July 2021 – View From A Bridge – management, education and personal thoughts

From pathway to runway and lift off for employability

Louise Nicol and Alan Preece First published in University World News 17 July 2021

Pathway operators are becoming the unlikely force behind new initiatives in international student graduate employability. It is a phenomenon that deserves some applause since it reflects the needs of students, but it begs the question as to why universities are not doing the heavy lifting in an area that is critical for national competitiveness in the post-pandemic world.

The answers suggest that it may be time for more radical solutions to careers guidance and advice services.

CareerAhead (Study Group), CareerFirst (INTO University Partnerships), Career Core (Kaplan), Career Accelerator (Shorelight) and Professional (Navitas) are all variations on the same theme. Some are costlier and have more guarantees than others.

It is early days and this may just represent an opportunist response to student concerns in a period of economic uncertainty, rather than a long-term plan to support graduate employment. Serious, smart and strategic operators should be building in robust longitudinal measurement of job placements, career progression and comparative performance.

It is no secret that international students are highly focused on the return on investment they get from their expenditure on a degree overseas.

In 2016, Hobsons research indicated that four in 10 (40%) said they would go where there is high demand for employees and 38% would choose their study destination based on expected high earnings associated with the industry for which their degree prepares them. A 2021 QS study of students interested in studying in the US showed 54% said a high graduate employment rate was the most important metric they considered.

Failure to support graduate outcomes

The pathway providers’ decision to take the initiative in this area may suggest that they have given up on the notion that their university partners are willing to provide what international students need or are capable of doing so.

One of the big selling points of the pathway providers has always been that, on arrival, students are “students of the university” with access to all the resources and facilities of the hosting institution. Any reasonable person would think that includes the careers advice and guidance services which are the institution’s go-to resource for helping students get jobs.

Another underlying dichotomy is that the implicit purpose of getting a degree is that it is a route to having more choice in the career one follows. The need for private providers to charge extra money to ensure appropriate levels of support reflects the broader truth that a degree is no longer enough.

Institutions would do well to consider how this will begin to change the return-on-investment calculation made by students when choosing a university.

Universities may also be hoping that, just as they have handed their brands over to pathway providers and allow them to directly recruit students, they will not have to invest further in careers advice and guidance.

The low level of investment by the sector in graduate outcomes was laid bare by research from Tribal/iGraduate which showed that universities are spending over nine times as much on marketing as they are on career advice and support.

This is aligned with a collapse in data gathering around graduate outcomes that means decent comparative information from the UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) will not emerge until 2023 – six years since the last meaningful data.

Even when the HESA numbers do arrive they are highly unlikely to provide any genuine insights into the outcomes of the 75% or more of international students who plan to return to their home country. If employability is to be a key battleground for countries, universities and pathway providers to prove their worth, this is a significant gap in data on which to build a reputation.

Alternative data collecting models are already being used by forward-thinking universities and demonstrate where individual universities are able to make a difference for their graduates.

Outsourcing careers services to meet need

Leading industry commentators have argued that “career services must die” and that would seem increasingly true, given the lacklustre support that most are able or willing to give to international students.

There is a real need for institutions to rethink their performance criteria and even for governments with ambitious international student recruitment targets to consider how national reputations can be made or broken. This may even be a good moment for higher education to pass their graduate and careers advice investment to private providers who are able to deliver both genuine support and an accurate measurement of performance.

It may seem radical, but there is evidence that career progress has become a highly nuanced, technologically advanced and competitive business where increasing numbers of graduates need every piece of support they can get.

It is clear that the world of work has become as oriented towards aggregators like ZipRecruiter, Indeed and others. Universities need good quality information to be able to orient their academic offerings to the changing needs of the market, but there is no reason to expect them to be experts in services to secure employment.

Outsourcing non-core business such as accommodation, pre-degree teaching and maintenance has come a long way and seen some substantial gains for the sector. Focusing on teaching, research and social impact is plenty for most institutions to be considering and the pace of change required when it comes to ancillary services will always be secondary to these core activities. There is a certain symmetry in providers of pathways to degree level education also becoming the runway to career success.

