Companies House confirmed on 4 August that, “Upon checking the company record I can confirm that the LLP’s accounts for the period ending 31/07/2021 have not yet been received for filing at Companies House.” This blog speculates without knowing the detail behind the late filing and it may turn out to be simply a matter of administrative failure. Time will tell and I would be happy to provide an update if anyone with appropriate authority from the company or university contacts me with a plausible explanation.
At one end of the spectrum the failure may simply be down to bad planning and Companies House list fines starting at £150 for being a month late to £1500 for being six months over the filing deadline. They do go on to say that “Not filing your confirmation statements, annual returns or accounts is a criminal offence – and directors or LLP designated members could be personally fined in the criminal courts.” One would guess that it’s unlikely to get that far.
The delay does, however, raise the possibility that INTO and the University of East Anglia are in discussions about the future of the joint venture and are delaying the filing until a direction is clear. It would require someone with appropriate accounting/auditing qualifications (which I don’t have) to fully explain the complexities of what needs to be declared in terms of timing (from balance sheet date to authorization for issue) and whether events are adjusting or non-adjusting. Change would not, however, be unprecedented because recent history has seen INTO become 51% owners and take “significant control” of INTO Newcastle University LLP and new profit/loss sharing arrangements at INTO City LLP were noted in the 2020 accounts.
Slip Sliding Away
A previous blog noted the trajectory of INTO UEA’s student enrollments and the slide in the university’s international tuition fee revenue. The parlous state of affairs at the joint venture was confirmed with the statement 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.” All that alongside a £7m loan guaranteed equally by both partners might be drivers of a discussion about the future.
The University’s Council meeting in October 2021 was advised by the Vice Chancellor that at that point it was falling short of recruitment targets by c1,000 students. This might suggest that international enrollments were also not picking up and the feed through from the joint venture was not as hoped. It all seems good fodder for the Council member who requested at the Council meeting the following month an executive summary of “what was keeping the VC awake at night.”
One other thing that might be on that list for both the University and the joint venture is that both look to be poorly positioned to seize the opportunities offered by India as the major growth market for the UK. According to HESA data, UEA’s intake from India rose from 40 to 175 between 2016/17 and 2020/21 in a period when total Indian students in the UK rose from 16,900 to 84,555. It is a period when UEA’s enrollment of students from China fell from 1,320 to 810.
Winds of Change
The trail of INTO’s long term, joint venture model has been patchy and it has, arguably, not proved to be as responsive to university needs as the more traditional stand-alone pathway model. In the UK five operational joint ventures have closed – INTO Glasgow Caledonian University (2020), INTO St Georges University (2017), INTO University of Gloucestershire (2019), INTO UEA London (2014), and INTO Newcastle London (2020). In the US there have been closures at INTO Marshall (2019), INTO Colorado State University (2021) and INTO Washington State University (2021) as well as INTO St Louis becoming fully owned by INTO in 2021.
A recent blog noted the shift in Shorelight’s range of university relationships from joint-venture pathways oriented to direct recruitment. INTO has not been as dynamic in making that move but the shifting sands and complexities are captured in the grid below. This presumes that the University of East Anglia remains a joint venture pathway operation with the university.
Joint Venture Pathway with University
Pathways (wholly or majority owned)
Direct Recruitment Only
Direct Admit Affiliates*
US
8
1
2
8
UK
5
3
1
0
Australia
1
0
0
0
*Described as “American universities that offer more choices to international students who seek direct admission.”
The turbulence in international student recruitment is being felt throughout the sector and pathway operations are particularly sensitive to changes impacting the relatively small number of student that require extensive language support alongside academic study skills. There are many examples of changing course portfolios, including International Year One, which reflect creative responses to new demands and developing visa scenarios to broaden the market for pathways. It may be that the continuing need for flexibility brings an end to the long-term, deeply embedded, joint-venture vision that was considered by some to be an industry game-changer.
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 21st 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
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)
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We are familiar with the notion that there are “lies, damned lies and statistics” so whenever an organisation throws up figures to paint a scenario that is in their interests it’s always worth taking a second look at the source data. Students, parents and agents should particularly beware claims made primarily for marketing purposes when safety issues are at stake. Caution is certainly a good approach to take with the recent collaboration between Shorelight and US News Global Education (USNGE) which includes a, so called, University Safety Index and league table of the safest States for international students.
There is no place in the world that is entirely free of potential trouble, and international students should be alert to both the joys and the potential troubles of studying overseas*. The widespread rise in hate crimes around the world and specific incidents of racism are as concerning for the UK, Australia and Canada as the USA. Reputable universities work hard to make their campuses as safe as possible but the advice to incoming international students should be pragmatic rather than marketing gloss.
There is no reason to believe that the numbers used are incorrect but the way the Index is constructed shows Washington D.C., Vermont and Massachusetts as the top three states of “the “extremely safe” category for international students.” In September 2021 these States were listed as the top three of the list for Hate Crimes per capita in a 24/7 Wall Street report using FBI Uniform Crime Data and the FBI data shows Washington D.C. as having the US’s most violent crime rate per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020. Further analysis suggests these anomalies reflect a selection and conflation of data that may mislead international students about the relative safety of their study destination.
While focusing on a comparison to criminal offenses two decades ago the Shorelight/USNGE’s own graph (below) shows that the “criminal offenses on campus” were comparatively higher in 2019 than five years before. Also, the long term decline is largely due to a fall in motor theft, robbery and burglary which masks other trends on offenses against the person. The U.S. Department of Education’s Campus Safety and Security Survey (CSS Survey), the source of the Shorelight/USNGE data on criminal offenses, shows that hate crimes, “sex-offences-forcible” and violence against women (VAWA) have increased in recent years.
Since 2014 the number of cases historically recorded by the CSS Survey as “Sex Offenses – Forcible”, increased 65% from 7,955 to 13,121 by 2019. Since 2014 these offenses have been reported separately as “rape” or “fondling” with the former growing 33.5% and the latter by 124.2%. A National Center for Education Statistics summary reflects these figures and notes that “according to reports in a student survey administered at several dozen large universities, officially reported sexual assaults represented only a minority of sexual assaults that occurred.”
There has been excellent progress in reducing motor theft, burglary and robbery but the situation appears to have worsened in terms of sexually related offenses. Offenses recorded as “aggravated assault” also remain stubbornly around the 4,000 mark. Mixing and matching the categories of crimes against property and crimes against the person fails to offer clarity that might be helpful in assessing risk.
The principle of aggregating data across a state is, itself, highly questionable when it comes to giving a student information on selecting a specific destination. The statistician joke, credited to C. Bruce Grossman, that with your head in the oven and your feet in the freezer you are comfortable on average, comes to mind. This consequences are evident as soon as you begin to consider more wide-ranging data about the crime rates in different cities.
Washington DC, according to the Index is an ‘Extremely Safe’ State despite a 2019 crime rate which some sources indicate is 1.8 times higher than the US average and higher than in 95.5% of US cities. American University’s campus may be a haven of civility and courtesy but students would probably be wise to exercise appropriate caution when they move onto the surrounding streets. The university provides personal safety tips to international students which is both responsible and appropriate.
Hate Crime is Relevant to International Students
The report is heavy on presenting data to reassure international students, yet surprisingly silent on the incidence of Hate Crimes recorded by the CSS Survey. It was a 2008 amendment to the Clery Act which required post secondary institutions to report these incidents. In 2018 the National Center for Education Statistics indicated that 43% of reported Hate Crimes in 2018 were motivated by racial bias.
The data presents a grim picture with a spike over the most recent years which is of relevance to students travelling to the US from abroad. This may not fit the Shorelight/USNGE narrative but it is an important issue if students are to be given the most complete picture. The Australian response to international students who are victims of crime might also inspire positive initiatives to engage productively with the issue rather than ignore it.
