Some international students are rushing to secure a place at UK universities this summer before the country’s ban on bringing family members kicks in while others are looking for alternative study destinations altogether, according to agents. 

With the UK set to crack down on dependant visas for international students from January 2024, some agencies have been advertising on social media advising students to apply for the September 2023 university intake. 

“People are scrambling to get here for September that are bringing families,” said Jamie Hastings, director at My International Office, which works with students in Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.

He added that the new policy is “not going down well across the board” and students feel it is “unfair”.

In a paid advert on Facebook, one Nigerian agency wrote: “Are you planning on studying and relocating to the UK with your family? 

“The right time is now, because from January 2024, the UK won’t allow Dependants to follow Students”. 

Another wrote, “This is final call to apply. Dependents will not travel after September intake.” 

In Nigeria, agents say they have seen a surge in students applying for UK universities. “While it is still early to make conclusive statements, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of students applying to UK universities for the September ‘23 intake,” said Beatrice Adegbiji, placement officer at Nubi Educational Counselling. 

“It appears that many students are still motivated to secure their study plans before the changes come into effect and it looks like there may be a surge for the intake.”

There have been huge jumps in the number of Nigerians studying in the UK in recent years. Over 59,000 Nigerians were granted study visas in 2022, compared to 6,798 in 2019. 

Nigerians also bring the most dependants out of all nationalities (60,923 in 2022), so the recent decision by the Home Office to ban most international students from bringing family members to the UK with them is expected to reduce demand after September 2023. 

Meanwhile in India, the second-largest dependant market, agents reported normal levels of interest in the September 2023 intake – but some observed that any students intending to marry may reconsider their overseas study destination as a result of the new policy.

Sadiq Basha, CEO at Edvoy, which works with students from multiple locations, said the agency hasn’t seen a noticeable increase and that students are starting to consider other destinations instead of the UK.

“We have some concern for the future, particularly in South Asia and Africa markets, that we are more likely to see a shift in 2024 and beyond towards Canada and Australia,” he added.

Parin Shah, CEO at Back2Study, agreed that some Indian students are now exploring other options, even if they don’t have dependants.

Many Indians marry in their mid-20s so choosing to study in the UK could mean putting this off if they want to pursue the graduate route, where they would also be unable to bring dependants, he explained.

“There are universities which want to capitalise on the September intake as they know that a big chunk of incoming students would disappear from January,” he added.

“A lot of incoming students who [were] quite happy and motivated for UK are thinking other ways, because Australia and Canada are more inviting in terms of dependants,” Shah said. 

He also claimed that other universities are actively ignoring those they suspect of having dependants (something students don’t have to disclose in their applications) as they don’t have capacity to support families.

There may be a longer-term impact on Nigerian student behaviour once the dependant ban is in place, agreed Hastings.

He told The PIE that Nigerians are still keen to travel to the UK and are now looking at other ways to do so.

“The goal posts have changed,” he said. “You can stop dependant visas but there are still potentially other options to get to the UK.”

“Already we are seeing more students interested in non-UK options,” he added. “It’s going to hurt students, unis, agents, everyone who’s in the sector because Nigeria’s a large number of students and it will definitely drop the numbers, so I’m worried.”

Students and institutions are awaiting clarification from the Home Office on the details of the new rules. In a recent update, Universities UK International said it expects students on fully-funded scholarships to be exempt from the ban, meaning women from Saudi Arabia may be less affected than originally thought. 

READ MORE:

• Unpopular opinion: a sense of relief over UK dependants ban?
• Visa restrictions could cost UK £10 billion yearly
• Departing students add to UK emigration as dependants double
• UK: dependants ban “deeply disappointing”

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Major policy changes combined with significant new socio-economic drivers saw a step change in growth and diversity of global higher education in the 1990’s including the rise to prominence of a wide range of private education service providers.

Those providers included multi-national recruitment agents, pathway colleges and university accommodation providers etc.

However, whilst the trends and realities of university-private partnerships have been evident for decades, the challenges in making these relationships a success have not diminished.