It could lead to the tantalising possibility of private providers also taking over aspects of alumni relations with a focus on networking to build job prospects rather than seeing development and fundraising as the point of staying in touch with ex-students.

It is only a short step from that to building and recruiting to boot camps and re-skilling and upskilling short courses. With imagination, ingenuity, care and private investment this might even become a radical reinvention of lifelong learning led by private providers to meet the skills requirements of ‘Global Britain’.

Louise Nicol is founder of Asia Careers Group SDN BHD, and Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Graduate job recruitment – From fish in a barrel to go fish

Louise Nicol and Alan Preece First printed in University World News 03 July 2021

The graduate jobs outlook still looks bleak for students who graduated earlier this year and for those graduating in the summer. Just-in-time recruitment, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, digitisation and artificial intelligence are all combining against the background of a global pandemic and economic recession.

In response and as we emerge from COVID-19, we see a new breed of careers information advice and guidance better suited to the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous or ‘VUCA’ world we find ourselves in.

It was not too long ago that thousands of students attended face-to-face graduate fairs with numerous graduate employers in a bid to land their dream job. It was a scenario that was reminiscent of the early 1900s phrase ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ because nobody could miss – employers knew where the students would be and the students knew where to go to get a job.

But when nobody can travel and there are fewer jobs, the game changes and is more like the guessing, bluffing and occasional skill associated with the card game ‘Go Fish’.

In the United Kingdom in 2020, at least 30% of university students lost a job or an offer of a job between March and April after the sharpest monthly increase in unemployment on record. At the same time, competition for graduate jobs is at an all-time high: With graduate job openings falling by 77% since the beginning of the year, there are on average 100 graduates vying for every role.

At least 20% of Britain’s biggest employers have suspended their graduate recruitment selection processes and stopped making graduate job offers and experts say the true scale of the damage inflicted on new graduates will not be fully realised until next year.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has warned that graduate overqualification has reached “saturation point” and squeezes lower-qualified workers out of jobs. It has bemoaned the crude approach to addressing the UK’s poor productivity growth with a “conveyor belt of graduates”.

There are fears that the situation is unsustainable, given that the government estimates that 45% of university graduates will not earn enough to repay their student loans.

The situation is no better elsewhere in the world: according to the Institute of Student Employers’ summer 2020 report, COVID-19: Global impacts on graduate recruitment, the pandemic is having a profound and damaging impact on the global economy. Many countries are reporting dramatic rises in levels of unemployment and there is growing evidence that these changes are having a disproportionate impact on young people.

The report explores how these economic changes are impacting graduate recruitment in 21 countries, with results broadly reflecting the issues in the UK graduate jobs market.

Career services must die

The solutions are challenging, but were foreshadowed in 2013 by Andy Chan, vice president for innovation and career development at Wake Forest University. He gave a TEDx talk, “Career Services Must Die”, where he challenged colleges and universities to completely rethink the traditional delivery of career services. Seven years later, he did an update.

He says: “Sadly, not much has changed at the majority of college campuses; career services continue on pretty much as before – with dissatisfied students, alumni and employers having to struggle on their own. True breakthroughs in career services will come when higher education embraces career as part of its academic core instead of a fringe student affairs offering.”

The reality is that some universities have been treading water as far as careers education is concerned, but now we do see a sudden shift. As is often the way, necessity is the mother of invention.

Changing careers education

There is and will always be a place for face-to-face or virtual careers fairs, CV workshops, mock interviews and assessments, but it seems like the stage is now set for innovation and out of the box thinking.

So here are some thoughts on reinventing careers education at university:

• First and foremost, careers information advice and guidance should be for all students, regardless of disability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion or sexual orientation, whichever country they are from or heading to post-graduation.

• Careers guidance needs to be well informed by robust graduate outcomes data and insight, graduate destinations, benchmarked employability metrics and up-to-date labour market information for both the country of study and also for major overseas student markets, for example, China, India and the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region.

• It will be important to personalise careers information advice and guidance and establish from the outset where in the world students are looking for their first job, for example, in their country of study or elsewhere. Careers advice will differ depending on their preference. It is likely that Asia will bounce back from the recession far quicker than Europe, so could there be exciting opportunities for graduates from other regions further afield.

