Today’s ICEF Monitor post looks at the findings of several new reports as they relate to trends in participating EU countries’ efforts to attract international students – including work and immigration policies, which are frequently viewed as key elements of a study abroad nation’s competitiveness.

A decade of growth

According to a new report from the European Migration Network (EMN), a body of the European Commission, the number of international students in Europe increased by roughly 114% from 2000 to 2010 – a substantially higher rate than the growth of international students in North America, which was estimated at roughly 55%.

The EMN report, entitled “Immigration of International Students to the EU,” was based on contributions from 25 countries including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, United Kingdom, and Norway.

International students a substantial part of many EU populations

Overall, the EMN report found that international students compose an important proportion of the non-EU population in many EU countries: 21% of all new first residence permits in the report’s participating countries were issued for education reasons.

Despite many countries’ efforts to facilitate the entry of Erasmus students (students from the EU going to other EU countries to study), the report notes that only “1.4% of the total number of first permits issued in Member States in 2011 for the purpose of study” were given to students coming under the high-profile Erasmus mobility programme.

National strategies in use to attract foreign students

In terms of the national strategic goals for wanting to attract international students, the report listed two:

• Attracting skilled students (mostly master and doctoral students) within a wider policy context of attracting highly skilled workers to meet skills shortages in national labour markets;
• Attracting international students for national economies to benefit from the revenue streams associated with these students (e.g., fees, living expenses, etc.).

Strategies used to attract foreign students vary from country to country, and may include:

• Marketing programmes to promote the country as an attractive destination and to provide information to students on available courses and services;
• Scholarship and funding opportunities, often tailored to students from countries with which the host country has a bilateral agreement in place;
• More recently, the introduction or augmentation of English-language courses (already prevalent in The Netherlands and Sweden, others are now prioritising English-medium instruction, including Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and Spain);
• Flexible admission procedures;
• Providing freer than usual access to the labour market (e.g., number of hours allowed to work) – but the report noted this was often restricted to low-skilled sectors rather than in sectors that would allow the student to build his/her professional network and expertise;
• Ability to apply for work permits without leaving the country, and even the ability to be self-employed as entrepreneurs.

Many of the countries participating in the study are putting the focus on attracting the “brightest and the best” students … “mostly masters and PhD students who contribute to the knowledge base of specific sectors important to the economy.”

Some (Finland, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Spain) are setting clear targets for the number of international students they want to attract (e.g., Finland wants to increase the number of foreign degree students by approximately 77% from 11,303 in 2007 to 20,000 in 2015, and Spain is looking to boost its international student population from 4.9% in 2012 to 10% in 2015).

Meanwhile, some are targeting specific countries for international students (e.g., France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands are prioritising BRIC nations, and Portugal favours Portuguese-speaking countries).

And others plan to amend their policies on international students. For example, The Netherlands intends to more effectively prevent “misuse of the student route” by setting targets for students and collecting biometric data during the visa application process. “Poland intends to introduce preferential admission and stay regulations for international students and university graduates.”

Hungary and Latvia appear to be the only countries without a national policy on international students. In Latvia, each institution determines its own needs and strategies for attracting foreign students. “In Hungary, only an action plan is in place which aims to strengthen the education of ethnic Hungarians living outside the territory of Hungary.”

Survey reveals current internationalisation strategies

Meanwhile, on the subject of strategies, a recent survey on the state of internationalisation in higher education by the European University Association (EUA) of 175 HE institutions in 38 countries found that “more than half (56%) have an internationalisation strategy in place and a further 13% intend to develop one or have considered internationalisation in other strategies.”

The survey revealed the following internationalisation strategies currently used by HE institutions:

• development of new partnerships with new regions and countries (73%);
• sending more students abroad (72%);
• growing the international student population (68%);
• offering international opportunities to staff (67%);
• offering more courses in English (67%);
• developing double and joint degrees (61%).

The survey found that the most popular priorities for action were:

• attracting students from abroad (30%);
• internationalisation of learning and teaching (19%);
• providing students with more opportunities to have a learning experience abroad (12%);
• strategic research partnerships (10%).

Three variations in university-level promotional efforts

In order to execute some of these strategies, universities in EU countries may be conducting their marketing…

• by themselves – often via scholarships or including offers of free or discounted services. For example, the EMN report notes that the University of Luxembourg provides free lodging to Chinese students.
• with another institution. The EMN report provides the example of the Spanish-Moroccan cross-border campus between the University of Cadiz and Abdelmalek Essaâdi University.
• in collaboration with the university sector in the country as a whole. For example, in The Netherlands there is a Code of Conduct agreed to by the joint institutions of higher education that is promoted to international students to signal a sector-wide commitment to excellent education for international students.

Waving the job flag

The EMN report assesses that there are two types of policies in place in the participating EU countries regarding employment after graduation for international students:

• Member states that only allow international students to stay if they have a job or are continuously employed (Belgium, Cyprus, Spain, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovak Republic, Sweden, and United Kingdom);
• Member states that allow international student graduates to stay in order to search for a job (Austria, Germany, Finland, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Norway).

An example of the impact of the second type of policy – allowing international students to remain in the country post-graduation to find work – can be found in Finland, which allows international students to remain to seek employment for a period of six months after graduation. In 2007, 73% of foreign students who remained in Finland found work.

For further details on this topic, please see our article from last year, which gives an overview of the intentions of 6,200+ international students at 25 universities in Germany, France, the UK, Netherlands, and Sweden.

The economic contribution of international students

Despite the economic contribution of international students, actual revenues realised thanks to foreign students vary due to the different types of educational systems across the countries. Some, for example, offer free access to education and low student fees.

The EMN report provided a table that shows the sources of international student revenues for select participating countries:

Source: EMN’s “Immigration of International Students to the EU” report

Immigration prospects important to study market attractiveness

Right at the outset, EMN’s report makes it clear that increasingly, the countries that provided data for the study are well aware of international students’ potential to remain in the country and add needed workforce skills.

And it moves on to declare: “States with a more flexible policy [on allowing international students to work during and after study] might be considered as more ‘attractive’.”

It seems, from the growing number of non-EU international students choosing EU countries to study in, that both national-level and institutional-level strategies are on the whole working well to attract students from outside the EU.

Looking for room for improvement, the report concludes:

“The overall aim of improving EU and national strategies and policies is to ensure that the EU can be considered as a world centre for excellence in education.

Further legislative action at the EU level, aiming to provide for further improvements in admission conditions, rights during stay, including mobility, and ensuring safeguards for third-country nationals, in line with Treaty objectives, is likely to make an important contribution to delivering this objective.”

Tourism sector a signal of Europe’s strength

The EMN report and EUA survey arrive at the same time as two more pieces of research; the first being the United Nations World Tourism Organization’s (UNWTO) new “World Tourism Barometer.” Results show that international tourist arrivals in Europe were up by 3% in 2012, a “very positive result in view of the economic situation.”

UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai said of the modest growth in European tourist arrivals: “2012 saw continued economic volatility around the globe, particularly in the Eurozone. Yet international tourism managed to stay on course.

