Each year the Open Doors announcement of US international enrollment numbers is given a big build up but only serves as a reminder that the higher education sector’s approach to data release is antiquated. A delay of a year in publishing student numbers might have been acceptable in the days of quill pens1, abacuses2, parchment3 and pigeon post4 but it is difficult to accept it in the early 21st century. So, on November 13, 2023, Open Doors will give us something that any marketer, recruiter or strategist will find as satisfying as a warmed up meal – congealed, lukewarm and not nearly as appetizing as something freshly cooked.
The figures released will relate to the 2022 academic year and are not likely to tell decent international officers very much of interest. That recruiting season is long in the past and the numbers will provide little insight for the 2024 cycle, the impact of a resurgent Australia, developing markets or the new competitive spirit around the globe. What makes it doubly frustrating is that most universities already know their 2023 enrollment numbers and some make the data available.
Looking at these institutions provides some guidance on what has happened this year and occasionally at a good level of detail. It’s also a good place to see how earlier claims about application rates may or may not have been a decent guide to enrollment. For some institutions there is even enough data to see how their pathway operations are doing.
Sunrise or False Dawn
INTO’s press release of May 2023 suggested a “Strong surge in international student demand across INTO partnerships in the United States”. There was an average of 52% more applications for “pathway and INTO Center supported programs” and a 201% increase in applications for “directly entry” (sic). The release came just one year after the University of South Florida took action that, it claims, terminated the joint-venture and just two months before the University of South Florida sought a declaratory judgement to enforce winding up of the partnership.5
Source: INTO University Partnerships, May 2023
It is reasonable to note that the figures were aggregated across all partners but it’s interesting to see how things played out in enrollment growth at an individual partner university. George Mason University’s (GMU) recently available fall census figures show that the pathway college and joint-venture INTO Mason has seen a modest increase of 12 students year on year (up 9.2%) and is still 100 below the pre-pandemic 2019 intake. 2016 was the peak intake and there seems little chance of recovery to those highs.
At the university level, the total growth in enrolled “non-resident aliens” was 9.9% (389 students). This was driven by postgraduate masters enrollment while undergraduate enrollment continued its decline from a high point in 2019 and remains below the 2016 level. There seems little evidence of a resurgence in growth from China but universities still due to report may give us more detailed insights.
Source: George Mason University Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Planning
INTO has recently announced a recruitment partnership with the University of Oklahoma (OU), Norman campus, and that institution may have been interested in the potential suggested by INTO’s stated growth in applications. A glance at the enrollment data indicates that while international first-time freshmen numbers at OU have been relatively static since the pandemic the bounce in total international students has seen a 17.5% increase since the low in 2020. Numbers for Fall 2023 are not yet available but it seems likely that OU would welcome direct recruitment growing closer to the GMU levels.
Meanwhile Auburn University, a Shorelight partner, is also showing how difficult life can be for pathway programs. The number of on campus, resident aliens enrolled in the four listed Auburn Global programs below continues to, at best, bump along the bottom. For ease and clarity the data shown is taken directly from the Auburn University website.
Source: Auburn University Office of Institutional Research
At a top level, however, the rise in non-resident alien graduate recruitment has pushed Auburn University back to pre-pandemic levels of enrollment. As with GMU the decline in undergraduate appears to have stabilized.
Source: Auburn University Office of Institutional Research
As noted in previous blogs Shorelight has made a significant pivot to direct recruitment and continues to add new partners while slimming down its pathway offerings. This seems to be a reasonable direction of travel in the US.
Paved With Good Intentions
The pathway model continues to have some strength in the UK and Australia markets. In the UK this looks to have been propped up by “International Year One” activity that exploits the gap between the lowest level of English language capability for university study acceptable for visa purposes and the lowest level most universities are prepared to accept for direct admission. A significant competitive threat (leaving the UK Home Office aside) is that some universities seem increasingly willing to reduce requirements and allow direct entry which may limit the scope for growth for pathway operators.
Over time the US higher education sector has tried the pathway model but appears to have found it wanting. The response of pathway operators is to try and leverage their expensive global recruitment organizations and become carriers of multiple university brands for direct recruitment purposes. Brand dilution and switch hitting of students between brands seem obvious potential concerns for institutions when considering such arrangements.
All the time there is also the tick-tock of governments looking at the damage to national reputations from largely unregulated and increasingly discredited recruitment practices involving agents. It is not that agents are necessarily unscrupulous but that technology has enabled a flood of new entrants which has destabilized a model where universities had at least a passing understanding of who was using their brand to recruit. Technology and the aggregator model have probably exacerbated the problem to the detriment of many, including the visa system in Canada and the ability of university admissions teams around the world to keep up with the volume.
It’s a complex time which is another reason that we could do with near contemporaneous release of data from the sector both to optimise recruitment efforts and to allay any unjustified responses from legislators.
NOTES
As always, the data shown is a genuine attempt to interpret and represent information available on university websites. The source is shown for reference. In the event that my interpretation or understanding of the data is incorrect I am happy to receive authoritative clarifications for publication.
- Quills were the primary writing instrument in the western world from the 6th to the 19th century.
- The word abacus dates to at least AD 1387 when a Middle English work borrowed the word from Latin that described a sandboard abacus. The Sumerian abacus appeared between 2700 and 2300 BC.
- Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared animal skins. The word is derived from the Koinē Greek city name, Pergamum in Anatolia, where parchment was supposedly first developed around the second century BCE
- In the 5th century BC the first network of pigeon messengers is thought to have been established in Assyria and Persia by Cyrus the Great. The Romans used pigeon messengers to aid their military over 2000 years ago.
- The case is complex and this sentence summarises the situation. For further reading see The Complaint for Declaratory Judgement which is Filing # 153460265 E-Filed 07/15/2022 07:45:26 PM in the Circuit Court of the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit in and for the state of Florida Civil Division. I have written a number of blogs on this ongoing issue.
Image by Dennis Larsen from Pixabay