• There will be a need to manage student expectations because in the present situation they may not initially walk into their dream job. However, a stop gap role working in an alternative industry or non-graduate job may provide them with valuable experience. In fact, speaking to many graduate recruiters in both Asia and the UK, many focus more on a candidate’s part-time work than they do on their degree during interviews.

• Widening graduates’ horizons is essential, for example, finance roles are not just available in banks. In Malaysia, oil and gas giant Shell employs over 1,000 accountants. For many employers, degree discipline is less important than one would think. They are looking at a level of education, but more importantly an attitude and resilience, which should be available in abundance in today’s graduates who have survived the pandemic and gained their degree.

• Students need to be given techniques and tips to find jobs that are not advertised, obvious or may not even exist yet. Effective account mapping and outreach to hiring managers and section managers could be a way of securing a job that has not even been advertised. This year’s graduates are going to have to be ‘job makers’ not just ‘job takers’.

• Students will have to think out of the box and commit time and energy to their own enterprise, join the gig economy and-or become a freelancer. This requires a different set of skills and commercial acumen that most employers find desirable in new recruits.

So, this and next year’s job search for both employers and graduates will, unfortunately, not be like ‘shooting fish in a barrel’. It will require new skills and a new way of thinking and navigating complex labour markets and employer needs.

Like ‘Go Fish’, you will be dealt your hand and must bring your wit, ability and judgement to bear to compete with other graduates in a fiercely competitive market.

For higher education, a focus more on employability alongside increasing resources in this vital area of development will not only add value to their students at a time when many are increasingly questioning the value for money of their tuition fees, but also equip them with new, more innovative skills to be successful in a VUCA world.

Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge and Louise Nicol is founder of Asia Careers Group SDN BHD.

Image by tomekwalecki from Pixabay

Go compare – the emerging threat to higher education

Louise Nicol and Alan Preece First published in University World News on 22 May 2021

Commodification is increasingly likely to be a word that universities need to recognise, understand and apply to their business planning as technology levels the playing field for international student recruitment.

Investopedia tells us that it means ‘a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other goods of the same type’. When you put it alongside Clayton Christensen’s ‘jobs to be done’ and the growing availability of university comparison or application sites, it’s easy to see emerging comparisons with the marketplace for car insurance.

The point about the ‘jobs to be done’ approach is that it highlights that the purpose of buying a particular good or service is to ‘make progress in specific circumstances’. For most international students (and increasingly home students) the purpose of getting a degree is to get a job and to have decent career prospects.

Higher education may want students to study for love of a subject, but the harsh reality for a generation that is poorer than its parents is that this does not seem to be leading to what they need.

A world where outcome is all that counts

A 2013 report by Oliver Wyman shows that, in the United Kingdom, price comparison websites (PCWs) were securing 60% of new motor insurance policies after starting up just a decade before. It suggests that many people were content to make their purchasing decision in this way rather than studiously interrogate the terms and conditions of every company individually.

There is no doubt that the ability to consider price alongside any other factors was vital in the rise of such sites. Moreover, the report found that the reality was that many of the insurance products were virtually indistinguishable.

Choosing a university may not be exactly the same as choosing car insurance, but aggregator sites could present dozens of business and finance courses that all end with a degree from an institution.

In the case of the UK these are accredited by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). The QAA Quality Mark or Review Graphic shows that the provider has “met or exceeded the UK expectations for quality and standards in their QAA review”. In principle, every UK university with this seal of approval has degrees with equal status, but they offer them at significantly different prices.

The great and the good of higher education may be shaking their heads at this and thinking of Lord Darlington’s quote from Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windemere’s Fan about ‘a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’. But, in a situation where the customer has access to alternatives at the touch of a button, they have the means to determine the price they are willing to pay for the outcome they want.

Lord Darlington’s remark was about the nature of a cynic and it is arguable that young people are increasingly sceptical about the value of higher education.