The experiences of universities and private providers have varied significantly with relationships either deepening or ending as parties succeeded or failed in establishing a shared vision, common approaches, joint investment and academic and operational synergies.

The need for, and challenges to, such partnerships are about to accelerate.

It is the result of a “perfect storm” of (geo)political and operational challenges including extraordinary pressure on university finances, rapidly rising competition for students, increases in fraudulent applications, volatility in demand for study overseas, migration debates.

Additionally student behaviours are changing and governments are demanding universities to focus on their core activities – research and teaching in order to serve the domestic socio-political agenda.

In parallel a new recruitment ecosystem in developing driven by technology and access to unparalleled levels of data about student profiles and intent.

Against this backdrop the leading international management consultancy Nous Group, Universities UK International and Oxford International Education Group identified expanding opportunities for public universities to better leverage private partnerships in post-pandemic recruitment.

We jointly published the report as ‘Public meets private: The growth of education services in international student recruitment’.

The report identified that the forces at play in higher education were driving many universities to increase their reliance on private providers who can have a crucial role in aiding the sector in making the right decisions to achieve individual and collective outcomes.

“The growth in private providers has opened up many new areas of collaboration”

The growth in private providers has opened up many new areas of collaboration. However, addressing “increased competition” for students was cited by 75% of respondents as the critical driver shaping their approach to private providers.

Sustainability, capability and capacity challenges were significant secondary drivers.

At Oxford International, we have demonstrated that we can deliver sector-leading processes and outcomes to the recruitment of overseas students by providing bespoke educational services tailored for the needs of particular partner universities, delivering a significant increase in the volume and diversity of students recruited for partners.

With our 30 years of experience in the global education sector, we have established transparent relationships with our eight university partners built on trust and confidence in our mission: Learning without Limits.

We see that the trends of the last 30 years, coupled with forces unleashed during the pandemic, have resulted in universities under pressure to rethink their approaches to internationalisation.

Communication and coordination between the private providers and education institutions are key, and more transparency is needed from service providers to build trust and confidence.

About the authors: This is a sponsored post from David Pilsbury, Chief Development Officer and Professor John Wood, Head of Business Development, Australia and S.E Asia, Oxford International Education Group.

David Pilsbury is the Chief Development Officer at Oxford International Education Group, where he leads the group’s higher education growth and development strategy.

David was previously Deputy Vice Chancellor, International at Coventry University, a position he had held since 2008. He was responsible for all international activities including joint ventures, recruitment, collaborative delivery, curriculum internationalization, mobility and enhancement.

He implemented an ambitious agenda involving a more than 6 fold increase in recruitment; establishing the UK’s largest overseas collaborative delivery programme ~20,000 students in 27 countries; and developing the world’s largest international enhancement programme which has ranked No.1 for overseas mobility since records began.

He has won many awards including a Queen’s Award for Enterprise and the premier award of EAIE and holds a number of Board level positions including with JISC, China-Britain Business Council and advisory positions including with IDP Connect, EURIE, NARIC and the Hainan Provincial Government. He was previously Co-chair of the UUK International Pro-Vice Chancellors Steering Group on the future of Global Engagement, a founding CEO of the Worldwide Universities Network, Head of Research Policy for HEFCE and Assistant Director R&D at Cambridge University Hospital.

David also spent a number of years in strategic consultancy and investment banking after a D.Phil and postdoctoral research at Oxford University.

