6%. Another number that catches the eye is that marketing expenses were an eye watering 77% of tuition revenue. The pandemic caused the LLC to cease operations for a period of up to 23 months, effective August 1, 2020 (the “Deferment Term”) and it will be interesting to see what happens next.

China Crisis for Pathways?

It is no secret that the early growth of pathways in the US owed an enormous amount to English Language scholarship students from Saudi Arabia and the acceleration of incoming students from China. As numbers of the former fell away pathways became increasingly reliant on the latter which made the COVID-19 situation particularly difficult. The $64 million dollar (sic) (and maybe more) question is whether the future will see a significant return to those pre-pandemic conditions.

Looking on the bright side might involve pointing to the growth in Chinese undergraduate applicants to the UK (up 12% year on year in January 2022) for entry later this year. A more negative view might be reflected in the range of reasons summed up in “How Washington’s hawkish China policy alienates young Chinese”. Optimists could point to the recent ending of the “crackdown on Chinese research ties” while pessimists would suggest that the countries are “locked in a stalemate”.

Back in 2014, Peggy Blumenthal, a 30-years at IIE and a senior counselor to its then president, Allan Goodman, discussed the underlying issues with Science magazine and its worth a look. China had devoted significant resources to build graduate capacity, more of the professors had been trained in the US and Europe, and even at that time “the added value of a U.S. graduate degree has shrunk in relation to a comparable Chinese degree…for the vast majority of Chinese students.” It’s arguable that the quality of Chinese universities has increased further and that there has been little to significantly increase the lure of a Western degree.

What is also clear is that, as discussed in a recent blog, 2022 is likely to be the first year that all four major recruiting companies are competing effectively at the same time and there have been a number of increasingly powerful entrants to add to the mix. There seems every likelihood of continuing international tensions and the potential for students to be “weaponized” by their home government as a form of economic and cultural sanction.

The most prestigious universities in traditional recruiting countries have little need to worry but the early signs from Fall 2021 are not particularly encouraging for universities or pathway operators that have relied on Chinese students paying high fees. While the growth of graduate students from India might provide some direct recruitment solace for universities this is not going to resolve the issues facing the pathway sector. Shorelight appears to have already set its sights on building a direct recruitment portfolio of institutions over and above any pathway interest but since the University of Arizona announcement in June 2020 INTO appears to have no obvious sense of direction to face the changing market dynamics.

Notes

*Tom Hands has recently joined as Chief Recruitment Officer. He has previously worked in recruitment positions for Study Group, Navitas and Kaplan. Namrata Sarmah joined at the end of 2021 as Chief Product Officer having previously been Senior Director of Product at ViacomCBS

**As ever, research is presented in good faith but with a recognition that classifications of courses can be complex. I am happy to receive any authoritative corrections (with explanations) and would record them as notes on this blog.

***A review on 1 September 2022 showed that the INTO University Partnerships Annual Reports for 2020 and 2021 carry different figures in reporting of debtor information for INTO Washington State University and INTO Illinois State University. In the Report to July 31 2020 the debtor levels are shown as £3.156m and £5.438m respectively while in the Report to July 31 2021 (which shows the prior year as a comparison alongside the current year) the debtor levels are shown as £1.873m and £3.365m respectively. The July 31 2021 Report appears to make this change due to a prior year restatement and the graph has been adjusted to reflect that. This does not alter the explanatory text in the paragraph immediately before the graph.

India Stealing a March on China for UK Universities

Back in March 2021 my blog considered the way that shifts in recruitment volumes between India and China could have a significant impact for higher education institutions. The release of the latest HESA statistics by UK institution have borne out the hypothesis. Building on another theme they also suggest that the value of league tables as a recruitment aid will rapidly diminish as students from strengthening recruitment markets ignore UniVanity rankings to pursue value and employment opportunities.

Between 2019/20 and 2020/21 the total number of students from India recorded by HESA was 84,555, an increase of 29,090 year on year. 54% of the increase (15,616) went to just 13 universities. Those ‘full offering’ universities growing by over 1,000 year on year to 2020/21 were all in the top ten for growth from 2018/19 to 2019/21. BPP University’s growth was noted last year and is included in the table below to emphasise the importance of institutions who position themselves as “building careers through education”.