Price, grades and rankings as differentiators

Institutions will undoubtedly look for ways of distinguishing themselves, but there are very few that have the financial muscle or marketing wit to be able to do so on a global scale.

It was not unknown before the internet for lowly institutions to inflate the tuition fees of their courses to international students on the basis that ‘price is a proxy for quality’. Better accessibility to information and ubiquitous university rankings have put a halt to that ploy so there will be a need for different tactics.

Entry qualifications, which are often seen as a signal of a quality institution, could become a way of communicating quality. But it has become clear that, with the number of universities going SATs free in the United States and the propensity for UK universities to be very flexible with international students, this is shaky ground.

It’s made even more complex by pathway operations that will offer international students a route to entry based on getting the required language level and passing the pathway’s own academic tests.

It would also seem counterproductive for most institutions to try to distinguish themselves by having high tariff entry points on a comparison site. Student matching may be sophisticated, but there is limited scope for nuance about such a defining piece of information and losing volume is not something that most institutions can afford to do.

Trying to impress with output grades is an equally risky business given the potential for grade inflation and the ability of institutions to decide how many of their students get ‘good degrees’.

University ranking may offer a different sort of quality test for students and, whether you love them or hate them, they have become a popular measure of distinction. However, research from the 2020 QS International Student Survey, recently presented at the Universities UK International Higher Education Forum, showed that there is a significant mismatch between the way rankings are compiled and the perceptions of students.

Prospective international students were asked to rank, in order of importance, what they thought a university’s good ranking indicated about the institution.

The top result was that 72% believe graduate employment rate is the most important factor. This was even above the 69% mark for the qualification level of staff members at the institution and 64% for student satisfaction. How a university is perceived by employers was deemed important by 49%, above the 48% for the number of citations in academic journals.

In short, students believed that employment outcomes and employer views were more important than staff quality, student satisfaction and research publications.

Price, ranking and employability

In that context it is disappointing that no current rankings include international student graduate employment as an input.

Within the QS World University Rankings, “employer reputation”, which is not the same as graduate employment rate but could provide some indication, accounts for just 10% of the measure. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 methodology did not include any element related to international employability or graduate outcomes.

Government-mandated graduate outcomes data collected in the majority of countries are usually only published with responses from domestic students. As the vast majority of international students – in the UK the estimate is 85% or more – still return to their home country, it would be inaccurate and misleading to use them as a guide to international student employability.

With rankings publishers forming partnerships with agents, aggregators and other interested parties to gain international student eyeballs, it is important for them to pay more attention to this important area.

International student graduate outcomes are being collected by private organisations and would bring real added value that is demonstrably aligned with the aspirations of students willing to invest to study abroad.

Without incorporating this key metric, the rankings will remain more of a vanity contest between institutions than a relevant and useful guide to applicants.

Price, ranking and international student employability are likely to become the key measures of a university’s value proposition when degree information is simple to compare and most institutions are obliged to engage with the aggregator sites.

Being a commodity product means a race to the bottom on price if that is where the institution chooses to compete.

Rankings are fickle, difficult to manage and leave the institution’s fate in the hands of publishers looking to satisfy their own ends. This is a good moment to really focus on providing the student customer with what they want and find ways to enhance value by proving that the institution provides a route to employability.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Aggregator recruitment start-ups meet the old order

First printed in University World News on 01 May 2021

The developing aggregator picture has some of the hallmarks of a classic movie where the scrappy outsider working from their bedroom takes on the corporate giants with near limitless resources.

One sign is that we are seeing Yocket, a company started in 2015 by four Indian graduates for US$132, taking on ETS, founded in 1947, which had revenues of over US$1 billion in 2019.

Underneath that David versus Goliath headline there are many other factors at play, with most leading to circumstances where many universities find themselves marginalised as active recruiters.

EdAgree is a subsidiary of ETS founded with US$1 million of seed funding from ETS’s corporate investment arm, ETS Strategic Capital. It runs a free platform allowing international students to match with and apply to university with the support of an advisor.

Yocket offers an online platform which helps students find their best fit university and offers counselling along with other support services.