The sector has shown its capacity to adjust to the changing market conditions and, although at a slightly more modest rate, is expected to continue expanding in 2013.

Tourism is thus one of the pillars that should be supported by governments around the world as part of the solution to stimulating economic growth.”

Zeroing in on the continent, the European Travel Commission’s (ETC) latest “European Tourism in 2013: Trends & Prospects” report indicates that “international arrivals and nights to Europe for the first quarter of 2013 point to a slower, but continued growth for most of the reporting destinations.”

Like tourism, international education seems relatively resistant to shocks to the overall economy, but as emerging economies and developing markets continue to advance in both sectors, Europe will need to fight harder to remain a competitive and attractive destination.

The post Europe takes stock of its international student recruitment strategies appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

Following the 2011 Knight Review, in early 2012 the Australian government moved to ease visa processing for international students bound for Australian universities. Only months later, this streamlined visa processing – a package of reforms that ease assessment levels and dramatically reduce processing times for visa applicants – was also extended to selected private colleges and TAFEs (Technical and Further Education colleges).

Private-sector providers, meanwhile, are still waiting. And while they wait they are at a distinct competitive disadvantage relative to other Australian institutions with respect to visa processing times for incoming students.

“Agents won’t deal with us”

A March 2013 item in The Australian sums up the situation as follows:

“The most recent official statistics show the different fortunes of private higher education and public universities. In the first half of last year, undergraduate student commencements in private higher education and TAFE fell 4.2% while the figure for public universities rose 4.6%.

The International College of Management, Sydney, saw commencing student load fall 41.5%. Managing Director Frank Prestipino blamed the strong currency, lack of streamlined visa processing and competition from public universities with uncapped, taxpayer-subsidised places.

‘Agents (who recruit overseas students) won’t deal with us, in terms of having to spend six to nine weeks to process a standard visa versus a streamlined visa,’ he said.”

In March of this year, Martin Cass, the chair of the Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET), expressed the industry’s frustration in an open letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard that called for an extension of the country’s visa reforms to non-university providers.

“After the turmoil that hit the sector in 2008–2009 your government acted to make it simpler for international students to come to Australia and study at universities, but not at institutions like mine,” wrote Cass. “Your government’s reluctance to support small, niche education providers and their students is alarming.”

ACPET is the leading body for private colleges in Australia and its letter singles out a recommendation from 2013’s Chaney Report that calls for streamlined visa processing for all sectors of Australian education.

Current and recent Australian immigration ministers have promised a further announcement on streamlined visa processing in the near future but these assurances come on the heels of some months of anticipation within the Australian industry – stretching back to November 2012 – of an “imminent” decision by government.

The Australian, however, quotes ACPET chief executive Claire Field as noting that the government has stalled on its own reforms.

“Good providers are going to the wall and Australia is losing substantial export income,” said Field. “The industry is on its knees as a result of government inaction.”

Risky business?

The heart of the issue appears to be a perception that easing visa processing much beyond the university sector could be a risky business. The streamlined processing now available to universities and others in Australia comes with some additional responsibilities for receiving institutions, particularly with respect to student quality, reporting to government, and other quality controls. The university sector in Australia is composed of a relatively small number of institutions that are in turn relatively easy to monitor, regulate, and hold accountable against the provisions of the reforms.

The government’s confidence of its ability to similarly ensure compliance for other sectors with larger numbers of institutions, such as private colleges, appears to be a factor in the months-long delays in further action on streamlining Australian visa processing.

Iain Watt, the Australian government’s former senior education representative in China, is quoted on this question in the aforementioned Australian article:

“[Watt] conceded an argument for extending the post-study work visas to ‘the higher end of the VET sector’, but it would be too risky to broaden streamlined visa processing beyond universities.

‘To let in a whole lot of students and be publicly wiped off the list would be disastrous to (a university’s) reputation and just not worth it. If you’re a private VET provider you could very well make a business decision that you can make an absolute fortune in two years before (the Immigration Department) catches up with you.’”

Meanwhile, the country’s private colleges continue to argue for a level playing field as in the request with which Cass closed his recent open letter to the Prime Minister: “I ask you to act on the advice you have received and to extend improved visa processing arrangements to international students in non-university providers, rather than seeking to only reward large, homogenous public institutions.”

The post Australian private-sector providers continue to call for visa reforms appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

International students in Japan

Let’s first set the scene by providing the latest top-line statistics on Japan as a sending and receiving market.

Japan has fared better of late in the area of inbound internationals than in recent years. The education sector experienced a drop after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent radioactivity release at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. Another downward driver had been the Yen’s high exchange rate against the Korean Won, but 2012 numbers were close to those from 2011.

The Japan Student Services Organization’s (JASSO) most recent figures for university undergraduate, junior college, technical college, graduate, professional training college, and university preparatory course students studying in Japan as of 1 May 2012 are as follows:

As a whole, the country’s tertiary sector received 137,756 students, only 0.2% fewer than in 2011.

Besides China and South Korea, other nations that sent fewer students to Japan in 2012 included Malaysia, Thailand, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Laos.

Below is a two-year regional breakdown of where Japan’s international students originate:

Japan as a sending market

The number of Japanese students flowing overseas has declined in recent years. The downward drivers are multifold, and include a flat economy, graduate unemployment, and changing demographics. The latter is a particular concern, and puts Japan in the same boat as other Asian regions such as South Korea and Taiwan. But Japan’s demographic shift is the most severe of the group.

Simply put, the Japanese government forecasts that the nation’s population could contract by 30% in the next half century, with negative effects in many areas of society, including international education. With Japanese citizenship and permanent residency still difficult for foreigners to obtain, there seems to be no easy way to bolster the country’s demographics.

Consider data from one of Japan’s largest receiving markets: the United States. In the US, traffic from Japan fell from 24,842 in 2009-2010 to 21,290 just a year later, totaling a drop of 14.3%. And in 2012, Japan registered a 6% drop. With so many factors at work inside Japan, it’s safe to say this was not mainly a demographic decline, but certainly fewer Japanese students will not help the overall situation.

However, nearby nations have seen more Japanese students arrive in recent years. Australia showed a 4.1% increase in Japanese student commencements in 2012, driven by growth in Australia’s vocational and English language education sectors. In New Zealand the number of Japanese students also rose in 2012, against an opposite trend of fewer overall student visa approvals.

Changes in the English Language Teaching (ELT) sector

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has proposed what he calls a “three-arrow” approach to educational reform aimed at improving science and math scores in order to produce more PhDs in those areas, focusing more on IT education, and bolstering the English skills of Japanese students.

In the latter area, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is pushing for regulations requiring students to achieve a minimum TOEFL score before acceptance to universities, and also before graduation. The proposal is aimed to shift the current system away from writing and grammar proficiency toward functional English, but it has caused considerable debate in Japan.

Some opponents point out that even though more Japanese schools have already been offering TOEIC and TOEFL courses in recent years, students are not learning to speak English but rather to pass tests. They say the number of students who can successfully communicate in everyday English remains small, and is not likely to increase significantly even with minimum score requirements.

