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.

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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.

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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.

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As highlighted on ICEF Monitor last year, online education is rapidly expanding in numerous countries, with the US leading the way. But other nations are exploring the model, and today’s article will examine international developments in the specific area of MOOCs, with a focus on countries where the technology is beginning to flourish.

MOOCs and international recruiting

Speaking at this year’s Going Global conference in Dubai, British parliamentarian and Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts directly addressed the effect of online education on international recruitment by suggesting the technology could “weaken the power of agents.”

Willetts was speaking specifically about British universities that traditionally rely upon international recruitment, but his comments could apply to recruiters from any country. In light of such of bold public pronouncement, just how far along are MOOCs on the international scene?

Asia’s first MOOCs

MOOCs are no longer solely the province of American institutions. Just this month, Naubahar Sharif of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) launched what was dubbed “Asia’s first MOOC” on Coursera: an online course entitled “Science, Technology and Society in China.” Sharif expected 8,000-10,000 students for the three-week course, but 17,000 registered.

In addition, China’s first cross-university online course debuted last month when Professor Wang Defeng of Fudan University taught an introductory philosophy class to 1,072 students from 30 schools across Shanghai. While not a true MOOC in the sense that it was not open to global registrants, it made use of the basic model, and follows a trend of Chinese universities trying to offer wider access to top universities’ resources.

And in Japan, the University of Tokyo, or Todai, signed an agreement with MOOC developer Coursera to create a September course on the evolution of the universe, followed by an October offering on peace and conflict. Both of these courses will be taught in English.

Coursera’s additional partners in Asia include The Chinese University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, and the National University of Singapore.

Meanwhile in India, Carnegie Mellon University professors Raj Chakrabarti and Anisha Ghosh are running the Academic Financial Trading Platform (AFTP), which calls itself the first MOOC dedicated exclusively to business education, with the specific goal of teaching skills that facilitate business decision-making.

While many AFTP participants have been MBA students and executives, the website touts the course as being for the average investor. It promises no less than to deliver, “for the first time, fully automated and transparent quantitative stock market prediction techniques and trading strategies, developed at the world’s top research centres.”

Non-English MOOCs on the rise

Naubahar Sharif, when assessing his Hong Kong MOOC, said that about 60% of the enrolees were from the US, UK, Canada and other developed nations. The remainder of the participants came from Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and middle-income Asian countries. Some of those Asian participants were from China, but with language still a barrier in online education, China is currently only the tenth largest market for MOOCs – though it has 22% of the world’s Internet users.

Coursera has addressed this language gap by offering courses conducted in Chinese, but the Chinese government – according to rumour, at least – is moving toward developing its own MOOC platform, with potentially far-reaching effects on student mobility patterns from one of the world’s leading sending markets.

The Chinese effort, if true, comes as no surprise. Concerns have been expressed about MOOCs’ domination by US developers, the one-way transfer of educational content from rich nations to poorer nations, and the cultural damage that could occur in the wake of “a wave of intellectual neo-colonialism.”

Sun Maosong of Tsinghua University put it bluntly to Xinhua News Agency: “Chinese courses need to be made in China, not America.”

It’s massive but is it tailoured?

If one of the strengths behind MOOCs is their ability to educate the masses, it is also one of their weaknesses.

Today’s trend experts tell us that the more a product or service can be tailoured to an individual, the better. This is certainly true for millenials, and personalised learning is no different. So it will be especially interesting to see how MOOCs adapt to different people’s needs, cultures, languages, nationalities, and socioeconomic status.

Armando Fox, a computer science professor at the University of California at Berkeley and teacher on an edX course, told Inside Higher Ed that one of his students is “working on a dashboard for MOOC instructors to analyse subpopulations of MOOC users to see if instructors can spot differences based on users’ locations, something edX can detect automatically using users’ IP addresses.”

“Ultimately, Fox said edX might be able to use this data or even collect more (like information on income) from users and then create classes tailoured to different student populations.”

“You can imagine different pathways through course material where a student might not necessarily follow every pathway,” he said.

Europe’s first MOOCs

Moving along, we come to Europe, where partnerships with MOOC developers are popping up everywhere. The latest is in Denmark, where the 500-year-old University of Copenhagen plans to offer four Coursera MOOCs, for which more than 40,000 students have registered and as many as 100,000 are expected. Other European universities linking up with Coursera include:

• Ecole Polytechnique, France
• Edinburgh University, Scotland
• IE Business School, Spain
• Leiden University, The Netherlands
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Munich, Germany
• Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy
• Technical University of Denmark
• Technical University Munich, Germany
• University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• University of Geneva, Switzerland
• University of Helsinki, Finland
• Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• The University of London, England

In addition to university partners, Coursera has also announced a collaboration pilot with Russian tech centre Digital October to bring more courses to Russian-speaking students, via translated subtitles and in-person meet-ups.

The not-for-profit MOOC developer edX has also expanded on the continent, doubling the size of its institutional membership. Among its new partners in Europe are École Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Delft University of Technology in Delft, The Netherlands.

Homegrown European MOOC platforms

As of December 2012, the UK has a massive open online course platform developed on its own shores in the form of Futurelearn. So far, 17 British universities, including King’s College London, Cardiff University, and Queen’s University Belfast have signed up to offer courses with the new company, along with non-university partners the British Library and the British Council.

Futurelearn CEO Simon Nelson is boldly talking about his platform expanding beyond learning. He envisions it becoming an entire social networking site. He told Times Higher Education, “It may sound ridiculous in ambition, but … in five or ten years, rather than hanging out on Facebook, people will feel they can hang around in the Futurelearn product.”

Germany has also joined in the MOOC movement with the development of OpenHPI, an educational internet platform developed by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Potsdam. Conducting courses in both German and English, part of OpenHPI’s courses are aimed at a general audience, while others are geared towards Information and Communications Technology (ICT) professionals.