Yocket’s claim of more than 400,000 registered users and over 100 university ‘tie-ups’ looks impressive with EdAgree only boasting nine listed university partners on its website at the time of writing. But the website also promises university partners the benefits of synergy saying: “EdAgree, with ETS, will bring you qualified students who are ready to succeed…”.

Just for good measure, ETS Strategic Capital is also an investor in ApplyBoard, while ETS is a partner of Studyportals.

A fast-changing world

It’s a dizzying world with companies appearing, rising and disappearing in the space of a few years, driven by the hunger for edtech investments and the expectations of significant growth in globally mobile students.

Start-ups since 2015 include the three mentioned above as well as Edvoy (part of IEC Abroad), Leverage Edu and StudentApply, while SchoolApply has risen, been purchased by INTO University Partnerships and then closed in the space of five years.

Longer term stalwarts such as Studyportals, founded in 2008, have responded with ambitions to be seen as ‘the matchmaker’ in higher education.

Their April 2021 blog notes that they have historically focused on generic content, but are trying to move to more personally curated content including scholarship opportunities.

The blog mentions Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix as inspirations, but it seems likely that the new kids on the ‘university matching’ block have influenced the pace of change.

The dynamics of the sector are still working themselves out, but some trends and tensions seem evident:

• Geographical focus – India seems to be the focus of attention which is not surprising as it has been identified by everybody as the most obvious volume growth market for student mobility and the preponderance of graduate students might suggest they are more comfortable and willing to forego involvement with an agent.

• Role of agents – Several of the newer players have been vocal in suggesting they are correcting the inefficiency of a disorganised agent market. Most aggregators seem to be reaching out to the agent community and providing a new channel for getting university offers. But savvy agents have been using technology for years and it remains to be seen if the agent powerhouses in China will be easily disrupted by aggregators.

• Pathway operators – Much of the recent effort of pathway operators has been to drive revenue through providing direct recruitment to both their pathway partners and as a stand-alone service to other institutions. This route to growth could be blocked if aggregators are able to dominate with students and agents in most countries. Pathway operations may also begin to rely on aggregators – an enquiry to ApplyBoard showed 34 of 97 opportunities identified in a search for UK-based institutions were for pathways.

• Aggregating aggregators – The investments related to ETS suggest that there is plenty of potential for big, well-funded players to selectively invest in a portfolio of aggregators by picking off smaller players or investing in start-ups who might be happy to take the money and run. The ETS involvement also offers the potential of vertical integration along the student journey.

Added value

It might be that the winners and losers are those that find the secret sauce of added value which makes them the best choice for nervous students and parents considering study 5,000 miles from home.

The Studyportals model of simply providing information has morphed into a much more bespoke service but seems a long way from Leverage Edu’s claim to offer access to ‘best-matched career and higher education options’, access to 2,000+ personalised mentors, scholarship finding, education loans, accommodation options and long-term mentoring.

Several of the newer entrants also mention employment and career opportunities with the same fanfare as their links to high-quality universities.

There is no doubt that the aggregators have the financial muscle to do whatever they think will fit the bill. Craft, the enterprise intelligence company’s platform of commercial data, shows that there is a tidal wave of money flowing.

Studyportals raised US$5.4 million in 2017, Leverage Edu’s latest funding round in February 2021 was reported to be US$6.5 million taking total funding to US$9.8 million and the ApplyBoard story is well known, with the funding round in September 2020 reported to be US$53.2 million to take the total raised to US$182.4 million.

It leads to an extremely disrupted and fragmented situation for universities which do not have the will or the money to build their brand, their recruitment expertise and their marketing capability to secure students.

Packy McCormick, founder of the Not Boring Club, notes that the “biggest breakout successes created in the first two decades of the 2000s – the aggregators – started by aggregating demand and using that demand to commodify supply”. The point about a commodity is that it is interchangeable with other goods of the same type and it can be argued that degrees from many institutions are very difficult to differentiate.

A zero-sum game?

If the algorithm works, then the degree alternatives offered should all match the student’s academic capabilities with their desire for a specified qualification from a country or countries of their choice.

They will then be able to focus on factors such as cost, visas and post-study work with the security of knowing that their choices have been laid before them.

