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.”

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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.

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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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“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.

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.

The post Part 2: MOOC development continues to pick up speed… around the world appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

In Part 2, we go behind the scenes, as it were, to look at the strategic questions that should preface the actual creation of videos for international student recruitment purposes. We offer seven substantial tips for getting the strategy right for your video, from initial inspiration to creation and through to distribution and continual enhancements.

The power of video

The timeliness of this post is exemplified by research just coming out such as this finding from the survey for Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report:

“Nearly 80% of participants reported that they use YouTube, ahead of all other social sites like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.”

Of the research, Technorati Media CEO Shani Higgins said,

“YouTube, and video in general, allows its users to see the action, to see someone using a product they might be thinking about buying. Consumers trust what they can see, and they trust people who have used the products they’re looking into.”

Technorati found that 59% of surveyed brand managers said their companies are planning to increase video budgets in the year ahead – many by as much as 30%.

Consumers clearly want to see video as they make choices about the products and services they will use to define their lives – so it makes sense to craft a solid strategy to make sure your video is doing the best job possible at promoting your institution.

Top 7 tips

Below are our top seven tips for getting the strategy right for your video, from initial inspiration to how it will be distributed. We’ll be aided by an interview we conducted with Mr Florian Schäfer, the co-founder of kommod.tv and a producer and video marketing consultant based in Germany; you’ll see his comments interspersed throughout the tips we provide.

1. Identify your target audiences and what this means for your video and its delivery

Are your audiences in multiple countries? Are they parents as well as students? What about agents?

Your audiences’ characteristics, geography, and different needs may mean the creation of more than one video, in different languages, perhaps, or with different emphases. Or, they could suggest that you deliver the video in multiple ways (e.g., for audiences with limited or blocked Internet access, a simple solution could be to send agents a USB stick they can use to show the video to student audiences).

Also, think about cultural sensitivities. Schäfer recalled the challenge of videoing a school in Miami for an intended Saudi Arabian audience: “You did not want girls in bikinis on beaches for that one,” he explained.

What about people who are visually impaired? Check your institution’s accessibility standards to see what this will mean in terms of captioning and other ways of making your video more accessible.

2. Present the best of your institution, but be genuine

As Schäfer says, “Don’t underestimate your target audience. If you’re a language school in Canada marketing to Brazilians, do understand that Brazilians know that it snows in Canada in the winter and that snow is cold!”

Your video should emphasise the best of what you offer, but stay within the realms of reality. It’s courting trouble to suggest idyllic scenes that are never then experienced by the student when they arrive – it’s not a great step on the road to student satisfaction.

3. Identify the key goal of your video

Identify one key goal: for example, prompting a decision to choose your university over one of two others the student has applied for.

Whatever else your video accomplishes, it must deliver a message that reflects that goal – and ideally, a call to action to make the goal more likely to be met.

The call to action can be soft or more explicit:

• A softer one would be simply outlining the benefit of performing the action (e.g., “Study here and live in the most beautiful city in the world”);
• A more explicit one would be a direct offer to drive immediate response (e.g., “Enrol by 30 April to receive season’s tickets to the orchestra/football games/etc.”).

If you have more than one goal to meet, consider a series of videos rather than a stand-alone. Schäfer explains that people’s attention span for a general promotional video taps out at 3–4 minutes, so if you have more to say or show beyond that time frame, consider another video.

4. Consider which assets you will use

Schäfer notes the importance of thinking about music and/or audio right at the beginning of conceptualising the video. He often finds it worthwhile to consider music composed specifically for the video, which is less expensive than some might think (e.g., US $500 for a 3-minute video) and has the advantage of being customised for the needs of the video.

As for what assets you might have but not know it, Schäfer offers another tip: call your local tourism board. This resource is guaranteed to have the most beautiful images and likely video of your locale and the surrounding landscape, and because international education is certainly aligned with the goals of your local tourism board, they are likely to grant permission for use of some of their material.

As much as international education marketing is in one sense destination marketing – because it relies on convincing students of the benefits of a place as much as an institution – it can be dangerous to rely too much on picturesque footage of landscape. Students want an experience out of study abroad – they want to meet people and try new things – so aim to get as much of the experience as you can into your video.

See for example this video below that Kommod produced for The Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. It employs student and staff testimonials throughout to reflect the experience of studying at the university.

5. Consider that at least 1 in 5 viewers will be watching your video via a mobile device

For the implications of this, we’ll simply share… a video!

6. Create a distribution strategy

A distribution strategy is crucial for educational marketing videos. Simply popping a video up on YouTube is not going to be effective. Here is an handy graphic that illustrates the range of possibilities to consider, thanks to an excellent post by public relations firm PRX Digital.

Source: PRx Digital

About YouTube, Schäfer explains that too many people still think of it as a place to watch and post videos. In fact, he says, it’s a social networking site (and the second biggest search engine with 3.9 billion searches a month) and the rules of social networking and SEO thus apply here.

Upload each video with an interesting headline, comprehensive keywords and description, and an attractive thumbnail (to generate more interest, avoid using logos as thumbnail images). For more tips on preparing videos online, try this “YouTube 101″ article from Huffington Post.