John Wood, a graduate of UWA and Oxford, John is a distinguished economist and leader with an international career spanning 4 decades in the private and public sectors. His positions include CEO University Partnerships at Navitas where he was an integral part of growing group’s global university operations. Previous leadership roles included the Deputy Vice Chancellor (ECU) and Professor and Dean of Business at Notre Dame. John has a deep knowledge of University and private providers international operations in a range of countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Zambia, Sri Lanka, Kenya and the United Kingdom. He has held Executive roles in State and Federal Governments, including in the Office of Prime Minister Hawke at a time when the decision was made to allow Universities to charge fees for international students. John is an experienced Board member and has served as Chair and a director of a number of organisations and has a detailed understanding of regulated industries including education, health, insurance and transport. He currently Chairs UTS’s pathway college in Sri Lanka. He has undertaken reviews and provided strategic advice to universities and private organisations in numerous countries, including Australia ,Singapore, United Kingdom, UAE and Norway. He has an international reputation as an author, having written 2 books and edited 145 volumes on Great Economists and Management Thinkers. A life member of Oxford Business Alumni, John also received an Hononary Doctorate from the Thai Crown Prince for his contribution to global economic thought. He is also a co-founder of the not for profit Centre for Stories where stories are told, shared and kept to encourage a more inclusive society.

The post Riding the coming wave: acceleration of university-private education partnerships appeared first on The PIE News.

Educations agents have been working with universities for decades and have been delivering large volumes of students across the UK. However, in the increasingly competitive realm of international education, agents play an ever-increasing, vital role in connecting aspiring students with their dream institutions.

With the global demand for higher education on the rise, agents are faced with the challenge of managing vast amounts of information and maintaining strong relationships with students and partner institutions.

In this digital age, where efficiency is paramount, agents can greatly benefit from the utilisation of a Customer Relationship Management system. But before we explore the reasons why agents should embrace CRM systems to streamline their operations and pave the way for future success, let’s understand what happens if they don’t.

Without a CRM system, agents often resort to manual methods of data management, such as spreadsheets, sticky notes, or multiple software applications. This scattered approach leads to disorganisation, difficulty in retrieving information, and an increased risk of data loss or duplication. As a result, agents may struggle to track student progress, manage deadlines, and maintain accurate records, which can lead to errors, miscommunication, and missed opportunities, resulting, ultimately in the loss of business.

Let’s consider the student journey.

Without a CRM system, agents may find it challenging to maintain consistent and timely communication with students and partner institutions. They may rely on manual methods like email threads, which can lead to overlooked messages, delayed responses, and a lack of centralised communication history. Consequently, the quality of service provided to students may suffer, and opportunities for engagement or conversion may be missed. Students who are at the receiving end of this disorganisation, may be tempted to walk away from the agent and either try and complete the process on their own, or commission a new agent.

“Without a CRM system, agents may find it challenging to maintain consistent and timely communication with students and partner institutions”

It is, for these reasons, that agents need to consider a CRM system as an investment and not a cost. It’s almost a basic requirement for a business to operate and compete in a congested marketplace where technology is moving at pace and becoming the modus operandi for both students and universities.

But it is important to understand that not all CRM systems are equal. Subscribing to a generic system which requires agents to have a clear understanding of their own processes, those of the universities and the student’s buyer behaviour, can be both time consuming and a resource drain. What agents need, is an easy, ‘out of the box’ configured system that has the entire student journey already mapped out, in a language that they understand.

That’s where we come in. Our CRM system has been designed by agents for agents and delivers an extremely solid punch. We’ve already done the hard work of mapping every aspect of what an agent needs, by keeping the student firmly in mind. Everything from nurturing leads to guiding counsellors through applications, uploading documents to flagging status updates, we’ve got it covered.

With multiple subscription options, offered at extremely reasonable rates, the SAMS CRM can be implemented easily and is fully maintained by us. Whether you’re running a multinational operation or a small set up, our system offers a solution that works. To find out more check out our website, www.samscrm.co.uk and book a demo, where we can discuss you needs in detail.

About the author: This is a sponsored article from Shamim Ghani, Sales & Marketing Director at SAMS Global. Shamim has over 20 years’ experience in international student recruitment and joined SAMS Global in 2023 having spent 5 years as Head of International Projects at the University of Huddersfield and almost 2 years as Associate Director, International Recruitment at UCLan. At both universities, he was the agent lead and responsible for agent efficiency management. Shamim had also worked as an agent in his early career.

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The regulation body for VET providers in Australia has announced a series of campaigns to overhaul its efforts in “regulating international student delivery”.