Part of the difficulty stems from English teachers themselves possessing lower proficiency in the language than needed, however the proposals address this shortcoming by calling not just for students to reach benchmarks (45 points or higher on the TOEFL test) but for teachers of English to score 80 or higher.

Hiring more foreign English speakers to teach the language has been suggested, but liberalising the current foreign teacher employment rules – under which native English speakers can be hired only as assistants, not full-time instructors – would likely be opposed by the Japanese teachers association Nikkyoso.

However, a proposal from the LDP aims to double the number of teachers hired for the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program (from 4,360 in 2012 to 10,000) in three years. The teachers would be dispatched to all primary and secondary schools within ten years.

And it’s worth noting that foreigners are finding Japan a more fertile job environment than during the country’s more insular past. Foreign students are filling more openings after graduation – 8,586 of them in 2011, as opposed to the 2,689 that obtained work visas in 2000. Some are finding integration and acceptance a challenge, but an expanded job market is good news for internationals. Whether a similar hiring influx looms for the English education sector is undetermined.

Despite obstacles, Prime Minister Abe and LDP are pushing ahead with their reform package, which calls for ¥400 billion for English education restructuring. Pieces of the proposal will be included in LDP’s campaign pledges for the July 2013 Upper House election.

Shift in national enrolment schedule

One of the largest changes in Japanese education could be structural: universities could shift to a fall enrolment schedule. At the moment, the school year begins in April, which places Japan out of sync with international systems and may be yet another reason the country sends relatively few students overseas.

The University of Tokyo (Todai), the top institution in Japan according to Times Higher Education rankings, is at the forefront of this radical idea. Todai President Junichi Hamada hopes to achieve the transition within five years, and perhaps earlier. But there are still obstacles, including the opposition of nearly 40% of parents with children up to 18 years old.

Switching the system would be a huge undertaking, requiring a shift at all school levels from kindergarten up, and would involve giving students several months of potential idle time between April and September (on the upside, that time could be devoted to exchange programmes, summer camps, travel abroad, volunteering and internships). But the idea has momentum; the push by Todai has already caused Kyushu University and Kanazawa University to start discussions about a similar shift.

Initiatives in Japanese higher education

Under the Global 30 initiative, Japanese national universities pledged to lure 300,000 undergraduate international students to 30 schools by the year 2020, which would amount to 10% of the total student body. The original 2008 proposal was whittled down to 13 universities – all of which offer English-medium instruction – because of budget woes, but current government policies aim to expand the plan to 42 universities. If successful, this would be a massive influx of students, and recruiters should stay abreast of efforts to reach this goal.

On the outbound side, the Global 30 Plus programme and the Reinventing Japan project are aimed at encouraging Japanese students to study overseas. Tomohiro Yamano, deputy director general of the higher education bureau at the Ministry of Education, told Time late last year:

“The ultimate goal is tied in with improving Japan’s economy. More specifically, for Japanese graduates to work for Japanese companies that will do business around the world and become more successful.”

Japanese universities are generally ramping up efforts in student exchange, international recruitment, and overseas collaboration. Government policies encourage double degrees with Asian and US universities, as well as promoting university networks, particularly in science and technology. And in order to bolster its sending numbers, Japan is funding short-term international studies for 10,000 Japanese university students.

The government is also hoping the education sector receives a general boost in 2013 from a new Southeast Asia credit transfer arrangement to be adopted by all nations in the Greater Mekong Subregion (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and China, as well as Korea).

In addition to the credit transfer agreement, Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have created what they call the ASEAN-Japan Plan of Action, a joint initiative designed to:

• implement education programmes to nurture entrepreneurs, seminars to strengthen human resource development, and training courses to study skills and know-how on international business within ASEAN;
• promote Southeast Asian studies, including Southeast Asian languages, in various universities and other educational institutions;
• establish human resource development centres in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam to provide business education and Japanese language training;
• develop further educational exchanges under the ASEAN Universities Network (AUN) and the Universities Mobility in Asia and the Pacific (UMAP) initiative;
• expand access to basic education and improve the quality of education, recognising that basic education is the foundation of nation building.

Some other international linkages include:

• Earlier this year at the Abu Dhabi Japan Economic Forum, ten agreements and memoranda of understanding were signed between Abu Dhabi and Japan that impact upon the education sector.
• A new agreement was signed aimed toward African development, particularly in the education sector.
• Australia continues to look toward Japan for new education agreements.

Changes for domestic students

The Japanese government is looking at reforming its higher education sector via revised regulations that could limit the establishment of new universities and merge existing schools. With 75% of private universities falling short of enrolment targets, policy makers are focused on maintaining overall sustainability in the sector.

Heightened competition for a shrinking pool of prospective students has prompted private universities to restructure summer campus visit programmes. For example, Osaka University of Economics and Law now pays ¥15,000 (US $192) to those who visit the campus from distant reaches of Japan such as Hokkaido and Okinawa, and even students who visit from much nearer Tokyo can receive ¥7,000.

Meanwhile, at Hyogo University in Kakogawa, the ¥30,000 entrance exam has been discounted by one-third for candidates who visit the campus and complete other tasks. Universities are also making more effort to attract parents, such as touting job assistance programmes that could offset tuition costs.

Another influence affecting Japanese students is the debt burden they take on to get a degree. About 960,000 – or one-third of current university students – are dependent upon public loans to finance their studies, and the amount of debt repayments in arrears hit ¥470 billion last year, mainly caused by joblessness and income drops during Japan’s extended economic slump.

Looming political difficulties with China

Perhaps the most important short-term factor for the Japanese education sector moving forward is an escalating territorial dispute between Japan and China over a set of uninhabited but oil-rich islands located in the East China Sea. Because family and parental views are a major factor in students’ choice of schools, especially in China, some sources expect the flow of applicants from China to fall dramatically in 2013.

This may already be happening. Hitoshi Iwamoto, Director of Fukuoka Foreign Language College, told Study Travel magazine that a third of Chinese students that had enrolled in courses scheduled to commence in October 2012 cancelled. October was the last period from which the Japanese government has made student visa data available. But Iwamoto has said that applications for April programmes are 80% lower than expected.

A decline in numbers that large from Japan’s largest sender of international students would be disastrous, but so far neither side is backing down in a dispute that has seen Japanese nationalists, Chinese marine surveillance vessels, and Japanese coast guard cutters all plying the same waters. In addition, the dispute reached an alarming pitch when Japanese Prime Minister Abe vowed to use force if necessary.

Japan as a bellwether

Japan faces challenges on numerous fronts, but positive changes have taken place. Many observers see the country as the “canary in the coal mine” for other industrialised nations, some of which are seeing the same demographic trends take hold, if to a lesser degree. Japan will be closely watched as a case study of how to manage such issues, and which strategies lead to successful outcomes.