Once it’s up there on your institution’s YouTube channel, spread the word: link to it on all the other social networking sites you’re on, and as web strategy firm WebInkNow tells us:

“Create links to your video from your home page, product pages, or online media room. Mention your video in your e-mail or offline newsletters, and create links to your video as part of your e-mail signature and those of other people in your organisation.”

There is also the ability in Facebook to create video albums, just like you would create a photo album. The importance of this goes without saying, since we all know how much students use Facebook.

As much as YouTube may be the biggest video sharing site, it is not the only site you should be thinking of to upload videos to. YouTube is a major social channel in its own right and the leading service for video sharing, but alternate hosted services, such as as Vimeo, Vzaar, and others, abound.

VideoSchoolOnline describes Vimeo as “the artistic sibling to YouTube,” reflecting the platform’s orientation to the arts and not-for-profit producers. Many of these alternate hosting platforms offer a range of customisation options and other special features but also carry a cost, especially for commercial usage.

Whichever hosting services you use, it is sensible to make full use of built-in platform sharing tools that will post the link to your video in sharing sites such as Twitter in order to get your video seen by as large an audience as possible. You may also know that you can tweet video links; important since Twitter is an excellent way to promote sharing because retweeting is such an ingrained behaviour.

In an international education recruitment video distribution strategy, don’t underestimate all the markets where students will be …

• Compromised by their computer’s or Internet connection’s ability to handle large video files;
• Unable to view YouTube or other hosted international services in cases where such platforms are blocked outright in major markets, notably China.

In these cases, video may need to be delivered via local media – such as discs or memory sticks – or posted to alternate video channels. For example, Youku is a major made-in-China platform, and the second-largest video sharing site in the world after YouTube.

7. Measure, tweak, and create anew

Consider how you’re going to measure whether your video was successful in its marketing aim.

Clicks, views, shares, and comments are the basics, but also think about how many people watched the video the whole way through. Another good idea is to conduct a survey with new students to see what marketing affected them and how (e.g., “Did you see our XYZ video? If so, did it have a positive, negative, or no effect on your decision to enrol here?”).

When it comes to tweaking, it can be a good idea to try out different keywords, descriptions, and headlines every few days or weeks – all very fast and easy to change on YouTube.

Consider how long you will rely on your video to promote your goal. As the following slide deck from eduGuru notes, “video ages badly.” There should be a plan in place for substituting the video with a fresh one that audiences will click on because they know it’s new.

The slide deck is based on a survey that eduGuru conducted in 2011 to gather insights on video usage among higher education institutions. Among its findings: 97% of responding institutions are actively producing and sharing videos. Please see the complete presentation below for additional findings and practical insights to give your video strategy a boost.

The post Part 2: Videos that work: What’s your strategy? appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

— 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.

The post India moving forward with education reforms appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

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.”

The post Top trends in strategy and pricing for educational travel providers appeared first on ICEF Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

ICEF Monitor takes a look at the growing importance of international internships, offers tips on finding opportunities abroad, and what this cross-cultural work experience means for employers and students.

Corporate hiring practices are changing

The benefits of internships are well documented – they provide practical experience, a sample of life in a chosen field, networking opportunities, workplace confidence, and practice using specialist skills and vocabulary amongst real world customers and colleagues. All these benefits go double for international students.

But perhaps most important for internationals, internships provide a chance to get into internal hiring queues, a crucial advantage, since instead of the default approach of recruiting from the outside, companies are refocusing on hiring from within their own ranks.

What are the reasons for this? Internal hires take less time to finalise and have a positive effect on company morale, but the bottom line is they’re economical. According to an August 2012 Time article, the average cost of identifying and hiring an external job candidate is 1.7 times more than an internal hire, and the website hreonline.com reported studies have found that 40% to 60% of external hires “are unsuccessful,” compared to only 25% for internal hires.

The high failure rate for external hires has to do with many factors, among them culture and language issues if they are foreigners, integration and credibility problems with longtime employees, and steep learning curves. Internships can help reduce all these issues yet still allow the company to benefit from the fresh ideas and new perspective a foreigner can bring.

Finding international internships

There are hundreds of international internship resources. At universities, administrative offices for individual academic departments and career services centres would be the first avenues to explore, followed by international relations or foreign affairs offices. Websites, social media, and old-fashioned networking are also valuable tools.

Lauren Berger, of internship listing website Internqueen.com, suggests that students call companies in which they have an interest and inquire directly. In an interview with the New York Times she recommended making a list of ten companies, then visiting their websites and collecting contact information for their internship coordinators.