	Volume growth 2019/20 to 2020/21	Volume growth 2018/19 to 2019/20
University of Hertfordshire	2355	1575
Ulster University	2040	1230
University of East London	1505	1710
BPP University	1485	1640
The University of Central Lancashire	1185	1180
Coventry University	1030	810

A couple of interesting features in the year-on-year comparisons is that the biggest year on year loser of students from India at -455 is De Montfort University (DMU) while Leicester University, in the same city, grew by 780. This could be a policy-led decision by De Montfort under its relatively new leadership or it might be that private recruitment partner Navitas has been able to help Leicester dominate over DMU’s pathway provider Oxford International Education Group. In another snippet of pathway related detail Study Group registered a loss of 595 students year on year from China while growing numbers from India by 230.

As in the previous years Russell Group universities made very little headway in increasing their numbers from India with the University of Glasgow’s +200 looking to be top of the pile. But unlike the previous year numbers from China have fallen away significantly for some. The table below shows the top ten for volume growth in the previous year compared to the latest HESA figures.

	Volume growth 2019/20 to 2020/21	Volume growth 2018/19 to 2019/20
Edinburgh	995	1410
Leeds	-335	1235
Southampton	-445	1190
Sheffield	400	1150
UCL	2975	1065
Manchester	2115	885
Birmingham	-430	860
Newcastle	-385	855
Kings College	1460	725
Nottingham	-750	725

This reinforces the potential for changes in recruitment markets making significant differences to the potential of individual universities to invest for the future. A stark example of this might be Nottingham where the Russell Group University of Nottingham (UN) lost 750 students from China and had 75 fewer from India – a net loss of 825. Nottingham Trent University (NTU) saw numbers from China decline by 95 but those from India up by 140.

At one level this could be an interesting test for private pathway partner Kaplan who service both universities. But more fundamentally level its worth reflecting that NU’s tuition fee for a Management PGT degree is £24,500 compared to NTU’s £18,000. As a value proposition it may be that the extra 36% on the price is simply not justifiable to a student who is self-funding. It is also reasonable to consider that UN’s decline in Chinese enrollments may be a feature of individuals choosing not to transfer from the campus in China during COVID and may right itself in time.

It seems difficult to argue that the driving force of the India market is not going to have a growing impact on the UK higher education scene. Universities that have long relied on their historical status and ranking to persuade wealthy, brand conscious students to enrol may find that self-funded students whose main ambition is to work in the UK after studying are less easy to lure. Price points and graduate outcomes could become far more powerful signals than whether the THE, QS and AWUR algorithms choose to favour the rich, old and elitist.

UniVanity League Table

Unveiling a new league table and asking people to look is a bit like extolling the virtues of a spare tyre. It’s not needed for any functional purpose, takes up space that could be used for better purposes and does not assist with current performance. Little wonder that about 30% of new cars don’t have one and something of surprise that university league tables continue to proliferate with the support and knowing glances of institutions that should know better.

The UniVanity League Table emerges from a review of the 141 institutional strategic plans and home pages of universities who are members of UUK. The table reflects a mixture of fact at a point in time, a scoring system* laced with bias, and an entirely personal component to replicate those well-established rankings that rely on questionnaire responses. It’s a similar methodology (or ‘mythology’ as a US News and World Report ex-editor told Malcolm Gladwell) to many of the major league tables.

53 of 141 institutions reviewed used rankings from major league tables** on their home page but, the UniVanity Table focuses on 27 who state that achieving a ranking, either explicitly or implicitly in a main league table, is a strategic objective. Elevating pursuit of rankings to this level looks, in many cases, like a vanity project and is certainly a distraction from the core business of a university. If fox-hunting is the ‘unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable’, chasing rankings may be considered the insecure in pursuit of the unnecessary.

Readers can be assured that this table, unlike most others, is made available without advertising from institutions and will not be developed or exploited for commercial gain or to build a database of students, parents, agents or government officials who might look at it. A celebratory event may be held if a sufficient number of universities are willing to invest their scarce resources to buy a table of ten at an appropriately salubrious London venue where they can eat, drink and dance the night away.