The post Japan’s ambitious proposals for higher education and language sectors appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

China and India are top source countries for Canada

In 2012, 104,777 new study permit holders entered Canada, up from 79,264 in 2008 – for a 32% increase over those four years. The total number of international students in Canada has also risen, from 177,657 in 2008 to 265,377 in 2012, for a 50% increase over the same period. The Province of Ontario accepts the most international students (45,401 out of the 104,777 new arrivals in 2012), followed by British Columbia (26,639) and then the French-speaking province of Quebec (16,770).

Universities claim the highest numbers of international students in Canada (41% of new arrivals in 2012), with “other post-secondary” (e.g., colleges, polytechnics, and CÉGEPS) coming in at 25%, and K-12 at 23% of the Canadian total.

The top ten source countries for Canada, representing nearly 70% of annual entries into the country, are:

• China
• India
• Republic of Korea
• France
• US
• Saudi Arabia
• Japan
• Mexico
• Brazil

Students from China and India together represented 37% of the international student entries to Canada in 2012.

Top source countries of new international student entries to Canada for 2011 and 2012 from Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

More international students choosing to immigrate to Canada

CIC noted in a recent presentation at the 2013 ICEF North America Workshop in Toronto that “the number of former students choosing to immigrate is increasing” and acknowledged the “growing importance of post-graduation employment.” Growth is driven by demand; there are no international student quotas.

The Canadian Experience Class is one of the key streams through which international student graduates are entering; since 2008, more than 6,000 students have attained permanent residence status through the Canadian Experience Class. CIC notes that there is an 84% approval rate for Canadian Experience Class applicants.

Visa office closures offset by new online services and VACs?

Faced with budget constraints and with a strong mandate to improve processing efficiency, CIC has decided to close visa offices in a number of countries over the last couple of years. The following table documents those closures, as well as the rerouting procedures used to compensate:

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada

Such closures are always a concern for local students, families, and advisors – and with a global average processing time of 76 days for study permit applications, all stakeholders have an interest in seeing processing times reduced where possible. However, CIC reports as well that processing times are low and approval rates high for students applying from many top source countries.

On average, 81% of all study permit applications to Canada were approved in 2012, and 80% of applications were finalised within 42 days.

Citizenship and Immigration also notes that processing times are considerably shorter – on average, 45% shorter in fact – for those students applying online, which is now much easier due to new online services that have been introduced in recent months:

• In November 2012, CIC launched an online Help Centre offering information on over 500 popular topics and designed to facilitate online client self-service;
• In December 2012, CIC launched a global electronic application service for temporary residents, including visitors, students, and temporary workers.
• The eMedical initiative was also launched in December, allowing physicians to submit medical results online to be integrated with the applicants’ electronic files.

CIC also anticipates that its plan to increase the number of Visa Application Centres (VACs) around the world will further help to improve service to international students wanting to study in Canada. As distinct from Government of Canada visa offices within Canadian embassies or consulates, VACs are managed by private companies or international organisations and are authorised to provide specific services to applicants under a formal agreement with CIC.

Currently, there are 67 VACs in 47 countries; the plan is to expand this network to over 130 locations in 95 countries. Of the plan to expand VACs, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney has said:

“Our goal is for there to be a global VAC network, one with worldwide coverage and services standardised across all locations. That way, no matter where you are in the world, you can expect the same service from all the VACs.”

As we reported recently, Canada is also part of the first five-country VAC in Singapore. For more on how VACs can help international students with Canadian study permit applications – as well as where they are in the world – see here.

Suggesting that further service improvements are still to come, Canada’s expanded online visa application services and burgeoning VAC network are taking shape against the backdrop of the Canadian government’s having earmarked CDN $23 million in its latest budget to supporting its national international education strategy and CDN $42 million to improving visa processing for temporary residents including students. See our related article for more background on what steps Canada is taking to boost its competitiveness as a study abroad destination.

The post Canada aims to streamline student visa processing appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

To learn more about how US schools can operate within compliance and proactively work with the government, we present an exclusive video interview with Mr Michael Compitiello from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Watch our interview and continue reading below for more information on the activities of the DHS, such as their Campus Sentinel School Outreach initiative, as well as a new security change for border agents announced earlier this month.

US department structure and student statistics

The September 11^th attacks prompted the US to create the DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). The departments’ roles are, as outlined on the government website:

• “On behalf of the DHS, SEVP manages schools, non-immigrant students in the F and M visa classifications, and their dependents.
• The Department of State (DoS) manages exchange visitor programmes, non-immigrant exchange visitors in the J visa classification, and their dependents.
• Both SEVP and DoS use the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) to track and monitor schools, exchange visitor programmes, and F, M and J non-immigrants while they visit the US and participate in the US education system.”

The volume of data in SEVIS continues to grow. On 1 January 2013, SEVIS contained records for over 1 million active non-immigrant students, exchange visitors, and their dependents. The total number of records for all F-1, M-1, and J-1 visa holders has increased to approximately 10.3 million.

SEVIS monitoring

As Mr Compitiello explains, SEVP was put into place to monitor foreign students’ progress and current location via the SEVIS electronic system:

“We found a loophole after 9/11… there was no comprehensive way to track students once in the US and the SEVIS programme was the answer to that problem.”

Maintaining accurate and up-to-date SEVIS records is critical to ensure the safety of foreign students, prevent exploitation of the system, and continue to welcome legitimate international students via a healthy student visa programme.

Mr Compitiello offers examples of some of the common pitfalls for schools, such as keeping student records up-to-date, specifically:

• enrolment status, especially if a student has completed his/her programme early or has transferred to a different school;
• a student’s (and/or his/her dependent’s) change of name or address;
• accurate programme start and end dates;
• Optional Practical Training (OPT) authorisation including employer and address;
• disciplinary action due to criminal conviction.

Ultimately, as Mr Compitiello affirms,

“It’s a partnership between the government and the schools themselves.”

The benefits of this collaboration are numerous, such as:

• by sharing information with school officials, the DHS may help improve a school’s programme management and help prevent students from falling out of status;
• information sharing and open lines of communication between the DHS, institutions, and students works to improve strategies for identifying and prosecuting unlawful activity;
• investigating and eliminating fraudulent schools upholds the integrity of the student visa programme;
• teamwork improves the reputation of international education programmes in the United States, raises foreign student enrolment at quality schools, and reduces potential threats to national security.

US government partnership with school officials

In order to facilitate this partnership, the ICE Project Campus Sentinel School Outreach initiative was formed.

The campus sentinel gives the DHS a chance to go out to the schools, meet with Designated School Officials (DSO), and personally educate them on how to avoid pitfalls. This face-to-face engagement opens the lines of communication, and shows them how to keep records up the date and report any suspicious activity.

Institutions are encouraged to alert the DHS if they become aware of dubious activity, such as:

• non-SEVP certified institutions providing instruction to foreign students;
• failure to maintain accreditation, licensing, facilities, curriculum or necessary teaching staff;
• schools allowing students to drop below SEVP attendance requirements;
• sudden, high volume foreign student enrolment growth;
• unusually high patterns of schools transferring students in and out multiple times;
• schools unlawfully maintaining students’ ‘Active’ status in exchange for money;
• recruitment of students under false pretenses or advertising of programmes that the school does not offer;
• schools manufacturing or providing false diplomas or transcripts.