The Australian Skills Quality Authority, in its July update, said the regulatory campaigns would be focused around the expectation that “providers have returned to compliance”, and offer “targeted monitoring of delivery in certain industry sectors” that have been high risk for non-compliance.

“We have identified these risks through our environmental scans, sector research, issues raised by consumers and internal data collection and analysis,” wrote Saxon Rice, ASQA’s CEO.

“Like all campaigns, this will involve a range of activities, including resources and guidance to assist the sector to mitigate these risks, as well as targeted regulatory activities to ensure we maintain appropriate regulatory oversight.

“This includes being able to identify providers who are failing to meet their obligations and using the regulatory tools at our disposal to support these providers to return to compliance or exit them from the sector,” she continued.

However, while these campaigns have been announced and current information has been updated to “support providers with their compliance”, stakeholders in the industry doubt it will be enough to clear the air.

“I welcome this announcement by ASQA but it’s taken a surprisingly long time to be made and without more details it’s difficult to know if their campaigns will work,” Claire Field, a known expert in VET regulation and the tertiary education sector, told The PIE News. 

Field referenced to an incident in late 2022 where reports were made of international students being trafficked into Australia for sex work, resulting in a police investigation but no action being taken against any providers.

“Last month the NSW Building Commissioner [also] announced they will conduct their own skills audits on construction sites to tackle the issue of ‘dodgy trade qualifications’ being sold online. Clearly that points to a lack of confidence in current VET regulation,” Field pointed out.

Field also claimed she had seen evidence that was provided to the authority in mid-May that fake childcare, health and electrotechnology qualifications are also being sold online.

Rice wrote in the update that childcare was an area labelled as “high-risk”, and it would be one of the areas of the “targeted monitoring of delivery”.

“Reading between the lines, it seems ASQA is going to dust off and start to increase auditing activities again in targeted areas based on their risk assessment – this is long overdue,” Phill Bevan, an expert in regulatory oversight and project management, told The PIE.

“Without more details it’s difficult to know if their campaigns will work”

“The lack of regulatory activity in recent years is frankly scandalous, as are the regular scandals now hitting the media as poor providers have been running without effective oversight,” he said, referring to the 2022 incident.

The update also referred to a video from a series of video campaigns launched in June 2023 on international recruitment, referring to a document on standards management published in April 2022.

As well as the video campaigns and the upcoming regulatory campaigns, ASQA has also updated its Service Charter as of July 1 2023. 

“The Charter sets out revised service standards and commits us to providing a high level of service which reflects our values – you can expect us to act with honesty and integrity, respect and courtesy, confidentiality, procedural fairness, competence, due care and diligence,” Rice wrote.

“ASQA was right in moving to a risk-focused, self-assurance, audit model”

Despite ASQA’s latest efforts, the VET Skills Reform Review launched a poll at the beginning of July asking people whether ASQA is accountable and if its “decision making is transparent” – 88% of 139 who voted, as of July 12, said no.

“The annual reports gloss over provider satisfaction and engagement, but when digging under the surface into key statistics accessed via FOI, the ongoing engagement is very poor,” Bevan added.

In 2021/22, ASQA only audited 211 of its total providers – just 5.5% as opposed to 11.7% in 2020/21, or even 13.1% in 2016/17. Of the 211 it most recently audited, just 15 were found to be non-compliant.

While the non-compliance figure seems encouraging, Field noted that while the Productivity Commission does mention that ASQA changed its regulatory approach in 2020, it’s still doing far fewer audits.

“The four-year implementation of self-assurance is yet to be finalised in a model that providers can understand and implement from internal operations,” Bevan said.

“ASQA was right in moving to a risk-focused, self-assurance, audit model,” Field relented.

“Most Australian providers offer quality training and operate properly – but ASQA has clearly got a lot more work to do on getting their risk settings right to ensure they can find and deal with the illegal activities of some providers,” she added.

The post VET regulator steps up amid compliance issues appeared first on The PIE News.

If you could spend five minutes with anyone from the international education sector, who would it be and what would you ask them? Introducing The PIE’s latest series, Five Minutes With… where we speak to leaders from across the sector and ask them all the big questions.