Not only are independent MOOC developers appearing in Europe, countries from the entire region have now joined forces.

Eleven nations (France, Italy, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, UK, Russia, Turkey, and Israel) supported by the European Commission and led by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) banded together to launch OpenupEd, the first pan-European MOOC initiative.

Courses are to be taught in twelve languages and are broad-ranging in subject matter, encompassing disciplines such as mathematics, economics, e-commerce, climate change, cultural heritage, corporate social responsibility, Middle East studies, language learning, and creative writing.

Unfortunately, the OpenupEd launch webinar struggled due to technical issues, but EADTU President Will Swann has said that the technology that failed is not part of OpenupEd, and is promising that the MOOC will flourish.

“We aim at growing with an ever-expanding range of courses from our partners, and we will welcome new partners from across the world who share our vision and practice of flexible, responsive higher education.”

The European Commission also has a hand in Academy Cube, an open education platform from Germany’s SAP software company aimed at teaching IT skills and matching students with job vacancies. With high youth unemployment in Europe yet up to a million job openings, the initiative hopes to bridge the skills-employment gap.

Along with SAP, the MOOC has support from Microsoft, Linkedln, Software AC, Thyssen Krupp, and the German Federal Employment Agency and academic institutions. Initially, Academy Cube will get a trial run only in Spain, but the creators of the project believe it may produce MOOCs or MOOC-like learning opportunities across Europe.

Australia’s own platform

MOOC provider edX has partnered with The Australian National University, but Australia also has its own MOOC platform, Open2Study, developed by Open Universities Australia. Open2Study and Open Universities Australia both offer online classes, but differ in that Open2Study offers free, non-certification classes whereas OUA provides access to accredited Australian university and TAFE (vocational) qualifications.

In part one of this article, we asked whether MOOCs will push students into core university programmes or draw them away. Open2Study aims specifically to do the former. Paul Wappet, CEO of Open Universities Australia, has said that Open2Study is designed to let students “taste what is available, getting them familiar with higher learning, so they can build the confidence to go onto further study.”

Africa’s potential

The overall technological surge in Africa has affected the realm of online education.

The African Management Initiative (AMI) is developing what they call the first MOOC designed by Africans for Africans. Their goal is to deliver business and management education for free to small business owners and young managers across Africa through a model that blends online content with offline peer-led learning.

AMI hopes to partner with business schools, and is seeking grant funding to develop and launch a full course which they hope can draw enrolees in the thousands. The AMI MOOC is part of a larger plan for the AMI Virtual Campus, a free online platform that plans to “leapfrog traditional bricks-and-mortar training by driving practical, personalised learning and development for African managers and entrepreneurs on an ongoing basis.”

Upward march for MOOCs

With the exception of MOOC mega-advocates like Sebastian Thrun, most developers are circumspect about a potential threat to traditional universities. At the moment, as discussed in Part 1, the possibility of earning credits is rare but expanding. And the process of building MOOCs necessarily involves building the architecture to enable a credit-bearing model.

Objections to credit-bearing MOOCs are substantive, and range from them offering a watered down curriculum, to them creating a breed of superstar professors with outside influence, to them being an excuse for political hardliners to gut public education budgets.

But do all the obstacles mean MOOCs won’t disrupt the standard educational model? Not necessarily.

In a February article in the tech trends publication Wired, authors Michael Horn and Clayton Christensen looked at MOOCs from the framework of historical innovation, and pointed out that continued refinement of the model could create a tipping point where it is broadly seen as a legitimate alternative to existing models. One important observation was:

”Disruptive innovations improve over time to march upmarket. Eventually the quality becomes just good enough for the established customers to flock to it. It’s worth noting that the upmarket march is enabled by some key technology – such as bandwidth, video quality, online sharing tools – which is why MOOCs may now be having their moment, even though they’ve been around for years.”

An upmarket march for MOOCs would involve not just technology, but class credit, a healthy revenue model, and global expansion as well. All of which is already beginning to occur.

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More mobility to and from Cuba

Perhaps the most important change, one impacting the mobility of all Cubans, has been the rescinding of the permiso de salida stating that citizens could not freely leave the country. Previously, Cubans had to go through a long, expensive process to obtain permission to travel, but as of mid January 2013 most will need only a Cuban passport and a visa from the destination country.

Cubans may now remain abroad for up to 24 months without having to renew their papers. But while movement off the island will involve jumping through fewer bureaucratic hoops, this does not mean explosive growth for Cuba’s sending market, as travel remains economically impossible for the vast majority of the population.

As an example of how thin the trickle of students from Cuba is nowadays, consider what has happened with Russia. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of Cubans studied in Soviet universities, but in 2012-13 only four Cubans studied in Russia due to the high cost of air travel.

But as a receiving market, Cuba is remarkably dynamic and robust.

At the moment, there are about 22,580 international students from numerous countries working toward degrees in Cuba, with more than 19,125 of the total enroled in the country’s famed medical schools. In 2012, 11,009 medical students graduated: 5,315 Cuban and 5,694 foreigners from 59 countries (e.g. from Bolivia 2,400+; Nicaragua 429; Peru 453; Ecuador 308; Guatemala 170; and Colombia 175). This was the highest total of medical graduates in the history of the country.

The Cuban education sector has agreements with many nations and regions, including Jamaica, Belize, Malaysia, Peru, and the European Union. In the last two years Cuba has strengthened ties with Vietnam, and, as reported on ICEF Monitor last July, South Africa, where an agreement was signed boosting tertiary-level exchange between the countries.