Naturally, the majority of institutions have the best of intentions but as Mr Compitiello says, “One bad apple can spoil the bunch.”

Mr Compitiello concludes with one overriding message to our industry:

“We appreciate the business that the schools are doing – it helps our economy – and we are here to help you do business the right way and to avoid any problems that you may have because of a lack of having someone to ask.”

SEVIS access for all border agents

Safety and compliance continues to be much on the minds of the public, especially in the wake of the Boston bombings. The tragedy spurred the government to initiate a new procedure – effective immediately.

The DHS ordered border agents to verify that every international student who arrives in the US has a valid student visa.

Under existing procedures, border agents could verify a student’s status in SEVIS only when the person was referred to a second officer for additional inspection or questioning. Under the new procedures, all border agents are expected to be able to access SEVIS to verify a student’s visa status before the person arrives in the US using information provided in flight manifests. If that information is unavailable, border agents will check the visa status manually with the agency’s national targeting data centre.

Regarding the information sharing and security challenges, Mr Michael McCaul, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, told CNN:

“The fact that a foreign national was able to re-enter the US with what appeared to be a valid student visa, while Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers were unaware that his visa status had become invalid, represents a serious hole in our national security. The front-line CBP officers did not have access to the system that would have informed them of a change in legal status.”

It is unclear what long term impact the new procedure will have on wait times at airports and borders, but in the immediate term, schools should alert incoming students to allow for more time at airports. Customs officials are required to report any effect, including longer waits, on a daily basis, and there have been reported delays of 30 minutes to three hours at major airports (i.e., in Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco) due to F, J and M visa holders being sent to secondary inspection. Inside Higher Ed has reported that the impact is especially being felt by border commuter students.

The post US Department of Homeland Security school outreach programme works to eliminate fraud appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

It is a journey that has become infinitely easier due to the Internet. The key for schools today is to put information out there in a compelling manner that prompts students to engage with it in a way that feels good to them.

In other words, the key is content marketing.

Content marketing has been described as “the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling.” More fully, content marketing is:

“A marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Although social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are perfect vehicles for content marketing – since they are made for the posting of relevant information, interaction, and conversation – not every school is optimising them for this function. Today’s post will look at best practices in social media management as they relate to content marketing.

Use social media for what it’s made for

Students are definitely on social media platforms, but they are selective in what they engage with. They may “like” a school page then happily – and without thinking – scroll right by it every time they go to Facebook to check out what their friends – and some lucky brands – are up to.

So getting lots of “likes” and “follows” is not in itself success, as much as social media marketing is often measured using these metrics. A “like” is not an action that at the end of the day is going to affect a school’s bottom line. What will affect the bottom line?

• Prospective students becoming aware of an institution (through “shares” but also by viewing other students’ positive reactions to and engagement with the school);
• Prospective students’ growing interest in attending an institution;
• Prospective students enrolling at the institution;
• Current students and alumni spreading the word about their school.

All of these actions can be spurred with good content marketing on social media platforms. But too often, this is not happening: a recent Guardian article based on a survey the newspaper conducted with 300 potential and current university students found that “although 65% of students use social media channels several times a day, students rated universities’ social media presence as less influential and less trustworthy than more traditional sources such as prospectuses or open days.”

The Guardian noted that some of the comments they received from students about universities were “they do not talk about the things we need to know” and “I don’t find enough useful information that relates to me.” Of such comments, the newspaper noted:

“This suggests that many universities are using social media to try and engage with too many stakeholder groups at once, and consequently not being tailored enough about the updates they are sending out. The danger of using social media channels to push out any and all university messages run the risk of engaging with no one successfully.”

By contrast, two university marketing professionals the paper interviewed provided smart perspectives on how to think of Facebook, Twitter, and other online social sites for student recruitment.

Ms Anne Whitehouse, head of marketing at Bucks New University, said: “Social media are useful at different stages of the application process. A prospective student may not use social media for initial research, but may engage with social media to help finalise their decision.”

Mr Tim Longden, director of marketing and communications at City University, said:

“The key is to integrate a range of activities including traditional media and print, web-based information, events and activities and social media throughout all stages of the recruitment process.”

8 tips for content marketing on social media sites

Whitehouse and Longden’s comments provide a great leaping-off point from which to introduce our list of eight tips for content marketing on social media sites:

1.  Use these platforms to engage students – not talk at them. Every single post must be based on the question: “How does this help my prospective/current students?” And ideally: “Have we phrased it in a way that might prompt comments, sharing, discussion?” As Copyblogger explains:

“Every piece of content you write has to either solve a problem your audience cares about or it has to entertain them … preferably both.”

2.  Consider them part of an overall marketing campaign. Again, the function of social media platforms is engagement – not advertising (your brochure can do this) or oodles of information (your prospectus or calendar serves this function).

Don’t make your social media platforms carry too much of the load or it will be overwhelming and unattractive for students. The better plan is to provide links to other marketing materials within posts – not every time, but sometimes.

3.  Share others’ great content, and run fun challenges or contests. For example, lots of students want to spruce up their dorm rooms or apartments. You could post cool pictures of decorating solutions (see Apartment Therapy for an example) or even run a Before/After contest among students to show how they have done it themselves.

When running contests, however, remember to be aware of constraints and ways around them. Here’s a good post on maximising the effect of contests.

If you don’t want to go the route of a contest, you can also simply just ask for opinions. In the example of a room/apartment makeover, many students would likely share their decorating genius, especially if your posts already receive a lot of positive feedback and discussion.

4.  Don’t make it look like an ad. As professional as schools must be on social media platforms, these platforms are… social. You are sharing with students, helping them, talking with them. You are encouraging trust, and a sure way of blowing that trust away is to use advertising copy or endless brochure-like pictures.

5.  Keep it short and often visual. Sometimes “content” connotes long-form writing, but it really shouldn’t. Someone once defined content as “Information designed for consumption, seasoned for enjoyment, and packaged to share” – a definition that works well for content designed for social media platforms.

A successful content marketer will always assess the format for which he/she is writing – and short and visual is the rule of thumb for social media. If you want to write more, reserve it for the blog, and link to the blog with a short post on FB or Twitter (e.g., “How one student gave back to his Sri Lankan community when he graduated and returned home,” and include a picture in the post).

6.  Use your assets – including multiple voices. Prospective students want to hear not only from the school but from people who have “bought” the school (i.e., other students and alumni).

They also want to sample as much of the school as they can before committing – just as they would for other products and services – so consider giving them as many snippets of the experience of studying there as possible. An important visiting professor’s video lecture, pictures of a successful charity event, a happy student’s recollection of his/her first “A,” etc.

7.  Remember the end game. The end game is recruiting students – so at some point, you want to get your students to perform actions that get them closer to enrolling. Invite them to a web chat in which they can ask any question imaginable about studying at your institution. Provide a link to a landing page of your website that includes an application form and ideally a great, time-sensitive offer. But execute such “homestretch strategies” conversationally, subtly, and entertainingly if possible (e.g., “You can ask us anything – last year’s best question was ‘What about your coffee? I need good coffee if I’m going to study there!’”).

