Early signs are showing the scale of decline in Fall 2020 international enrollments in the US and how pathway enrollments may be even more disappointing. Everyone has been expecting a deterioration in numbers and it comes after several bruising years where many pathway providers have closed operations. INTO University Partnerships and Shorelight are the dominant players in a troubled market and their partners at Colorado State University and Auburn University make it possible to drill down to pathway level.
It’s an early snapshot of what is likely to be happening around the US in Fall 2020 and also an indicator of what the pathway pipeline of international students looks like. It makes for sombre reading if you are a big player in the US pathway business and represents a financial blow on two fronts. Low enrollments make it difficult to run the pathway profitably or get any contribution to overhead. It also means several years of lower income the operator gets from its percentage of tuition fee per student in the university in succeeding years.
INTO CSU and Colorado State University
At Colorado State University (CSU) the overall international numbers have been dropping slowly for a couple of years. But Fall 2020 total enrollments dropped 22% year on year. Longer term pain may be signalled by the declining pipeline from its pathway partner.
Source: Colorado State University Institutional Research Planning and Effectiveness
Since Fall 2017 the number of undergraduate and graduate enrollments in the INTO pathway at CSU has declined by 54%, but in absolute numbers the drop in enrollments of 42 students (35%) from Fall 2019 to Fall 2020 has been the largest ever. Graduate enrollment declines are outpacing those of undergraduate students but both are falling sharply.
Source: Colorado State University Institutional Research Planning and Effectiveness
It’s worth remembering that INTO closed its pathway business with Marshall University earlier this year. This was covered in a blog back in March 2020, with the growing levels of inter-company debt between INTO University Partnerships and several of its US pathways explored in a May 2020 blog. Colorado State University was near the same inter-company debt level as Marshall, and it seems unlikely to get any better after this year.
Shorelight and Auburn University
Auburn had been showing healthy growth and outperforming most US universities for several years. But total 2020 Fall enrollments are down by 18% on 2019. Underpinning this is a 21% drop in Chinese students whose numbers have fallen from 1881 to 1489 year on year.
Auburn University Enrollments by Country – all colleges/schools, departments and primary majors
While an 18% drop in total enrollments might not be too bad a result in the current year it does not look as if Auburn will be able to rely on Auburn Global, the partnership between Auburn and Shorelight, for stability or future growth. There has been a 69% drop year on year (384 to 119) in enrollments on four key Auburn Global programs. Perhaps more troubling is that this number is driven by a 66% decline in the number of Chinese students enrolled in the programs (325 to 109).
Auburn University Enrollments by Country – Auburn Global – Academic, Extended, and Masters Accelerator Programs (First and Second term)
It’s reasonable to add that Auburn and Shorelight are working hard to promote an online option starting in October. This is positioned as offering “the perfect solution for international students who would like to earn academic credits virtually this fall”. Students can earn 9-12 credits on the Academic Accelerator Program and 7-8 credits on the Extended Accelerator Program. They will work through Zoom and pay the same price as on campus students.
Long term observers of the global recruitment business know that there is an ebb and flow to country performance but it cannot be easy for private pathway operators trying to satisfy private equity holders when a market looks to be in free fall. Huron appears to have backed its investment in Shorelight with a further infusion of $13m in the first quarter of 2020 but that was pre-pandemic. There seems to be a lot riding on the possibility of online delivery being attractive to students but that remains an unknown quantity.
By way of a contrast the UCAS data on UK university international undergraduate acceptances suggests students are already voting with their feet. International students placed in September 2020 were up 10% (4030) to 44300 with students from China up 27% to 12980. There’s still plenty of uncertainty around and the growing number of coronavirus cases on university campuses may bring the party to a grinding halt. But, for now, many universities are chartering planes to fly students into the country to bolster their chances of turning enrollments into attendance.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
It’s worth noting that Shorelight recruits at the direct entry level for Auburn, so separating out the direct numbers against the accelerator program numbers is a misleading indicator of Auburn Global performance.
Hi. The graphs are a straightforward comparison year on year using the same terminology/course description for each year and the data provided by Auburn. Unless Auburn changed their method of assessing enrollments against those course descriptions in the years in question the graphs are a fair like for like comparative measure. They also indicate the terms used and the source if anyone wants to check. If you’d like to provide me with some other numbers that I can verify with the university I’d be happy to revisit this.
It seems as if INTO has struggled with placing students in US institutions, which is part of a broader trend that includes Navitas. Do you think this is because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the US marketplace, or some other feature of their business model?
I think that the US is suffering a general decline in international student interest due to global competition, cost and post-study work opportunities. I also think that the pathway model – which emerged in markets where universities generally accept home students after 13 years of schooling – is not entirely the same in a system where home students come in after 12 years. It’s also possible that the US model – where out of state students can often be charged as much as international students – brings different motivations to universities. Plenty of things to consider.
Would be interesting to see the trends between the “South and East” and “North/West” partnerships. My thinking is that race and COVID can intersect positively or negatively.
It’s not always easy to find universities that give sufficient granularity in reporting pathway numbers. In that respect the type of analysis you suggest is probably not possible. I agree with you that the more transparency the easier it is to understand the impact of other issues that influence enrollment.
UCAS acceptance figures are not the same as arrivals. Most UK universities will be 20% down on undergraduate arrivals would be my guess. And masters arrivals maybe 50%.
I agree that the acceptance figures do not represent arrivals but they are the only public proxy we have for possible performance. Unfortunately UK universities (unlike many in the US) do not provide any transparency in terms of current enrollments so it is difficult to know with any certainty whether you are right or wrong. Knowing your insights into the sector I have every reason to believe your analysis and it would seem to to me that the resurgence in COVID cases in the UK will dampen any chance of recouping Autumn shortfalls with a January surge.