If there’s ever an example of how a study abroad experience can change the trajectory of a life, it’s the story of US born Christopher Cripps, who embarked on an exchange to France, and never left. Now in his role of senior advisor for global engagement and and diplomatic affairs in the capital’s prestigious Sorbonne University, he’s a true champion of the country’s sector and the wider impact of international education.

How did you find yourself working in international education?

I came to France from my native Illinois, US, as an exchange student at Sciences Po Grenoble.

I was offered a part-time job as a language assistant at Grenoble Ecole de Management that year. At the end of my exchange, the director offered me a position on the international affairs team. How could I refuse?

Over nearly 18 years at GEM, I worked my way up through the ranks and became director of International Affairs in 2001. International education is not a job but a passion that I have been honoured to pursue with some of France’s finest institutions.

Tell me about a defining moment in your career

That’s an easy one. It was leading the project to establish a campus for CentraleSupélec in Hyderabad, India. We were amongst the pioneers in India for such a venture, and we started from scratch and took six years from idea to opening the engineering school.

We went through market studies, meetings with consultants, interviews with potential partners, visits to potential campus sites (sometimes in boots in the mud!), intercultural challenges, and countless encounters with Indian government officials.

Two year after meeting the right partner in Tech Mahindra, we had the immense joy of welcoming 220 brilliant Indian students to our new campus in August 2014.

Everything I had learned and experienced over the first 20-25 years of my professional life was put to an extreme test, and the result was successful.

Seeing 220 students walking through the door of an overseas campus you helped create for the first time, you think, “Mission accomplished! These young ones are here thanks to our initiative and efforts.” 

Biggest challenge to your profession?

I started my career around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the Soviet Union, the ‘end’ of the Cold War.

Since then, we have witnessed the exponential growth of study abroad, the strengthening and intensification of European cooperation in higher ed, and the rise of China as a major player. Now those of us in international education are doing our best to keep up with the more recent shifts in world order ranging from the Trump-era politics in the US, Brexit for the UK, the political changes in China, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Let us not forget the numerous challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Under the new presidency of Sorbonne University, we have created support programs for Ukrainian students and scholars, and stepped up our efforts in open science and science diplomacy. It is challenging, but universities must endeavour to be prepared, equipped and agile enough to adapt to an ever-changing, often unpredictable reality of the world.

What makes you get up in the morning?

Students! It is a privilege and a pleasure to practice a profession that allows me to help create life-changing opportunities for talented young people and to help them to discover the world.

I helped lead Sorbonne University’s successful grant project, sponsored by the French government, to create a Franco-Indian Campus for Health with partner IIT Delhi. The first six French and Indian students are set for exchange starting in October.

My experience as an exchange student changed my life completely. I feel a sense of responsibility to ‘give back’ and am thrilled when I see students take a leap forward and study abroad. 

Most inspiring international student you’ve met/ helped/ taught?

One of my most inspiring international student stories harks back to my days at Grenoble Ecole de Management. Gaurav Varshney, a native of India, was just finishing GEM’s Master in International Business program. He was steps away from my office one day when he received a call and learned that his father had suddenly passed away. In a very emotional moment in my office, he explained that he had to rush home for the funeral and to take over the family’s small milk processing business. There was no deputy director to replace his father; it was all now on his young shoulders. We had to get him home. At 23, Gaurav went back to India to become the head of household for his mother and younger brother and run the family business.

Chris and Gaurav in Delhi in June 2023

He and I have met up several times over the 19 years since Grenoble.

I’ve witnessed his drive to succeed as an entrepreneur, developing the family milk processing plant and exploring new ventures. I was able to catch up with him for lunch in Delhi during a recent trip for the first time since Covid and was delighted to see him thriving.

He is now at the helm of his own highly successful ‘farm to cup’ chicory and coffee company with a full team around him and business in 17 countries!  You asked earlier, ‘what gets you up in the morning’? It’s for students like Gaurav.

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