Cuban-US relations

Cuba’s relationship with its northern neighbour the United States has long been difficult, and the problems have inevitably had a negative effect on academic relations between the two countries. But even amid longstanding hostility and an economic blockade against Cuba that is now 53 years old and running, there is new room for academic institutions to forge ties.

US students and academics had been exempt from travel restrictions to Cuba, but in 2003, under President George W. Bush, the US eliminated travel for people-to-people educational exchanges unrelated to academic coursework, and in 2004 tightened travel rules further. However, in 2011 President Barack Obama removed the Bush era regulations, opening the way for greater educational interaction.

In addition, earlier this year the US State Department untangled some licensing issues related to third-party study abroad providers operating credit-bearing educational programmes in Cuba. While the 2011 Obama moves had eased the situation related to exchange programmes, the licenses to run them had not been forthcoming. With the licensing problems sorted, full-fledged exchange programmes are fully enabled.

One such exchange is already off the ground. Academic Programs International (API) in conjunction with Marist College is operating short term and long-term study abroad programmes in Cuba for academic credit in the field of Cuban and Caribbean Studies. US students who participate attend classes at the Universidad de La Habana.

Tulane University, located in New Orleans, has had a longstanding relationship with the Universidad de La Habana, and this year sent a delegation to Havana to pave the way for expanding the university’s involvement there, with a focus on public health and science. Other universities with Cuban connections include the University of Pittsburgh, Indiana University Southeast, and Burlington College.

Around 375 Americans studied in Cuba during the 2010-11 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education, and that number looks set to increase. Of course, the vast majority of foreign students in Cuba come from other Latin American nations, and the effect on the region has been profound. According to the website People’s World, 11% of Latin American scientists obtained their PhD’s in Cuba.

Government reshuffling education sector

Annually, Cuba offers thousands of full scholarships to the Latin American School of Medicine via its seven-year Medical School Scholarship Program, however the government announced last year that places in the programme could be reduced by up to 900 for 2012/13. There are many reasons for the potential change, but in the broadest sense, educational costs have gone up and the government, which already spends about 13% of GDP on education, is looking for savings.

According to IPS News, other changes to higher education include:

• official encouragement for Cuban students to major in agricultural and technical sciences;
• tightening of enrolment places in the humanities;
• tougher university entrance exams;
• in a move designed to help boost production, more training for technicians and skilled workers, as well as support for vocational fields that can have an immediate impact on the economy.

One of the government’s main goals is to achieve greater food independence. Decades ago students were encouraged to go into agricultural fields, but in the 1980s the idea of studying agriculture fell out of favour because importing was cheap. But that has changed. The global recession has pushed Cuban importation costs up 25%.

The new policies may fill needs in the Cuban workforce and economy, but have had a drastic effect on local enrolments.

In 2007/2008 there were about 744,000 local students enrolled in Cuban universities. The numbers began falling the next year, and by 2011/2012 had declined to a little over 351,000, according to the national statistics office, ONEI.

These changes have been disconcerting for Cubans, who – under the previous system saw the island’s literacy rise to 99.8% after a pre-revolution low of 60%-75% – have seen universities increase from three to more than 60, and now produce students that attain the highest scores in Latin America in language and mathematics, far outpacing countries like Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

Currently, five Cuban institutions appear in the 2012 QS Top University Rankings: Latin America:

• Universidad de La Habana
• Universidad de Oriente Santiago de Cuba
• Ciudad Universitaria Jose Antonio Echeverria
• Universidad Central Marta Abreu de Las Villas
• Universidad de Cienfuegos Carlos Rafael Rodríguez

Cubans are rightly proud of their educational system, but the fact that advanced education had become a birthright, without regard for cost, has been cited by Cuban officials as a reason to make changes. President Raúl Castro told his National Assembly last year, “Social expenditures should be in accordance with real possibilities, and that means cutting those expenditures it is possible to do without.”

Other Cuba concerns

In addition to the recent restructuring and enrolment shifts, Cuba has other pressing issues with which to deal. Perhaps most important are the hits its medical training reputation has taken since graduates from the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) were barred from practicing in Costa Rica after failing exams in 2012.

But the problem may not be one of quality but rather incongruence. Ricardo Boza Cordero, director of the medical programme at the University of Costa Rica, told the Costa Rica Star that the ELAM and Costa Rican curricula were not aligned in at least 80% of the subject matters.

Also impacting on the education sector, Cuban Internet access remains substandard. While the country has an international IP link, it has little infrastructure and little leased line access. The blockade prevents Cuba connecting to swift global carrier cables in the Caribbean, and top-down control of content affects the efficiency of already slow satellite service. According to the International Telecommunication Union’s global ICT development ranking, connectivity is the third worst in Latin America, topping only Honduras and Nicaragua.

Education in a time of change

Though Cuban-funded scholarships for foreign students have been cut, potential growth in exchange from the massive US market could help bolster local enrolment numbers. On the present course, that seems very likely to happen, but few situations are as changeable and complex as Cuba’s where the US is concerned.

On the other hand, for Cubans, the situation is more clear-cut. Their country is one of the few in the world that had completely separated access to education from household income. As open spots at universities diminish, merit matters more than in the past, but families that can afford tutors have an advantage, something that flies in the face of the equal educational opportunity set down in the country’s constitution.

Only time will tell what effect this has, both academically and socially, but the mood of many Cubans was summed up by Havana architect Alejandro Padrón in an October Reuters article:

“It used to be that a university education, in one form or another, was almost a sure thing. Now you have to struggle. I understand that it was impossible to maintain everyone studying, but I still want to see my son go to the university.”

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— The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, at the 10^th Convocation of the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra

A troubled education system

India is on a mission to redress the discrepancy between its economic potential and its education system. The latter has been plagued, among other things, by:

• “a staggering percentage of vacancies in central universities”;
• “no comprehensive policy on governance and the role of education in the growth of a nation”;
• an out-of-date curriculum focus;
• regional variations in accessibility and quality.