UNIVANITY LEAGUE TABLE 2022

University	Stated Aim	Score
Southampton	top 10 UK and towards a top 50 internationally	26
Bristol	firmly established among the world’s top-50 universities (draft)	23
Durham	The Times/Sunday Times League Tables Top 5	22
Queen’s Belfast	top 175 in global league tables	21
Birmingham	within the top 50 global institutions in the leading international tables	20
Plymouth	Top 30 in national league tables Top 250 in international ranking	20
Manchester	in the top 25 in leading international rankings	18
Glasgow Caledonian	Annual improvement in Impact Rankings score	18
Lancaster	progress towards a top 100 position in key global rankings	14
East Anglia	as a top 20 university in all of the main UK university league tables	14
Essex	top 25 Times Good University Guide..top 200 Times Higher Education World Rankings	14
Liverpool	among the top 20 UK universities in the world rankings	14
Central Lancashire	League table ranking (Guardian, Times, GUG)	14
Heriot Watt	World University ranking top 250	13
West of Scotland	recognised as a world leading university ranked inside the top 200	13
Cardiff	UK top 20 in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide..world top 200..QS World University Rankings..TimesHigher Education World University Rankings, the Academic Ranking of World Universities and the Best Global Universities Ranking, and in the top 100 of at least one of these	12
City	Top 20 in the Times and Sunday Times University League Table	11
West London	KPI – Aggregate League table position Top 50	11
Solent	Times Higher Education Impact Rankings Top third of rankings	11
Surrey	reaching the top 200 in THE and QS, and the top 300 in ARWU	8
Huddersfield	Top 300 Times and QS World University Rankings	8
Liverpool John Moores	reputation reflected in..THE WUR: performance of disciplines in Times and Sunday Times	8
South Bank	being in the top 500 QS and THE rankings	8
Newcastle	global Top 100 as measured by at least one of the main university rankings	7
Royal College of Art	number 1 for art and design in the QS World University Rankings. The College will occupy the same position in 2021	7
Buckingham New	80th or better in aggregate across league tables	5
Stirling	one of the top 25 universities in the UK	4

You had one eye in the mirror**

Russell Group universities dominate the table with all top five places and nine of the overall positions which suggests that they feel a real need for external validation. It’s a reminder of the old McKinsey hiring dictum to recruit people who are “smart…driven by their insecurity;and..competitive”. Institutions that are in a club claiming to be for the “UK’s leading research-focused universities” should probably feel more comfortable in their quality.

The Group has always been slightly ambivalent about league tables with various press releases making the point that “League tables shouldn’t be used in isolation to make judgements about the quality of an institution..” (2015) and “Ranking universities is fraught with difficulties..” (2014). Perhaps it is the division in the views of the members themselves that has caused the Group to be silent on the issue in recent years. It is also something that Universities UK seems to steer well clear of with a search showing no comments on rankings and league tables at all.

Well you’re where you should be all the time

Tom Peter’s book What Gets Measured Gets Done borrowed the phrase from what he considers the soundest piece of management advice he ever heard, which is why it matters when universities elect to chase specific league table targets. With many strategic plans reaching a decade into the future it is just possible that the real driver is the ease with which current management can make supposedly visionary statements with no accountability for delivery. There is also a good deal of fudging of the actual measurement leaving future reporting to decide which table to report against.

Durham University’s strategy set a target to be Top 5 in the Times/Sunday Times league table by 2027 which could reflect that this is a much easier set of parameters to manage than the THE World Rankings where the institution’s position dropped from 96 to 162 from 2017 to 2022.

Liverpool takes a more nuanced stance in wanting to achieve “a UK top 20 worldwide ranking in a recognised international league table by 2026.” At one level this suggests that it is content to see its global position decline as long as other UK universities see the same or greater decline in their position. In the THE World Rankings the university was 25^th in the UK and its overall world position had fallen from 158 to 178 since 2017.

Birmingham has made some progress but is falling some way short of its stated ambition of “..ranking within the top 50 global institutions in the leading international tables”. Since 2017, they have moved from 130 to 105 in the THE but have fallen from 79 to 90 in the QS rankings since 2019 and have been becalmed in the 101-150 ranking of AWRU for the last five years. The timescale for achieving top 50 is 2030 but the incoming Vice Chancellor must be wondering how the growing strength of other countries will mitigate against further progress.

The great shame is that each university has a Strategic Plan that is choc full of ideas, creativity, energy and brilliant stories of how they intend to make students, the economy and the world better off. These are good reasons that holding the institutions sense of worth, progress and well being ransom to a vainglorious punt on league tables makes so little sense.

You Gave Away the Things You Loved

Reviewing over 140 university Strategic Plans is a reminder of the transformative power that institutions have and the tradition of diversity, quality and excellence that they offer. It reminded me of Sir Howard Newby, then chief executive of HEFCE, commenting that, “I think the English – and I do mean the English – do have a genius for turning diversity into hierarchy..”. Perhaps the league table compilers play on this genius to tempt universities into trading instincts for collaboration and cooperation for a system that encourages game playing and one upmanship.

Whatever the reason, the willingness to be judged by external forces seems contrary to the notion of universities as autonomous, self-governing institutions. The sector has, over time, grumbled mightily about REF, teaching quality framework, NSS and others, so willingly paying homage at the altar of QS, THE, AWUR et al seems out of character. It is reasonable to measure progress but there are many more targeted mechanisms for determining performance.

By engaging so actively and giving prominence to league tables, universities are also giving significant opportunities for the commercialization of data from potential students. It is another example of a sector which is struggling to come to terms with the reality that for many organizations education has become just another business opportunity. External investment and for-profit organizations are very welcome where they serve the interests of students, research and teaching but the sector should act collectively to prevent exploitation and ensure that it receives a reasonable slice of any revenue being generated.

Notes

* The final score is generated from six categories. These are: mention (explicit or implicit) of ranking/tables as a measure of performance in the strategic plan; whether the strategic plan was downloadable/easily searchable; how many years are left on the plan; whether rankings were mentioned on the university homepage; Russell Group membership and; whether the compiler had visited the campus and enjoyed the experience.

**’main league table’ generally refers to those published by Times Higher Education, QS Quacquarelli Symonds, or Academic World University Ranking by Shanghai Rankings or in the UK by major national newspapers or the Complete University Guide.

***Sub-headings are, aptly, from You’re So Vain, a song by Carly Simon and released in 1972. It topped the charts in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and sparked years of speculations as to its subject. Simon has gone as far as to say that the song is about three men and Warren Beatty is one (verse two). Separately, she said the ‘apricot scarf’ was worn by American writer, Nick Delbanco.

****If any of the universities listed feel I have misunderstood the intention of their strategic plan or referred to an incorrect/out of date version I will be happy to receive authoritative corrections and note them on this blog.

Pathways to the Future for US Big Two?

Open Doors Fall 2021 snapshot offered some solace for international student recruiters in the US after the strong headwinds of recent years. It comes after nearly two years of pandemic that has seen a focus on technology enabled learning options, increased online language testing and a brutal culling of pathway relationships during 2019 and 2020. A deeper dive into the numbers suggests that fundamentals are changing in ways that will have a material impact on the future of the private pathway providers.

Global demographics indicate that future growth will be driven by India and south-east Asia with a Mitchell Institute report indicating that “India has now overtaken China as the largest source country of international students.” The majority of Open Doors respondents are now prioritizing recruitment in India – 56% in 2021 compared to 45% in 2019 – compared to China where the percentage is now 51% compared to 58% two years ago. However, an increasing numbers of international students seeking graduate level study and having reasonable proficiency in English will brings challenges for pathways in their existing format.

If Chinese students become less willing to travel due to caution over health, political factors and declining returns on investment in a western degree the problems will be compounded. INTO’s own research from November 2021 notes that agents from China, Hong Kong and Macau think that the US has handled the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out considerably worse than the UK or Australia. The rankings for the US being “welcoming and safe” are even less helpful.

Source: Agent Perspective on International Education in the Context of COVID-19, INTO University Partnerships, November 2021

The two established pathway operators with most at stake in the US are Shorelight and INTO but recent developments suggest differences in their willingness and ability to innovate, adjust strategy and move decisively. It has been eight years since Shorelight burst onto the scene with a model that looked like an enhanced version of INTO’s pathway operation but VP Imran Oomer’s early claim that “we wanted to come in without a formula” was an indication of being willing to adapt. Shorelight now has at least 17 pathway partnerships while INTO has lost Marshall University, Washington State University and Colorado State University in the past three years to reduce it to a portfolio of nine US partners.

Past success is not always an indicator of future prosperity but a brief review of the two companies suggests how they might fare under current circumstances. The context and references are in the public domain and offer some grounds for speculation about possible directions of travel.

Shorelight

Shorelight announced five new partners towards the end of 2021 – Eureka College (Illinois), Austin College (Texas), St Thomas Aquinas (New York), Southwestern College (Texas) and Wilson College (Pennsylvania). It seems a significant shift of emphasis for a business which had previously focused almost entirely on partnerships with US News and World Report nationally ranked institutions. The announcements say that they are “accepting international undergraduate student applications through Shorelight” which indicates these are not the full pathway model.

It’s always been difficult to see inside Shorelight’s finances and performance but there have been several indicators that enrollment aspirations for some partnerships have fallen short of expectations. Huron Consulting Group Inc’s third quarter filing in November 2021 show that the ‘fair value’ of the convertible debt investment in Shorelight was reduced from $64.4m (December 2020) to $61.5m. The total cost basis over three tranches (2014, 2015 and 2020) was $40.9m with a consolidated maturity date of January 2024.

In November 2021, CIBC Innovation Banking announced new debt financing for Shorelight although the amount was undisclosed. The announcement says that the money will be used to “invest in automated, self-service tools for students, counselors and universities engaged on its platform” which may be a glimpse of the future of the Shorelight business. This echoes the language of the recruitment aggregators who have been able to secure significant investor funding in recent years.

The latest surge in partners may be designed to impress potential new investors. US recruitment conditions have eased and a robust pitch highlighting online delivery, long-term contractual partnerships with well-known brands and a burgeoning new stream of direct recruitment partners could be attractive. Memories of the past few years of international enrollment declines are fading but with the mid-term elections in 2022 and a Presidential election now just three years away it could be a small window of opportunity.

More intriguingly, Shorelight may be in a position where a capacity for online delivery, the option of face-to-face study and a technology-led recruitment capability has made it into a credible prototype one-stop shop for student needs. A decent number of strong brand names, a deepening pool of price points and a widening range of institutional types makes the portfolio big enough to provide a credible breadth of choice. With reasonable post-study work options in the US, a more benign visa regime and evidence of demand from high-growth source countries there could be some attraction to playing the longer game.

INTO

INTO’s performance has been reasonably well recorded over the past few years and the new year sees the six-month anniversary of CEO Olivia Streatfield’s tenure. The recent departure of the company’s Chief Recruitment Officer offers scope for a revitalization of a top team that has been virtually unchanged for over five years. Cumulative losses of partners in both the US and UK may have undermined the company’s ability to capitalize on blossoming UK enrollment and the resurgence of the US.

Over a five-year period, where it has lost six face-to-face pathways while major competitors have been growing their portfolios, INTO’s competitive edge has looked increasingly blunted. Linking with Cialfo arguably handed ownership of a key recruitment channel to a third party after the 2020 annual report had trumpeted the acquisition of Schoolapply AG as “part of its strategy to continue develop (sic) its technology platform to maximise student recruitment…”. Schoolapply was closed down in February 2021, just nine months after the purchase.

There are few signs of INTO responding effectively to the opportunities arising from online learning. By contrast Study Group has Insendi, CEG Digital has seven online university partners, Shorelight has Shorelight Live and American Collegiate Live, and Kaplan is working with Purdue and has online UK partners. Even relative newcomer Oxford International Education Group, which is opening its first US operation in 2022, has established a “Digital Institute”.

INTO’s most recent partnership in the US is the direct recruitment relationship with University of Arizona (UoA) which reflects the recent direction of partnerships announced by Shorelight and Study Group. It is not a competitive differentiator but may be a wise first step away from the pathway model at a point when enrollments at Oregon State University offer an insight into the problems as international student mobility trends shift. Declining enrollments at the INTO OSU pathway operation are driven by a significant decline in students from China but there is no evidence that enrollments from India are increasing to pick up the slack.

Source: Oregon State University, Institutional Research Enrollment and Demographic Reports

The past year has also seen INTO announce its first partnership in Australia which provides an even more complex set of options for its sales team to manage. Diversity can be an attractive feature but often comes at the expense of spreading management talent too thinly and confusing the market. By contrast Shorelight has retained a laser focus on working with US institutions while diversifying the ways in which it can serve the needs of agents and students.

INTO’s UK and US portfolio could support a level of organic growth as student mobility increases but a trade purchaser looking to beef up existing operations in the UK, US and Australia may be better able to optimize the assets. With money still cheap and a lot of dry powder around it would not be too difficult to see one of the major global players, with relevant management chops and sales expertise, trying to find some synergies. It would also be interesting to see if the management team has enough confidence in its skill and ability to invest in itself, buy out the Leeds Equity stake and compete aggressively in the new world.

It is appropriate to reflect that demand for US higher education remains strong throughout south Asia and that record numbers of study visas were approved for students from India. For operators that can meet that demand with a mixed US portfolio offering realistic options while also catering to the students considering online options as part of their planning process the future could be bright. While reflections on the future of the current big two pathways operators are speculative there is no doubt it will need an agile, flexible and committed approach to make the most of the changed circumstances.

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.