This should send a chill down the spine of institutions that have relied on the promise of ‘acres of rolling grassland’, ‘years of academic integrity’ or ‘highly regarded professors’ rather than differentiated, relevant courses leading to successful careers.

There is an inevitable and inexorable shift in the axis of power and the pandemic has accelerated the disruption of old norms. Aggregators are here to stay and the only question is the extent to which most universities find themselves caught in a zero-sum game, where attempts to distinguish themselves become more about marketing spend or data on graduate outcomes than nuances of location.

For all but a few, commodification may then be the name of the game.

Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

All recruitment agent aggregators are not created equal

Alan Preece and Louise Nicol First printed in University World News, 12 April 2021

A flood of private money into the education sector is not necessarily a bad thing. Providing students with choice and value is positive and doing so with maximum effectiveness and efficiency makes sense. When a single ship in the Suez Canal can disrupt international trade and a pandemic makes global movement risky or near impossible, there is even more reason to use technology to bring people together.

That is the siren call of the ‘aggregators’ in higher education, but there have been recent challenges questioning their transparency, efficacy and level of genuine concern for students.

The possibility of consolidation to create an ‘Amazon of aggregators’ or a ‘Weibo of wannastudy’ leaves the prospect of market manipulation that is far from the interests of applicants. Regulation, compliance, oversight and the personal link between a university and its potential students are all good questions in this brave new world.

A rapidly evolving network

A clarification about different types of aggregator in the context of this article is needed: ‘Agent aggregators’ provide a platform that allows universities and agents to interact while ‘university aggregators’ provide a means for students to search and apply for universities directly.

The two types are a simplification of a complex and rapidly developing network where the lines are already blurring as different models prove more, or less, successful.

It’s partly a recognition that in some markets and at some levels of study, agents are dominant, while in others many students feel comfortable enough to proceed without a friendly hand guiding them through the process.

Agents themselves have also been ‘aggregators’ for many years, with sub-agency networks feeding into the main players or middlemen establishing themselves and coordinating dozens of geographically separated ‘mom and pop shops’. Pathway operators and universities have become particularly familiar with this environment as the only way to extend their reach without the overhead of an army of travelling salespeople.

The need for a quality framework

The reality is that an education institution often has no idea who first advised a student on their application or whether it was done in good faith.

The recently published BUILA (British Universities’ International Liaison Association) and UKCISA (UK Council for International Student Affairs) report, A Partnership for Quality: A route to a UK quality framework with education agents, produced by education consultancy Edified was commissioned prior to the meteoric rise of the aggregators, but provides a strong foundation for thinking about this development in the global higher education landscape.

Given the current pace of change, it’s troubling that a ‘route’ to a quality framework is only emerging when agents have been increasingly influential for three decades.

That is really the point that emerges from consideration of the risks and challenges of a rapidly developing new approach to recruiting students. Universities are ill-prepared to engage effectively to ensure that they are not being misrepresented or that students are not being misled.

The report’s timing is a little like the United Kingdom publishing a treatise on how to do better with horse drawn artillery in the 1914-18 war just as planes are fighting out the Battle of Britain in the skies above London in 1940.

Nothing new

Having established that aggregation is not really new, it’s important to note that neither is the notion of universities allowing commercial third parties to use their brands in the hope and expectation of lucrative recruitment from international markets.

Deals signed directly with agents have been common for decades and commercial pathway operators have made significant gains in the UK, Australia and the United States, while Canada is catching up. An example on the ‘student aggregator’ side is Studyportals which has been running since 2007, has over 3,700 participating universities and has branched out from ‘Mastersportal’ to have eight portal brands.

The real question is how universities should approach the new world of ‘agent aggregators’. It is possible to build upon the framework provided by the BUILA-UKCISA report to provide some direction.

The report identifies ‘Education Giants’ – Kaplan and Navitas – who have an international network of agents as well as other education business interests, ‘Multi-Nationals’ such as UKEAS and IDP which account for 10% of agents, and ‘Market Specialists’ which account for 5% of agents, for example, TC Global, which focuses on India, and Golden Arrow, which focuses on China.