At a state level Shorelight/USNGE report considers Massachusetts “extremely safe” for international students but the state’s campuses rank behind only New York (250) and California (174) in terms of reported Hate Crimes in the Survey. The trend has been remorselessly upward for a decade. In the broader Massachusetts context even the Editorial Board of the Boston Globe has recently argued that the situation in the state is serious enough to warrant its legislature updating hate crime laws.
It is not unusual for organizations to give the most positive presentation of their situation and the Index is positioned as a response to a situation where “news headlines and social media shares can unfairly grab attention and raise concerns”. But it seems specious to suggest that “U.S. News and Global Education (USNGE) and Shorelight — two leaders in U.S. higher education — have partnered to develop the University Safety Index” when one is owned by the other. It also seems misleading to present the item as news on a website where the branding gives the gloss and reflected credibility of US News and World Report’s league tables.
While the article is designated as “News” the authorship, data and presentation of universities looks like an inside marketing job. The writer was once on staff for Shorelight, has written regularly for the company’s website and describes herself as a “content manager specializing in e-commerce marketing, UX messaging and lifestyle brands.” The statistics were compiled by Shorelight’s vice president of data science and strategy.
The marketing dimension becomes even more clear when “Notable U.S. News Global Education Universities” are highlighted – they just happen to be Shorelight partners. There is, however, no mention that the lowest “Somewhat Safe” category of the Index features Florida and Illinois where Shorelight has partnerships with Florida International University, University of Central Florida and University of Illinois at Chicago as well as new partner Eureka College. The implication of the Index is that international students have more reason to be concerned about safety if they go to those institutions but that seems a less palatable marketing statement.
Summary
Several countries and many universities are in a headlong dash for more international students and most recently Colleges Ontario commented on the need to recruit them to fill funding gaps. CBC News recently reported on the problems for students from south Asia who had arrived to study in Calgary but couldn’t find jobs and were unprepared for the winter weather. It’s a toxic mix where students are not getting realistic information about the situations they will encounter and there is every chance it will end in tragedy for individuals as well as blemishes on institutional reputations.
Fall intakes have shown that international students are returning to the US in significant numbers after the pandemic but it is entirely possible that some will have lingering doubts about attitudes towards foreign visitors. It is, however, unhelpful to underestimate the importance of ensuring that young people are given balanced information and not lured into a false sense of security. International students are courageous, committed and deserve more respect than that.
The US should also be applauded for publishing campus crime data in a consistent manner and might consider positioning this as a competitive advantage over the UK where there is a growing clamour for better data on student-related crime. While the Complete University Guide is to be commended for giving comparative information on an issue where one in five students are likely to be a victim, action from HESA or the Office for Students would be welcome. For international students, agents and other decision makers the best advice is to demand information directly from your university of choice and avoid sales promotion gimmicks.
NOTES
* I am not aware of any comprehensive and credible research on which countries are safest for international students. Various guides exist but tend to base their outcomes on overall country statistics. The Founder and CEO of iSchool Connect based a recent table in The Tribune of India on indexes covering factors such as Global Peace, quality of life etc. It includes Singapore at number five – a country where the Prime Minister has recently acknowledged “resentment over foreigners”.
**US News Global Education was formed as a collaboration between US News and World Report (USNWR) and Shorelight but is a subsidiary of Shorelight. The University Safety Index is a reminder of the link to USNWR’s own league tables whose methodology ex-Editor Peter Bernstein, in a classic Freudian slip, called “this mythology.”
***This blog relies, in part, upon my understanding and interpretation of various data sources and media reports. While data is almost always partial in the way it is collected, categorized and presented I have considered a range of sources in an attempt to ensure the points made about specific locations are reasonable. I am happy to correct any material errors brought to my attention by an authoritative source.
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.
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 February2021, just nine months after the purchase.
INTO’s most recent partnership in the US is the direct recruitment relationship with University ofArizona (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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pathway operators are becoming the unlikely force behind new initiatives in international student graduate employability. It is a phenomenon that deserves some applause since it reflects the needs of students, but it begs the question as to why universities are not doing the heavy lifting in an area that is critical for national competitiveness in the post-pandemic world.
The answers suggest that it may be time for more radical solutions to careers guidance and advice services.