Just a couple of months ago, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said:

“Too many of our higher education institutions are simply not up to the mark. Too many of them have simply not kept abreast with changes that have taken place in the world around us … [and are] still producing graduates in subjects that the job market no longer requires.”

Concern about India’s education system is clearly registering at the highest levels of government, as are calls for immediate action. President Mukherjee went on in his address at the National Institute of Technology to say that the three goals India must focus on in terms of educational reform are:

• accessibility;
• affordability;
• quality.

The Indian government’s 12^th Plan Strategy’s educational focus areas are technical education and distance learning, plus better quality in research, infrastructure, faculty, and curriculum content.

Streamlining system may produce real gains

There are thousands and thousands of small Indian colleges, many of which are accused of being of sub-par quality and a sizeable number of which are closing down due to reports that graduates are not emerging with market-ready skills.

A University World News article argues that a key problem in India’s struggles to upgrade its higher education system has been undue focus on spending without thinking strategically about what the spending should be doing.

One example of this is the profusion of Indian colleges and universities, too few of which are said to be of high quality and most of which are troubled by lack of harmonisation (i.e., inter-institutional cooperation to create clear study pathways and credentials for students).

The article considers that a possible remedy is the decentralisation of the Indian university and college system, “whereby core courses could be retained by a university, while responsibility for the rest of the curriculum could be devolved to colleges …. [creating] a desired innovation culture in colleges.”

Well-implemented strategy will certainly be needed to address quality concerns and worries that Indian students aren’t getting the education they need, especially in light of India’s new budget cutbacks for education. As ICEF Monitor reported in January of this year, the Indian central government cut education spending by 13% this fiscal year.

But encouragingly, just this month, India’s Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) agreed to create a committee to formulate a National Higher Education Qualification Framework (NHEQF). This committee is expected to provide recommendations for the monitoring and regulation of higher education institutions’ quality and compatibility with each other within six months. The ultimate hope for the NHEQF is that it will result in “a single system of levels for all qualifications offered by higher educational institutions across all disciplines thereby making higher education qualification comparable nationally and internationally.”

More focus on technology

In line with the 12^th Plan Strategy, a bill has recently been introduced into India’s Parliament that would see the creation of “20 more Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) in various parts of the country”; the bill also declares the four existing IIITs as “institutions of national importance.”

Technology investments will also likely be aimed at distance learning modules, to redress the concerning fact that many Indians in remote areas cannot access a college or university education.

Domestic improvement needed to fight brain drain

India, like China and the rest of the BRIC nations, has been sending ever-more students abroad to gain the skills needed to power the growing Indian economy. But some worry that the trend may be draining as much as giving to the nation’s economic power. In fact, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a new study by Wan-Ying Chang and Lynn M. Milan of the National Science Foundation shows that:

“Only 5.2% of Indians who study outside their home country to earn doctorates in science, engineering, and health return home.”

The article also quotes Rajika Bhandari, a deputy vice president for research and evaluation at the Institute for International Education, who said:

“China and South Korea have done a much better job of deliberately creating well-structured incentives and opportunities for students to return back home, than, say, India.”

Furthermore, a 2012 study conducted by Indian Institute of Management- Bangalore (IIM-B) found that the students going for higher studies abroad increased by 256% between 2000 and 2009.

Internal strengthening more a focus than attracting foreign branch campuses, students

Because of the brain drain problem and senior government officials’ embarrassment at India’s poor showing on university rankings, the current focus in higher education in the country seems to be on strengthening the domestic system – aligning the competencies of universities and colleges and making sure Indian students are emerging with respected, job-ready skills – rather than on courting outside partners or students.

ICEF Monitor reported in August 2012 about the Indian government’s decision to shelve pending legislation that would allow foreign universities to establish campuses and award degrees in India. There has, however, been some progress on this front of late. After a two-and-a-half-year delay, the foreign education providers bill was recently cleared by a parliamentary committee and is now going to parliament.

The Indian Human Resources Development Ministry aims to see the bill passed between now and September, and, if it is, this new legislation will clear the way for expanded foreign participation in India’s education system. Commenting on these recent developments, University World News notes :

“In its report, the parliamentary committee said that scrutiny of all the proposed legislation had been completed. Enactment would bring about major transformation in the higher education sector ‘and thus restructure and reorient our higher education system’ in a globalised world.

‘The committee is of the firm view that passing of these legislative proposals need not be delayed any further,’ the report said.”

Meanwhile, as we reported in February, the Indian government is also putting its efforts into its vocational sector, estimated to reach US $20 billion by 2020, through the adoption of its National Policy for Skill Development, which aims to create a skilled workforce of 500 million people by 2022.

These reforms, along with the government’s targeted investments and increasing focus on quality education, represent important steps towards allowing India to achieve the promise inherent in its “demographic dividend” – its huge population of working-aged people – and in further opening India’s economy and education system to the world.

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Key markets and strategies for the language travel sector

In Part 1 of our interview, Mr Vetrak guides education providers through the major trends and opportunities that may impact their marketing and recruitment efforts.

Mr Vetrak outlines the global educational travel landscape as follows:

• 4.1 million higher education students (65% of total), expected to increase to 7 million by 2020;
• 2 million language travel students (32% of total), expected to increase to 2.5 million by 2020;
• 200,000 K-12 students (3% of total), expected to increase to 260,000 by 2020.

Mr Vetrak highlights that boarding schools, primary and secondary schools are working more and more with language schools and language travel providers. Along the same vein, higher education institutions are also collaborating more closely with the language sector, thereby tightening up the pathways model.

Furthermore, he observes that lately, companies in the language travel sector are more focused on increasing their margins rather than student numbers, and as a result, the sector is witnessing a rising number of consolidations, mergers, and acquisitions.