Agent aggregators might be thought of as an ‘Exchange’, a ‘One Stop’ and a ‘Pathway’.

In the Exchange approach, taken by Adventus, the aggregator behaves like the ‘Booking.com’ for international higher education where agents receive 100% commission, students get more choice and institutions more applications.

In the One Stop approach, taken by ApplyBoard, the aggregator brings an agent network together with their university partners to offer students breadth of choice, but also takes a slice of the agency commission. They have additional services like English language testing, visa applications and advice to create a ‘one stop shop’.

In the Pathway approach, aggregators have a network of agents feeding their pathway programmes into universities. This is where the best known and longest standing commercial names sit – Study Group, INTO University Partnerships and Cambridge Education Group as well as parts of the Kaplan and Navitas operations.

The Outsourcers, such as MSM Media and Sannam S4, operate offices overseas for university partners to engage more effectively by using technology and streamlining services and agent engagement.

There is, unfortunately, one more group that could be called the Pretenders, who do not have the global office infrastructure, investment in training, technology platform, network of agents or university partners that they claim. A slick website purporting to have high levels of student traffic, a comprehensive network of agents spanning the globe and a multitude of university partners does not mean this is the reality. Strong marketing ‘does not an agent aggregator make’.

The need for oversight

The next and most urgent steps for the sector are to embrace the new world, but to act cautiously and coherently to ensure that both students and financially challenged institutions are not disadvantaged.

It is self-evident that they should steer clear of organisations copying others’ marketing campaigns and dressing up to look like legitimate outfits. But a degree of oversight by the Office for Students (in the UK) and similar bodies in other countries might be helpful in creating a level, legal and equally lucrative playing field.

It may even be a good step for aggregators to be obliged to capture and publish the views of students who are placed through their services.

Technology has provided a wonderful opportunity for students to have greater transparency, accessibility and support with finding the right university than ever before.

The biggest agents have long argued that they rely on reputation and repeat business to grow their organisation and that they invest heavily in supporting applicants. It is something that aggregators should be obliged to formalise and standardise.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD SPOILT FOR CHOICE

Writing before the date with Denmark in the Euro quarter finals is a reminder that it’s now 55 ‘years of hurt’ since the World Cup victory but that hope springs eternal. After all, Marcellus tells us in Hamlet that, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. Unfortunately, I am pretty certain it is not their defence because that guy Vestergaard looks a lot more solid than the ‘Little Mermaid’ and a lot less fun than Tivoli Gardens.

The misery of uncertainty will remain very much alive as I head to one of the English pubs in Little Italy, San Diego later today. I guess that it will be for the England manager and his boys “to be or not to be” but they do have the power of Atomic Kitten singing, “Southgate you’re the one, you still turn me on, football’s coming home again.” Mashing up Three Lions with Whole Again is fine but reminds me with sadness that in 1970 bringing the world cup Back Home was ruined by Gordon Banks being ‘indaloo (apologies for terrible pun and dad joke).

Whatever happens there is still the joy of Argentina v Brazil in the Copa America to look forward to on Saturday and the ongoing NBA playoff series between the Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks will continue until at least next Wednesday. And then there is the CONCACAF Gold Cup with the chance that we will see the USA men’s team blossom or the possibility of Mexico sending this corner of California into raptures. Being an Englishman abroad means realizing that there is a big world away from England.

There is so much to love about the prospect of Messi and Neymar meeting on the field in a competition that has been characterized by the most robust tackling I have seen since the 1970s heyday of Leeds versus Chelsea. Columbia has become famous and notorious as home to coffee, cartels and cocaine but it seems that the football team consider being C in the alphabet as a slight that must be rectified against the A and B of Argentina and Brazil. So much so that blood was oozing from the sock on Messi’s left ankle last night as he took the first of the penalties that took his team through to the final in the semi-final last night.

I’ve never seen a bullfight and have no desire to watch an animal taunted and slaughtered so it is paradoxical that Bulls of Parral by Marguerite Steen is one of the books I read over and over again. Maybe it is the human condition to be drawn into fictional situations that are too gross or terrifying to ever wish to experience and I cannot imagine any other reason for people to watch horror films. Life may not be as “nasty, brutish and short” as Hobbes suggested it can be but imagining the worst things is probably a way of realizing how lucky we are.