We’ve compiled a short list of a few other noteworthy external resources (note: most of these charge fees for their services):

• AIESEC – student-administered and present in over 100 countries, this fee-charging organisation provides 60,000 members a year the opportunity to live and work in foreign countries in areas of management, technology, education, and development.
• IAESTE – founded in 1948 and present in over 80 countries, this programme is open to degree level science, engineering, technology and applied arts students in the second year of study and above.
• KOPRA – a non-profit entity administering more than 500 internships focused on East Asia.
• Goabroad.com – a web portal offering a directory of over 27,000 opportunities abroad.
• The Leonardo da Vinci Programme – administered by the European Commission as part of its Lifelong Learning Programme, this offers financial support to EU students involved in internships in other EU countries.
• Intrax Global Internships – an organisation offering college students and recent grads from the US, Canada, and the EU internship placements in Europe, South America and Asia.
• CIEE – a non-profit, non-governmental organisation offering programmes for international students, recent graduates and working professionals as part of the US government’s J-1 Exchange Visitor Program to qualified international candidates for up to 18 months.
• IES Global - provides internships in over 150 companies in China across a variety of highly sought after industry sectors, as well as teaching internships in Vietnam.
• CRCC Asia – a fee-charging agency arranging internships in China in areas including law and green technology, and that usually has three times as many applicants as the 1,300 places it offers.
• International Cross-cultural Committee – headquartered in Tokyo and with offices in numerous countries, ICC accepts students and recent graduates between the ages of 20 to 30 from around the world to intern with host organisations in the Tokyo area.

Application processes vary depending upon country, visa requirements, field of employment, and other factors. Some schools offer credit for already completed internships while others do not allow credit accumulation to begin until after the internships are registered. The amount of credit to be earned also varies, depending upon the learning potential of the work experience and how many hours are worked.

From a recruitment perspective, being knowledgeable about internships at institutions, within host communities, and among international organisations can have a profound impact upon the fortunes on students. With so many options available, informed recruiters who know the details of the internship process in their markets can offer valuable data to students.

The growing importance of internships

Philip D. Gardner, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University, recently told The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“Once upon a time, ‘trainee’ used to be a common job title. Now companies expect everyone, recent graduates included, to be ready to go on on Day One. The mantle of preparing the work force has been passed to higher ed.”

Or put more bluntly, for employers, internships are increasingly required of applicants.

Sir Tim Wilson, author of the whitepaper “A Review of Business-University Collaboration“, agrees. He believes government should offer tax credits to companies that create paid internships, and told The Guardian last year,

“The world has changed. If you look at a lot of internships offered in the corporate sector, these are highly competitive. I think we’re beginning to see internships being used as part of an extended interview process.”

The article also quotes UK Business Secretary Vince Cable as stating:

“The best universities around the world are building deeper links with business.”

Universities have long maintained internship programmes, however their evolution into an indispensable building block for students’ futures has caused many institutions to take a broader approach:

• The State University of New York, for example, is promoting cooperative education on all nine of its campuses. “Our goal is that all 465,000 students who enroll annually at SUNY have some sort of experiential education experience,” explained chancellor Nancy Zimpher.
• The University of Pittsburgh has also taken a bold approach. Any of the school’s 18,000 undergraduates who complete an internship preparation programme can receive faculty help finding an experiential learning opportunity before graduation.
• At Johnson & Wales University, a US $4 million fund has been created to ensure that all the students at its five campuses can locate and gain placement in a suitable internship.
• In Japan, a recent report revealed that 74% of 476 surveyed universities offer certified course credits to students who participate in internship programmes at companies. Furthermore, 95% of universities with more than 5,000 students grant credits for job experiences, 73% of them for studying abroad and 41% for volunteer projects.

Government and private companies are getting more involved as well:

• Canada is spending CDN $35-million to fund Mitacs, a national not-for-profit organisation that supports research and development at 1,200 companies through 4,800 internships for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Companies put up an average of CDN $25,000, matched by CDN $30,000 a year from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to hire a PhD graduate intern for two years.
• In the UK, the private company Experio Enterprise recently launched a project-based internship and part-time study scheme for international students in London, with a 4-month programme designated for those requiring a UK entry visa, and programmes of flexible duration for those who don’t need entry visas.
• GlobaLinks Learning Abroad has launched a new educational webinar series on international internships which “helps advisors at universities better educate potential programme participants on the components and benefits of high quality programmes that go beyond basic internship placement.”

Internships and getting ahead

Collated international data for internships is not readily available, however various surveys help to paint a picture. In the US, a 2012 survey of 15,715 graduating bachelors students by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) revealed that 55% had received internship or co-op experience. Of that group, 51% had been offered at least one job.

However there was a divergence between paid and unpaid interns, with about 60% of paid interns receiving at least one job offer, compared to 37% of unpaid interns. To put the latter number in perspective, 36% of non-interning graduates received job offers. Clearly, not all internships are created equal.

But what is true is that, broadly speaking, students who have worked as interns command higher starting salaries on the job market. Research from Inspiring Interns revealed that UK graduates who interned for as little as three months could earn £1,500 more in their first year of working than graduates without work experience.

High demand for internships means some students pay for placements, which raises ethical issues – among them whether it is fair for companies to accept unpaid labour from indebted students, and whether wealthier students deserve the advantage of being able to pay more for placements. But as long as businesses drive demand, neither of these issues is likely to be resolved soon. In the end, barring changes to the system, the most important consideration is each student’s future needs.

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