Emerging markets in K-12 and language travel

One of StudentMarketing’s strengths is the company’s ability to source and analyse data, and their research shows educational providers how to identify the emerging source markets that are most suitable to their academic offering, as well as how to use a research-driven approach, and how to evaluate various marketing strategies to obtain the desired results.

As explained in the first half of our interview above, for the budding K-12 sector, Mr Vetrak confirms that China is the number one source market, but also shares a tip with viewers that European countries such as Germany, Spain and Italy are growing in strength. He also talks about the latest trends in both K-12 and language travel sectors and how the industry is evolving.

Emerging markets account for approximately two thirds of the current enrolments in educational travel, and represent powerful growth potential. Mr Vetrak cites Brazil, Turkey and Russia as key emerging source markets that balance out the losses from countries that were hit by the global economic crisis.

Pricing strategies for language travel

There are various factors to consider when determining your growth strategy to increase student enrolments, such as:

• comparing current enrolment figures with future goals (i.e., increase student numbers by x%, double the number of countries your institution works with, etc.);
• setting a realistic time frame to reach goals;
• reviewing the current product mix (to ensure your products are aligned with the markets’ needs and demands);
• examining current and new marketing techniques, including how often you visit source markets;
• evaluating your pricing levels vs. the competition’s.

We review the latter, pricing, in the second half of our interview below.

As a market research and business development specialist for the youth and educational travel industry, Mr Vetrak also keeps tabs on the latest trends in business models and pricing strategies for the language travel sector.

Part 2 of our video interview moves into pricing strategies, particularly when viewed through a B2B vs. B2C lens. Mr Vetrak explains that there are a variety of techniques a company can use to set their pricing, such as combining gross prices with special offers, or setting net price deals with partners and allowing them to be creative, or setting a nationwide price and deals on commissions.

For more information and advice, please see our related article “Pricing strategy in the language travel industry.”

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Meagre growth overall despite a big leap in Indian applications

International graduate applications to US schools rose by 1% overall this spring (compared to 12% in 2011 and 9% in 2012), but they likely would have fallen into negative territory were it not for a 20% jump in applications from Indian students. This big surge is definitely a positive development, but The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that it may not be a trend:

“Indian families … tend to be price-sensitive, their education decisions subject to economic fluctuations and employment prospects, both at home and abroad. Consequently, their enrolment trend line has been a series of peaks, valleys, and plateaus – in one recent year, for instance, the number of applications from India exploded by 23%, only to plummet by nearly 10% two years later.”

Graduate applications from Brazilian students also grew substantially (+24%), which may stem in large part from the Brazilian government’s investment in US scholarships for their students.

Why the Chinese drop is so worrying

The 5% decrease among Chinese students may result in a huge blow to many American universities, since as of a year ago, Chinese students accounted for half of all foreign applicants to American graduate schools and one-third of those enrolled.

Other countries contributing to percentage declines in US graduate school applications this spring are South Korea and Taiwan (-13% each) and Mexico (-11%). These source countries are often prioritised in national and institution-specific recruitment targeting, so the decreases here are also very notable.

Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, is on record as being very concerned about the Chinese drop in particular, calling it “disturbing” and “precipitous” … “a post-9/11 kind of drop.” She attributed at least part of the decrease to a restricted funding environment for students attending US schools, and said:

“As a country, we simply can’t afford to maintain obstacles to international graduate study, especially as other countries are decreasing these barriers for highly qualified students.”

Recruitment barriers aside, some hold out hope that the decrease in overall graduate applications from Chinese students will not result in a decrease in actual enrolments. Peggy Blumenthal, senior counsellor at the Institute of International Education (IIE), said to University World News: “It is possible that the same number of Chinese students are applying, but to fewer institutions, either due to rising application costs or because they are being more selective.”

Possible reasons for the decrease

While there isn’t consensus on exactly why the Chinese numbers have fallen so drastically, University World News outlines several possibilities:

• The expansion in China of EducationUSA, the US State Department-supported network that helps foreign students with their applications to US colleges and universities, which may have contributed to a more selective application process this year;
• The growth of joint degree and dual degree programmes offered in China by American universities, which allow Chinese students to stay home as they pursue US-branded degrees;
• The uncertain funding situation for foreign students at US universities;
• The growing competition for international students from institutions across the world.

The Chinese drop also occurs at a time where there have been reports of concern in China at the high unemployment rate of Chinese post-graduates, which has been rising for the past seven years and which was higher than the unemployment rate for undergraduates in the three years to 2012.

The potential implications for US graduate schools

If declining international student applications turn into lower international student enrolment rates, some US graduate schools may find themselves in trouble.

As we reported in our previous article “With US enrolments declining, strategies may focus further on international students“, a Moody’s study of more than 200 American universities found that, for the fiscal year 2013, almost half of surveyed institutions predicted lower enrolment among full-time students, especially for graduate programmes.

Part of many institutions’ strategies for offsetting downward trends in domestic enrolments has been courting international students, and for the past two years, international student numbers have been increasing. According to the IIE’s most recent Open Doors report, international student enrolment in the US increased in 2012 by 5.7%, and new international student enrolment – students enrolling for the first time at a US institution in fall 2011 – increased 6.5% over the previous year. But that same report cautioned that “US institutions may be overly reliant on China as a source country.”

The alarm with which the new China applications data has been met seems to suggest that indeed, many institutions are highly reliant on China – but understandably, given the huge pool of students in China and their enthusiasm of late for study abroad. On that note, The Chronicle of Higher Education has just published an excellent article underlining the need for diversification strategies as well as the danger to the US if the country turns out to be losing its competitiveness in attracting foreign students.

Strategies to consider

As mentioned earlier in this article, the relationship between application numbers and actual enrolments is variable – just because a student has applied at an institution doesn’t mean he/she is going to choose it as a final study destination. It is precisely now that international students are making up their minds, so it is an excellent time to fine-tune and focus marketing outreach and recruitment strategies on the most likely candidates.

Our recent article, “From prospects to enrolments: direct marketing in international recruitment“, notes how crucial it is to segment recruitment lists and to follow up with customised messaging to the most promising candidates. We also emphasised the need for institutions to ensure they have answered all the questions prospects may have: i.e., what do they need to hear before they will enrol with you? Or, feel? Additional questions from the article include:

• Do they need to see how happy current students are (possible marketing response: testimonials and increased reliance on student advocates on social media platforms)?
• How successful graduates are (possible response: increased reliance on alumni)?
• How much they will be supported as international students (possible response: more offers of live chats, Skype conversations, one-on-one calls with current international students)?
• More certainty that they can afford to study with you (possible response: last-minute offers – and deadlines – for accommodations, transport, meal-plan savings)?

If possible, spring/summer 2013 would be a good time for American graduate programmes to pull out all the stops to maximise the chances that the international students who have applied will go on to enrol in the fall. This is the best possible short-term strategy to help avoid disappointing fall enrolments.

In the long term, however, American higher education institutions will have to press for a harmonised national strategy – encompassing everything from funding to visa and immigration policies – that allows the US to hold its position in the increasingly intense global competition for international students.

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The following is a guest post – the first in an occasional series – from Dr Mark A. Ashwill, founder and managing director of Capstone Vietnam, a human resource development company with offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. From 2005-09, he served as country director of the Institute of International Education in Vietnam.

Vietnam by the numbers

For a host of reasons, including the generally poor quality of secondary and postsecondary education in Vietnam and a growing ability to afford an education overseas, there were 106,104 young Vietnamese studying in 49 countries and territories in 2012, according to the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training (MoET).

To put this in perspective, that’s nearly 5% of domestic postsecondary enrolment. A full 90% were self-financing, a 10-fold increase compared to a decade ago. The Vietnam Ministry of Finance estimates that the total investment falls in the US $1-1.6 billion range.

The top five study destination countries in 2012 were:

• Australia;
• US;
• China;
• Singapore;
• UK.

Nearly 40% of all Vietnamese studying overseas were in two countries: Australia and the US. Based on surveys and anecdotal information, the US is the preferred destination, which means that many students whose visa applications are rejected end up going to second-choice countries like Australia, Singapore and the UK.

In the US, Vietnam ranks…

• 8th among all sending countries (IIE/Open Doors, 2012 and SEVIS/DHS);
• 5th in international undergraduate enrolment (IIE/Open Doors, 2012);
• 3rd in international enrolment at US community colleges (IIE/Open Doors, 2012).

The growth in the number of Vietnamese studying in the US over the past 15 years has been nothing short of meteoric: a thirteen-fold increase from 1998 (1,210) to 2012 (15,572). As of the end of December 2012, using SEVIS information, that figure rises to 18,740, including all levels and types of institutions.

Vietnam continues to lead Southeast Asian countries in the number of students studying in the US, with Thailand a distant second, followed by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

Education as a high investment priority

If you glance at the top ten sending countries and rank them by students and GDP (gross domestic product at purchasing power parity per capita), Vietnam jumps off the page.

It ranks eight in the number of students in the US, but is 43rd in GDP. For comparison purposes, consider Saudi Arabia, which ranks fourth among places of origin, and comes in at 24th in GDP. All of the other countries are in the top 20.

This tells you – with a gigantic exclamation point – that Vietnamese parents are spending enormous sums of money on overseas study in proportion to per capita income. In a phrase, education is important and parents are putting their money where their priorities and values are.

Community colleges are hot!

When I first arrived in Hanoi in 2005 to take up my position as country director of the Institute of International Education in Vietnam, there was very little awareness here about the benefits and advantages of community colleges as a gateway to four-year schools and a bachelor’s degree. That has changed dramatically over the past eight years.

US community colleges are now all the rage in Vietnam for all of the usual reasons, including quality education at a reasonable cost, an open admissions policy, transfer opportunities and aggressive recruiting on the part of a growing number of community colleges.

According to the 2012 Open Doors report, there were 87,997 international students enrolled at America’s community colleges. Of that number, 8.7%, or 7,656 students, were Vietnamese. This means that 68% of Vietnamese undergraduates were studying at a community college, nearly all with the goal of transferring to a four-year school to complete a bachelor’s degree.

… And so are high school completion programmes

The state of Washington, which ranks eleventh nationally in international student enrolment with 20,198 pupils, has 1,656 Vietnamese students. Many are enrolled in community colleges and, more specifically, high school completion programmes offered by community colleges that allow students to kill two academic birds with one stone: earn a Washington high school diploma and an associate degree in two years, assuming additional English language training is not required.

In addition to saving time and money, high school completion programmes enable students to make a smooth linguistic and cultural adjustment and better prepare them for study at a four-year college or university. For Vietnamese parents of means, these programmes are a cost-effective option for their children to obtain a quality education, something that is in short supply at home.

A new government policy has provided an additional incentive for some parents of means to send their children for overseas study: two years of mandatory military service when their sons turn 18 years old.

And an additional reason for the popularity of high school completion programmes and high school study in general, including boarding and day schools, is the fact the 12th grade is considered to be a waste of time for students planning to study overseas and therefore, they have no need to take either the secondary school completion or university entrance exam.

Vietnamese student profile

Unlike many other Asian countries, Vietnam is primarily an undergraduate market with nearly three-quarters of international students enrolled in associate and bachelor degree programmes. Another 17% are in graduate programmes, a percentage that has been decreasing in recent years. Finally, 5.5% fall into the “Other” category (e.g., intensive English programmes), while 5.2% are involved in Optional Practical Training (OPT).

Just under 40% of Vietnamese students in the US are studying business and management. This is by far the highest percentage of any of the top 25 places of origin. STEM studies also have appeal – the second highest percentage is engineering (9.6%) followed by math/computer science (7.1%). Other areas of study include physical/life sciences (6.8%), health professions (4.5%), and the social sciences (4.5%).

While California, Texas and Washington play host to well over half of all Vietnamese students in the US, they can be found in nearly all 50 states. This means that institutions that are not located in one of these top three states have to go the extra mile in branding and spreading the good word about themselves in what has become a fiercely competitive market.

In addition to the increase in tuition dollars and diversity that Vietnamese students bring, universities and colleges welcome them with open arms because they distinguish themselves academically and through their active involvement in extracurricular activities.

Recruiting in Vietnam

An October 2012 World Education Services (WES) report, entitled Beyond More of the Same: The Top Four Emerging Markets for International Student Recruitment, identified Vietnam as one of four emerging markets for international student recruitment, along with Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey:

“High recruitment potential is attributable to Vietnam’s growing middle-class and strong study abroad interest. Institutions of higher education that identify and reach Vietnamese students with the financial means to study in the US should enjoy a good deal of recruiting success in the coming years.”

Like in other countries, institutions need to develop and implement a long-term and multi-pronged strategy that meets their unique needs and accommodates the budget. This includes helicopter marketing (e.g., fairs, info sessions, presentations, high school outreach), armchair activities (e.g., marketing and promotion; virtual student fairs), and different forms of short- and long-term in-country representation. Recruiters (and the administration) will also need a healthy dose of patience and perseverance.

An initial checklist would look something like this:

• How often do you come to Vietnam?
• What types of activities and events (e.g., fairs, information sessions, high school outreach, individual meetings, alumni outreach) do you participate in?
• Do you have Vietnamese language promotional materials?
• Do you have Vietnamese language web content?
• How do you use education recruitment agents?
• Do you have a marketing strategy?
• Which of your “selling points” appeal to the Vietnam market?
• Assuming you have Vietnamese students, do you make use of them (e.g., referrals, word-of-mouth advertising for in-country events, written/video testimonials)?

With an Internet penetration rate of 35%, nearly 32 million netizens, and over 12 million Facebook users as of last month, most of whom are young people, the effective use of social media is key in reaching young people and prospective students.

Finally, be sure to select a local partner whom you can trust and who shares your commitment to transparency, excellence and quality service.

Quality controls in Vietnam

The push for quality in Vietnam’s higher education system is coming from all directions, including MoET, employers, parents, students, and even some expatriates who work in the education sector.

For example, Decision 05/2013, which was proposed by the Ministry and approved by the Prime Minister, will provide for closer scrutiny of education agents. This is the result of recent scandals and demands from the public for more oversight of these companies. This is good news for students, parents and those companies that conduct their business in an ethical and transparent manner.

Another area that has received considerable attention from the government is higher education enrolment. The Ministry recently announced plans to reduce enrolment at 23 universities and colleges. According to Bui Van Ga, a vice minister, the intent of the policy is to “focus on quality instead of quantity.”

There are currently 419 universities and colleges in Vietnam, including 82 private institutions with a 2012 enrolment of 2.2 million, of whom 66% were enrolled at a university. This is extraordinary when you consider that Vietnam still has an elite higher education system. To put this in perspective, there were 153 higher education institutions in 1999/00 with an enrolment of 893,754.

Like many other aspects of Vietnamese society, there has been a mad rush to make up for lost time, take advantage of a plethora of new opportunities, and respond to a surging demand for education and training – without the requisite infrastructure or quality control. Not surprisingly, one end result has been “deficiencies in infrastructure and teaching staff,” which is one of the reasons for the enrolment freeze.

It remains to be seen how this contraction will influence the number of Vietnamese students studying overseas. For those who choose (or are obliged) to study at a college, the impact should be non-existent. Limits on access to private schools may be an impetus for more students of means to select an overseas study option.

Yet another area that has consumed copious amounts of ink and untold millions of gigabytes in recent years is the crackdown on unauthorised foreign institutions operating in Vietnam. Enter Decree 73, intended to put a stop to the influx of unregulated foreign educational institutions by stipulating the terms and conditions of foreign investment in short-term training programmes, preschool education, K-12 schools, vocational institutions, universities, branch campuses, and foreign-invested institutions that work in cooperation with Vietnamese partners.

A prelude to Decree 73 is an official statement made in August 2010 by Dr. Nguyễn Xuân Vang, director of the International Education Development Department of MoET, that unauthorised joint training programmes are illegal and that the Ministry will not recognise the diplomas of programmes offered in cooperation with unaccredited foreign partners. This was the culmination of a “summer of discontent” in the nation’s media about the nefarious activities of foreign rogue providers, most of which hailed from the US.

A look ahead

In spite of some recent economic stumbling blocks, Vietnamese continue to value and invest in education for their children both overseas and at home. This growth trend should continue for the foreseeable future.

The Wild West environment – in which corruption has been rampant, chasing after money seems to be the order of the day, and cutting corners “business as usual” – appears to be going the way of the dinosaur, which is good news for students, parents and Vietnam as a whole.

The rising tide of expectations and the emergence of educated consumers bode well for the development of a higher quality education sector that is better equipped to prepare young Vietnamese for a globalised economy.

About the author

A 2011 Hobsons consultant’s report noted that “The work of Dr Mark Ashwill, formerly of IIE, and the former US Ambassador, Michael Michalak, helped to promote the United States as a destination for Vietnamese students, and strengthened the ties between the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) and US universities.”