8.  Stay in tune with your audience. Keep tabs on what is engaging them and what isn’t. Have discussions with anyone at the institution who is regularly in contact with them and thus privy to their concerns and questions – and sources of interest – and create posts that respond to these.

Never before has it been so easy to adapt marketing to changing conditions and even changing audience needs – and this includes the type of content you’re publishing. As PR professional Mr Justin Shaw notes in the Guardian:

“Prospective students want to make better informed decisions and require a greater amount of information and engagement from a university. Students want to follow, friend, tag, pin. Let’s encourage that.”

The post 8 tips for better content marketing on social media sites appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

The survey does more than look at growth and demographic data for FEDELE’s schools – it also asks for opinions about Spain’s international education sector from the survey’s respondents (school directors) from across the country.

Top-line results reveal an increase in student weeks and revenue in 2012, driven by growth from Russia and China as sending markets, which compensated for declines from other nations, namely Denmark. Small and medium-sized schools fared better than larger institutions. Below, ICEF Monitor translates, examines, and puts FEDELE’s data into context.

What is FEDELE?

Before getting into the survey, here’s some quick information about FEDELE that will help in interpreting the information: FEDELE’s main objective is to promote quality teaching of Spanish in Spain. It consists of six associations totaling 88 private Spanish schools. Five of the associations are named for five of Spain’s autonomous communities, and their schools are located in or near those communities.

The sixth association is Asociación Escuelas de Español como Lengua Extranjera, or the Association of Spanish Schools as a Foreign Language, referred to as AELE. This association encompasses schools that are not members of the other five associations, and which are scattered from Málaga in the south of Spain to the Basque Country in the north. So as a whole, FEDELE looks like this:

• FEDELE Barcelona, which has 7 schools, all located in Barcelona.
• FEDELE Comunidad Valenciana, which has 13 schools, located in Alicante (3), Castellón (1), and Valencia (9).
• FEDELE Madrid, which has 13 schools, all located in Madrid.
• Asociación Español en Andulacía, or AEEA, which has 33 schools located in Cadiz (7) Granada (6), Málaga (13) and Seville (7).
• Asociación Español de Español de Castilla y León, or AEECYL, which has 14 schools in Avila (1), Salamanca (12), and Valladolid (1).
• AELE, which has 8 schools located in A Coruña (1), Guipúzcoa (1) the Balearic Islands (2), Marbella (1), Navarra (1), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1), and Biscay (1).

Of the 88 schools, 50 took part in the survey, and FEDELE states that it is extrapolating data from this sample size to apply to the whole association. In a similar vein, FEDELE’s figures apply only to its collection of private schools, and may not perfectly correlate with data for other types of language schools in Spain.

Demographic trends in FEDELE schools

The FEDELE survey uses a measure based on enrolment weeks to show the size of its schools, the growth trends per region, and the demographic makeup of the students. The entire survey is of interest, but we’re going to jump to the middle and start with the demographic information that will be of greatest interest to recruiters.

The graphic below reveals which countries or regions send students to FEDELE Spanish schools and in what proportions. Most of the Spanish country names are self-explanatory, but a few to note are Alemania (Germany), Reino Unido (UK), Corea (Korea), Europa del Este (Eastern Europe), Suiza (Switzerland), Paises Nordicos (Nordic countries), and Paises Arabes (Arabic countries).

The charts below break the data into FEDELE’s sub-regions. FEDELE does not group Dinamarca (Denmark), seen in both the chart above and those below, with the Nordic Countries, though it is in fact Nordic.

The data was collected not by surveying actual student numbers, but by asking the institutions to indicate the top five nationalities of their enrolees. This methodology made for some revealing results, which we see below. The list shows which countries or regions were top five senders for FEDELE schools. In other words, 94% of the schools reported Germany as one of its top five sending countries, and so forth.

• Germany – 94%
• United Kingdom - 70%
• Italy – 52%
• United States – 52%
• France – 46%
• Netherlands – 32%
• Nordic countries – 24%
• Russia – 24%
• China – 22%
• Japan – 20%
• Austria – 18%
• Switzerland – 16%
• Korea – 14%
• Brazil – 8%
• Denmark – 6%
• Arab countries – 2%

The ups and downs of international sending markets

FEDELE also asked its schools which nationalities showed the fastest growth in 2012, and which showed the steepest decline. The methodology was the same – i.e., the results shown refer to the percentage of schools that included these nationalities in its response.

The results were broken into two charts. Thus FEDELE reveals which nationalities showed growth:

And which showed decline:

FEDELE doesn’t include 2011 charts for comparison, but reveals that as a sending market, China has fallen two places since last year. However, respondents still ranked China highly, which indicates merely a downtick in what remains an upward trend.

ICEF Monitor reported last month that about 25,000 Chinese students are currently studying Spanish in Spain, a number representing a huge increase compared to ten years ago. Spanish language instruction within China is also up, with 35 Spanish academies now operating in Beijing, and 90 universities offering Spanish courses. The change shows both the increased importance of Spanish in global markets, and also the increased competition that FEDELE faces.

Notably, the Nordic Countries are up as senders, but Denmark shows a marked decline. Also Germany, while remaining the top sending market to FEDELE schools, did show a slight decline.

The differentiated charts appear below and reveal sharp variation between countries. For example, the US is down as a sender to the Valencian region located on Spain’s eastern coast, but up to Andalucia in the south. Similarly, the Nordic Countries (minus Denmark) are up to Andulacia but sharply down to Castille and León.

FEDELE growth figures

As stated earlier, the survey uses a measure of volume based on enrolment weeks to show the size of its schools.

Thus we see that 48% of the schools are classified as small, 30% are medium, and 22% are large. Spanish schools in the Barcelona and Madrid regions tend to be large, while schools tended to be small in Andalucia in southern Spain, Castille y Leon in the northwest, and in the widely scattered AELE grouping.

Interestingly, the data also showed that while numbers were generally up, the schools showing growth were small and medium schools, while the large schools that responded to the survey showed a tendency to decrease.

Next we see a comparison between 2012 and 2011 weeks/student to get a sense of the growth rate of the schools.

FEDELE’s metric “weeks/student” does not measure actual numbers of students, but rather enrolment weeks. Below is the specific data, which shows that as a whole FEDELE schools grew from 136,100 weeks/student in 2011 to 160,250 weeks/student in 2012.

• AEEA: 53,250 weeks/student 2012; 48,100 weeks/student 2011
• AELE: 8,000 weeks/student 2012; 7,500 weeks/student 2011
• Barcelona: 16,500 weeks/student 2012; 14,700 weeks/student 2011
• Castile y Leon: 21,750 weeks/student 2012; 15,600 weeks/student 2011
• Comunidad Valenciana: 29,250 weeks/student 2012; 25,000 weeks/student 2011
• Madrid: 31,500 weeks/student 2012; 25,200 weeks/student 2011

Growth and decline drivers for FEDELE

FEDELE respondents were asked to cite the major factors affecting school enrolments. Again, the responses were subjective, but give an indication of the issues that are of concern to school administrators. The top responses were as follows:

• The exchange rate in Spain as compared to competing (international) markets: “The impact of this factor in both 2011 and 2012 remains as strong or very strong for most of the schools participating in the survey.”
• The economic climate: “The international economic crisis has affected major emitters of Spanish students and has caused the decline of Spanish students in our traditional markets.”
• Visa policies: “The immigration control measures established in Spain for some countries delay and often hinder penetration into emerging markets.”
• Unfair competition: “The growing number of Spanish students in the world and the consequent development of our sector in Spain has led to the emergence of multiple entities that compete in the market without compliance, with established quality standards even without complying with the law.”
• Marketing budget: “A limited budget to invest in marketing, both in the development of strategies and participation in action.”
• Spain’s image: “A new factor is … the image that Spain has been evolving in recent years [to people on] the outside: economic crisis, corruption, unemployment, eviction demonstrations. This image of instability and insecurity causes insecurity in parents and prescribers that ultimately decide not to send their children/students to our country.”

FEDELE and wider Spain

FEDELE’s data set confirms the increasing global demand for Spanish language instruction and the continued resiliency of Spain’s language sector.

However, the concerns of FEDELE school directors paint a vivid picture. Even in the midst of growth, they feel that their strength with traditional sending markets is declining. Education providers may do well to focus on new sending markets and refine their marketing strategies, perhaps concentrating on untapped customer segments, as outlined in the British Council’s Spain Country Brief.

The post FEDELE’s 2012 Spanish language school survey reveals overall growth appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

With estimates that 42% of global enrolments (or 212.9 million enrolments) will be from the East Asia and Pacific region by 2035, Malaysia’s educational capacity and the quality of its educational system is an important aspect of the regional and global markets.

Malaysians know this, and it is one of the reasons the controversial Barisan Nasional (BN) government (just re-elected in a hotly contested election) has made educational reform such a focus in the last year.

The stakes are high: Malaysia was ranked 55 out of 77 countries in the recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report. Not one Malaysian public university placed in the top 400 of the 2012–2013 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. And yet, the country is busily solidifying its image as an education hub, thanks in large part to its successful efforts to attract international universities: the Iskander Education Hub is one example of such an effort.

An aggressive initiative to lure foreign universities and students does not jibe well with a poorly performing public education system. Nor does a weak public education system elevate an economy to the level it needs to be to compete with the growing number of countries prioritising the “knowledge” basis of their economies. So in autumn of last year, Malaysia announced an ambitious new “Blueprint” designed, among other things, to elevate Malaysian students “from the bottom one-third to the top one-third of the [PISA] ranking within the next 13 years.”

A blueprint for action

The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013–2025 has been called…

“the biggest shake-up ever of our education system … a 13-year roadmap [which] will reshape how our policymakers, education officials, teachers and parents deal with educating and teaching millions of our schoolchildren and preparing them and the nation for the future.”

The stated targets of the Blueprint are:

• Universal enrolment from pre-school to upper secondary education in 10 years;
• Halving the achievement gaps between the rich and the poor, urban and rural, and between the states that form Malaysia in eight years;
• Rising from the bottom-third to the top-third of countries in international assessments like PISA and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 15 years;
• Building an education system that gives children an appreciation of their unique identity as Malaysians.

Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the plan prioritises:

• Upholding the teaching profession;
• Enhancing the leadership of schools;
• Enhancing the quality of schools;
• Strengthening the curriculum and assessment standards;
• Enhancing proficiency in various languages;
• Getting the involvement of parents;
• Partnering with the private and social sectors;
• Making students better prepared for higher education and the job market;
• Improving the competency and effectiveness of our resources;
• Building up the potential and ability of the delivery system.

In addition, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is calling on students to pick up three languages (it has been said that too many students are focusing on Bahasa Malaysia to the detriment of their English language skills). The prime minister said at the Blueprint’s launch in Kuala Lumpur:

“We need that competitive edge. We can leverage on our multiracial component. Why lose that advantage? We should be pragmatic.”

Education Minister Yassin explained that there are three “waves” to the Blueprint’s action plan:

• Wave 1: Blueprint implementation – more support for teachers and a focus on core student skills.
• Wave 2: Building upon progress.
• Wave 3: To occur between 2020 and 2025, schools will take over their own administration.

Officials say they are on track already

A ceremony was recently held to celebrate the First 100 Days of the 2013-2025 Blueprint, and at the event, government officials declared that six of the plan’s initiatives have been carried out.

Chief among them were the development of a parents’ toolkit to foster education at home as well as at school – 10,000 have been given to schools nationwide – and measures and testing to improve the English language proficiency of teachers.

So far 61,000 English educators have taken a Cambridge placement test in preparation for a must-pass test to be introduced in 2016.

Meanwhile, the drive for international students and universities continues

As we reported last summer, Malaysia wants to become the world’s sixth-biggest education exporting country by 2020 with a target of 200,000 international students.

The country is supporting the development – mostly privately funded – of two education “cities”:

• Kuala Lumpur Education City (KCEC), launched in 2007, is still in development and aims to house both international and local universities, as well as primary and secondary schools in a 500-acre KLEC Academic Park. The hub will offer education from University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, Epsom College, and Universiti Sains Malaysia (and potentially other schools) to those in the region with an expected student population of nearly 30,000.
• EduCity at Iskandar is a similar idea: a 350-acre campus on which several universities will be housed as well as elaborate sports and leisure facilities including a 14,000-seater stadium and an Olympic-length swimming pool. The idea is to create a “student village” of about 16,000 students on the campus, where students from each university share access to the amazing recreational and sports facilities. Mohd Hisham Kamaruzaman, acting chief operating officer of Education@Iskandar Sdn Bhd (owned by Iskandar Investment Berhad, which is developing EduCity), told University World News that “the student village and sports complex will be ready by August, in time for the next academic year.” Several universities are already open in EduCity, with more about to start.

Cohesion between public and private educational investments

As Malaysia continues to develop its education hubs, it is reassuring to note that it seems newly dedicated to improving the public infrastructure of its domestic education system.

If Malaysia is able to carry through meaningfully on its new Education Blueprint 2013–2025, this – at least as much as its two education hubs – will set it on the right path to becoming a notable knowledge economy in the region.

The post Malaysia pushes forward with ambitious education reforms appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

We sit down with Mr Jonathan Kolber, Executive Director of International Language Academy of Canada (ILAC). ILAC offers English classes for all ages, levels and purposes, as well as exam prep, summer camps and additional services such as accommodation, university placement, and student activities.

Kolber explains that they have a very interactive relationship with their agency partners, asking the agents for market feedback, brainstorming new products and marketing techniques, and helping them improve their efforts on the ground in key source markets.

Additionally, he stresses what to look for when selecting agent partners: it is very important that an agent understands the school’s profile and promotes the school’s image in a manner the school is comfortable with, and ultimately, always works in the best interest of the students.