CareerAhead (Study Group), CareerFirst (INTO University Partnerships), Career Core (Kaplan), Career Accelerator (Shorelight) and Professional (Navitas) are all variations on the same theme. Some are costlier and have more guarantees than others.
It is early days and this may just represent an opportunist response to student concerns in a period of economic uncertainty, rather than a long-term plan to support graduate employment. Serious, smart and strategic operators should be building in robust longitudinal measurement of job placements, career progression and comparative performance.
It is no secret that international students are highly focused on the return on investment they get from their expenditure on a degree overseas.
In 2016, Hobsons research indicated that four in 10 (40%) said they would go where there is high demand for employees and 38% would choose their study destination based on expected high earnings associated with the industry for which their degree prepares them. A 2021 QS study of students interested in studying in the US showed 54% said a high graduate employment rate was the most important metric they considered.
Failure to support graduate outcomes
The pathway providers’ decision to take the initiative in this area may suggest that they have given up on the notion that their university partners are willing to provide what international students need or are capable of doing so.
One of the big selling points of the pathway providers has always been that, on arrival, students are “students of the university” with access to all the resources and facilities of the hosting institution. Any reasonable person would think that includes the careers advice and guidance services which are the institution’s go-to resource for helping students get jobs.
Another underlying dichotomy is that the implicit purpose of getting a degree is that it is a route to having more choice in the career one follows. The need for private providers to charge extra money to ensure appropriate levels of support reflects the broader truth that a degree is no longer enough.
Institutions would do well to consider how this will begin to change the return-on-investment calculation made by students when choosing a university.
Universities may also be hoping that, just as they have handed their brands over to pathway providers and allow them to directly recruit students, they will not have to invest further in careers advice and guidance.
The low level of investment by the sector in graduate outcomes was laid bare by research from Tribal/iGraduate which showed that universities are spending over nine times as much on marketing as they are on career advice and support.
This is aligned with a collapse in data gathering around graduate outcomes that means decent comparative information from the UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) will not emerge until 2023 – six years since the last meaningful data.
Even when the HESA numbers do arrive they are highly unlikely to provide any genuine insights into the outcomes of the 75% or more of international students who plan to return to their home country. If employability is to be a key battleground for countries, universities and pathway providers to prove their worth, this is a significant gap in data on which to build a reputation.
Alternative data collecting models are already being used by forward-thinking universities and demonstrate where individual universities are able to make a difference for their graduates.
Outsourcing careers services to meet need
Leading industry commentators have argued that “career services must die” and that would seem increasingly true, given the lacklustre support that most are able or willing to give to international students.
There is a real need for institutions to rethink their performance criteria and even for governments with ambitious international student recruitment targets to consider how national reputations can be made or broken. This may even be a good moment for higher education to pass their graduate and careers advice investment to private providers who are able to deliver both genuine support and an accurate measurement of performance.
It may seem radical, but there is evidence that career progress has become a highly nuanced, technologically advanced and competitive business where increasing numbers of graduates need every piece of support they can get.
It is clear that the world of work has become as oriented towards aggregators like ZipRecruiter, Indeed and others. Universities need good quality information to be able to orient their academic offerings to the changing needs of the market, but there is no reason to expect them to be experts in services to secure employment.
Outsourcing non-core business such as accommodation, pre-degree teaching and maintenance has come a long way and seen some substantial gains for the sector. Focusing on teaching, research and social impact is plenty for most institutions to be considering and the pace of change required when it comes to ancillary services will always be secondary to these core activities. There is a certain symmetry in providers of pathways to degree level education also becoming the runway to career success.
It could lead to the tantalising possibility of private providers also taking over aspects of alumni relations with a focus on networking to build job prospects rather than seeing development and fundraising as the point of staying in touch with ex-students.
It is only a short step from that to building and recruiting to boot camps and re-skilling and upskilling short courses. With imagination, ingenuity, care and private investment this might even become a radical reinvention of lifelong learning led by private providers to meet the skills requirements of ‘Global Britain’.
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.