Last summer, Jeff Browne wrote in his blog Vietnomics that “Much of the credit for the strengthening US-Vietnam higher education link goes to Hanoi-based educator Mark Ashwill, director of Capstone Vietnam and key advisor to student-run nonprofit VietAbroader, both of which help Vietnamese students navigate the American education culture.”

Dr Ashwill can be reached at markashwill[AT]capstonevietnam.com. He blogs at An International Educator in Vietnam. Capstone Vietnam works exclusively with regionally accredited colleges and universities in the US, and officially accredited institutions in other countries.

The post Why Vietnam? A market snapshot appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

But in the struggle to cover all bases in marketing and branding – all channels, all techniques, all technologies – there is a danger that some basics of communication get lost.

Today we’ll take a look at the importance of making sure your marketing resources are answering the right questions for prospective international students.

First things first: who is asking the questions?

A prospective international student seldom decides what country and institution to choose in a vacuum. Most often – and especially if they are younger – they embark on their selection process amid friends and parents, and the latter especially are likely to have strong opinions and/or preconceptions. In addition, parents are likely to have different priorities when evaluating schools than students do. They are considering sending their children to another country, and to do this, they are looking for certainty that their children will be:

• Safe;
• Supported (academically and socially);
• Happy and welcomed;
• Provided with an education that opens doors for exciting and well-remunerated careers;
• Provided with an environment that respects home country traditions (e.g., prayer rooms for Muslim students).

The parents of study abroad candidates are often among the most ambitious parents; such parents want the best lives possible for their children and can also be excited about the prospects their children’s education may mean for the family as a whole. This is particularly true in many important source countries with burgeoning middle and upper classes, such as China, India, Russia, and Brazil.

Especially for institutions that do not have the benefit of elite rankings or established brands, it is important to make sure that parents – key influencers in students’ study decisions – get the information they need to be able to support a student’s interest in a school.

Some schools even devote entire sections of their websites to the parents and families of prospective students, such as the University of Toronto.

Categories of question: emotional and logical

For parents and students alike, there are two types of questions that have to be dealt with in order for them to enrol with a school:

• Emotional: Will this decision satisfy my emotional needs?
• Logical: Is this a decision I can afford to make – will the return on investment justify the cost and effort required?

If students aren’t emotionally moved by an institution (e.g., “I will fit in well in this community – I can see myself being happy here. Imagine what I’ll be able to do when I graduate!”), they won’t care about the logistics of getting into the school. However, if it seems like too much trouble to get into a school, even if the school looks exciting, students may give up and turn to another option – of which there are often many.

Looking at emotional drivers

In terms of the emotional assurance students and their families crave, it really boils down to this: is this school going to make the student (a) happy when they are studying there and (b) successful after they graduate?

Leveraging satisfied current and alumni students’ experiences via social media, the school website, print materials, and by video or in-person (e.g., student fairs) can go a long way to moving the emotional needle in the right direction.

In addition, marketing materials should emphasise such things as employment and earning rates after graduation, companies’ testimonials about their positive experiences working with the school’s graduates, and VIP alumni doing exciting work in their careers. The student, and their family, has to be convinced that the benefits of studying at Institution X trump those of studying at Institution Y, and/or that Country X is a better choice for their career than Country Y.

An important question, therefore, for an institution’s marketers, is:

“Are we focusing enough on the benefits our school provides students (e.g., entry into a successful, global network of alumni or an internationally recognised qualification), and not dwelling too much on the school’s actual features (e.g., world-class facilities)?”

It can be useful to trace a line from features to benefits to make sure the latter come out in messaging. For example, Brown University doesn’t just say that it “is frequently recognised for its global reach, many cultural events, numerous campus groups and activities, active community service programmes, highly competitive athletics, and beautiful facilities located in a richly historic urban setting.” The university spells out the meaning of such features for the student: it was “named by the 2010 Princeton Review as the #1 College in America for Happiest Students.” The result? A movement from features… to benefits.

Ending with logical drivers

As much as students and their families want happiness and success from the experience of studying abroad, they have to be assured that the experience makes sense for them from a logical – and logistical – perspective. Is the student even able to study in the country in question? Do they have the credentials required by their institution of choice?

Institutions need to ensure that they take the unique concerns of international students into their marketing materials. First, they need to address all the possible questions students may have in their target markets, such as:

• How will my credentials translate to the institution? Do they all count?
• Will the qualifications I receive from the study abroad institution be recognised in my home country?
• Is there financial aid or scholarships available to help fund my studies?
• Can my partner/spouse/children come with me?
• Can I/we work abroad when I’m studying? What about internship opportunities?
• What about immigration? Are there programmes to help international students stay in the country upon graduating?
• What kind of student accommodation would best suit me?
• Are there graduates from my country to whom I can speak with for advice?
• My English isn’t where I need it to be in order to be admitted – what can I do?
• Will there be a medical exam? Do I need special kinds of documentation to be admitted into the country?
• What kind of support can I expect to make sure I am successful at the study abroad institution?
• In which other ways can you assure me that international students are a priority at your school?

Many institutions are new to international student recruiting, and may not have adapted their marketing resources to adequately reflect questions like the ones addressed above. But these are make-or-break questions, and students need prompt, comprehensive, current answers to be able to progress seamlessly in their movement from interest to enrolment.

Providing easily discoverable answers to such questions – for example, on websites – is part of the solution. The other part is making it very easy for prospective international students to correspond directly with a knowledgeable school representative to have questions answered – and even, where possible, answered in the student’s first language. There should be several ways to do this, which may include email, live web chats, Skype, Facebook/social media messaging, and telephone.

As with consumers in other high-involvement product and service categories, prospective students will be more likely to choose those institutions that respect their needs, and that deliver real value over the long term.

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