Kolber also discusses how ILAC tailours each product to suit the market – such as residential programmes for teenagers from Mexico – and that one of the secrets of their success has been their ability to “stay ahead of the market and offer products to students as the market evolves.”

Part two of our interview (below) dives into several of the Latin American markets ILAC is active in, such as Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, whose students prefer to return to their home countries following their studies overseas, as well as Venezuela, whose students are attracted to post-study work rights.

Canadian-based ILAC is no stranger to Brazilian students. Scores of Canadian and Brazilian universities have signed exchange agreements in recent years, and Canada will also receive 12,000 of the 100,000+ students on Brazil’s Scientific Mobility scholarship programme (also known as Ciência Sem Fronteiras and formerly called Science Without Borders). In preparation for such study abroad experiences, university pathway programmes, exam preparation and Intensive English courses prove popular.

When looking at the Colombian market, Kolber explains that like Brazil, these students are looking to return home following their studies. Almost 9 million 15-24 year olds live in Colombia, nearly 98% of whom are literate. Today Colombia is one of the largest sending markets in Latin America after Brazil, and the top study destinations are the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand. The majority of student referrals are made through agents, hence ILAC places a great deal of emphasis on their strong relationships with their agency partners.

Venezuela certainly has its market challenges (i.e., currency controls, political instability), however, with the right approach and a healthy amount of patience, educational providers can achieve results. Kolber explains that ILAC has been successfully “selling pathway programmes in Venezuela for many years.” They are well aware that given the current climate in the country, most students prefer to stay overseas and find work abroad after their studies, so ILAC takes that into account when working with agencies in Venezuela.

The post Strong focus on agent relations key to success in Latin America appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

“Commodities from crude oil to copper, wheat and corn all fell after the data, share prices were knocked lower and the Australian dollar slid as investors repriced expectations of import demand from China.”

The Chinese economy is the second largest in the world and its 10%-and-above growth rate in the first decade of this century was a valued driver of the global economy in uncertain times, especially with the onset of the global financial crisis in 2007/2008, and particularly for heavy commodity exporters. China is now the world’s largest trading nation, surpassing the US in this capacity last year.

However, despite the fact that slowing Chinese industrial growth will indeed have some adverse effects on some sectors and countries, not all the news is bad. In fact, many analysts are saying the slower growth in the Chinese industrial sector is:

• inevitable,
• necessary for the maturation of the rest of the economy,
• required for sustainable development.

In this article, we look to some of these viewpoints since they may provide a sense of how important economic and social shifts now taking place will affect this key market going forward.

Chinese economy is maturing

In 2011, Professor David Beim at the Columbia Business School summed up the Chinese economy in the 2000s like this:

“For 30 years, China’s mix of entrepreneurial energy, heavy investment, and low-wage exports has proven such a potent formula that many, both inside and outside China, cannot imagine it slowing down. But sustained high growth is being undermined by inflation, declining returns on investment, and rising bad loans in the banks.”

Professor Beim wrote that the required solution was domestic consumption – making sure more Chinese consumers could have the means and standard of living to afford its “prodigious” consumption. He commented:

“If domestic consumption is to be China’s saving grace, wages need to increase substantially and the famously high savings rates of individual Chinese will have to come down. That requires better state healthcare and more affordable education, so that the Chinese people do not have to save money to shoulder these costs on their own.

“The entire development philosophy needs to shift away from producers and toward consumers, with businesses raising wages and banks raising deposit rates and increasing consumer loans. However, there is a timing problem: raising wages will impact export competitiveness immediately, but the benefits of wealthier consumers buying more will take many years to evolve.”

In short, Beim was arguing for a more nuanced, gradual, and comprehensive approach to fiscal management – not one that would make for splashy headlines, but one that would provide better access into the economy for more Chinese over the long term.

In other words, for the Chinese economy to grow sustainably over time – with the support of its huge population – the focus would have to shift from GDP to a wider range of indicators, including quality of life. Social wellbeing is key to economic and political stability, and right now, according to some China watchers, China has a long way to go to improve on this front. As Marguerite Dennis writes on the MJDennis Consulting blog:

“The gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen …. Chinese families worry about unemployment, health care, retirement, the environment and their children’s education. Clean water is a national issue as is health care.”

The fact is that industrial output alone does not an economy – or great world power – make. The expansion of production and manufacturing can go on for only so long before other parts of the economy and society need to catch up – not to mention its domestic consuming base, as Professor Beim asserts. Canada’s Globe and Mail explains that:

“China’s service sector is finally beginning to catch up to industrial production as a share of GDP, now making up slightly under 45%. The fraction is still well behind mature Western economies where services contribute closer to 55 to 60% or more, which means China’s shift to a consumer economy will likely continue to play out for years.”

In the Globe and Mail article, Ron MacIntosh, a former Canadian diplomat and now a research associate at the University of Alberta’s China Institute, notes:

“Big industrial projects will shrink in importance. That’s what happens when economies mature. Why would China be any different? The stated goal of the Chinese leadership is to move to a more consumer-oriented economy, to meet the aspirations of the rising middle class.”

And indeed, the Chinese government seems quite unperturbed by the 7.7% first-quarter GDP growth rate. The Wall Street Journal writes that officials see the data as reflecting “China’s increasing emphasis on stable growth rather than the breakneck pace that has resulted in social and environmental woes and other imbalances.”

And in China Daily, Wang Jun, an economist at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, says: “The data have continued a stabilising growth trend that took shape late last year, showing that the new government does not put pursuing growth as its number-one task.”

What does slower Chinese “growth” mean for the education sector?

The aspirations of the rising middle class in China includes – high up on the priority list – a good education, and right now, that often means an education gained abroad. Writes Marguerite Dennis:

“Over 90% of Chinese parents want to send their child abroad to study in an English speaking country. In December 2012, the College Board reported that the number of Chinese taking the SAT exam increased 48% over the previous year. Chinese students studying in US colleges and universities increased 23% last year and 27% of all overseas Chinese study in the US. The UK has a 22% market share followed by Canada at 15%.”

At the same time, the Chinese government is investing unprecedented sums in its domestic education system – to the tune of US $250 billion a year (see the infographic below).

Education is simply one of the economic – and social – areas to which the government wants to shift the focus. Wang Huiyao, the director general of the Center for China and Globalization and a senior visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, summed it up eloquently in the New York Times at the start of this year:

“Among the goals is the transformation of China from a manufacturing hub to a world leader in innovation – a grand objective. One step is to increase the pool of highly skilled workers, to 180 million by 2020 from the current 114 million. Another is to ensure that by 2020, 20% of the work force has had a college education. That would be 195 million people.

“For the past 30 years, 225 million migrant workers have made China into a world manufacturing powerhouse. The same principle will apply: nearly 195 million college graduates by 2020 will certainly change China and the world.”

The infographic below from CollegeStats.org is chock full of statistics on China’s education sector.

The post China’s slowdown doesn’t mean the sky is falling appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.