The story itself is set in Spain in the 1950s and charts the lives and rivalry of the moneyed bullfighter Paco and a waif on the Parral farm called Ildefonso. Their courses cross with Paco being feted and showy but never loved by the crowd while Ildefonso is adored as the heir to the natural talents of the greatest matadors. It is a story which plays out the genius amateur against the tutored strategist and leaves us in little doubt where our sympathies should lie.

The European media tend to idolize Messi as Ildefonso while Ronaldo is positioned as Paco. But watching the mesmeric genius of Neymar has been a revelation to me having only previously seen him as a brattish, patchy player for Paris St Germain. My admiration for Ronaldo as a player and leader is high but his game comes with the shock and awe of a broadsword while the other two devastate with the deftness of the epee and stiletto.

Watching a game where Messi is playing to cement his reputation with a first* winners medal for his country while Neymar is defending the honour of the greatest football nation in its spiritual home of the Maracana. Both are an equal target for the hatchet men of the opposition but in this tournament they have got up, smirked and set about taunting the aggressors anew. It recalls Steen’s vivid description of how matadors are bloodied, torn and scarred by drawing the bull ever closer but continue until it can resist no more.

The stage is set, the sides are well-matched and it should be a wonderful exhibition made even better by the referees willingness to see the footballing equivalent of a mano a mano cagefight. It is made even better by the fact that I really don’t mind who wins and will not have the disappointment of having seen England knocked out of the competition at an earlier stage. Sport without responsibility is one of the few reasons that I can enjoy watching golf for its enormous skill, wonderful settings and leisurely pace.

All that leaves me a little on the fence for the basketball playoffs because I have got something of a passion for the Suns after their mighty effort to see off the LA Lakers. In a game where the ebb and flow can mean leads change hands quickly and games can become total blowouts and meaningless with a long time still to play it has taken time to love it. That may be because at Stewards Comprehensive School we had one gym lesson where the sports hall hoops were set out but the lesson become more like a session of British Bulldog with a ball than anything resembling a game with rules.

All the stranger then that I was the lead manager for the bizarre ASDA sponsorship of the English Basketball Association which saw me spending many nights watching very tall men play the game in front of very small crowds in venues more intended for darts, bowls and 5-a-side football. The overwhelming memory was that for something dubbed a non-contact sport there was plenty of testosterone and brutal elbowing between the behemoths. The crowning (sic) glory of a tournament at the Royal Albert Hall in 1984 was a reminder that the building, named in memory of Queen Victoria’s husband and opened 150 years ago, is a better setting for Land of Hope and Glory than Battle of the Giants.

I have been on a big learning curve but understanding the terminology of “pick and roll”, “in the paint”, “downtown” and “goal tending” has added significantly to my viewing pleasure. But the tactics are so nuanced and finely managed that I find myself bemused, baffled and strangely awed by the cleverness of the coaches. Working out how to draw fouls, use time outs and manipulate the rules has a level of strategic cunning that is easily the equal of any other game.

It has also become clear that appearances can be deceptive. I was commenting that the excellent Devin Booker was much smaller than most of the others and could only be about six feet tall only to learn that he is listed as 6’ 5”. I felt like one of those fabled grannies from the era TV was introduced who wondered how it was possible to get people who would fit inside the screen.

All this is a long way of saying that if I was still in England I would, quite happily, be taken up with the frenzy of England versus Denmark with all the glory or sorrow that this might bring. As it is I will be turning up Three Lions on a Shirt and Vindaloo before heading off to the Princess pub and will be drinking my share of lager when I watch the game. But win or lose I will be fortunate to be living in San Diego with South American football and the Suns versus Bucks to enjoy in this glorious week of sport.

*I know he has won a gold medal with Argentina at the Olympics in 2008 but football, as with tennis and golf, at the four-yearly celebration of athleticism is just a distraction from the driving idea of faster, higher, stronger.

Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay