International student recruitment has felt a bit like steering a ship through a storm recently. UK policy changes, local factors in key markets like Nigeria, and rising competition across the globe have all caused headaches for UK recruitment teams.
Indeed, the latest Enroly industry data in July 2024 shows that CAS issuance and deposit payments are down by around 42% and 39% respectively year-on-year. However, despite these falls, the data also shows that September intake is recovering somewhat after a very slow start.
This article will delve into actionable strategies that universities can employ to not just stay afloat, but to thrive in this competitive landscape.
1. Review Your Programme Portfolio
A thorough analysis of your programme or course portfolio is essential for understanding your product-market fit. Traditional methods like student surveys, industry reports, and alumni feedback can provide valuable insights into how well your offerings align with market demands. This process helps in refining programmes to meet the needs of international students, increasing their satisfaction and perceived value of their investment.
For those leveraging Enroly’s tools, the Data Insights platform extension can and should start forming a key part of this process of product development. We’ll soon be enriching our Data Insights tool with HECoS data so you can report on subject-level trends. We also cover real-time subject trends at our monthly webinars: anyone can sign up for these sessions and benefit from subject insights, with special in-depth sessions for Enroly Data Insights partners.
2. Adjust Your Pricing and Scholarships
Understanding how your fees and scholarships stack up against competitors is crucial in crafting an effective pricing strategy. By analysing competitors' pricing models and scholarship offerings, universities can position themselves to prospective students. Traditional benchmarking methods, such as market research and competitor analysis can be an effective starting point.
Enroly Data Insights clients can take this several steps further by diving deeper into real-time scholarship data in the platform. You can track your scholarships over intakes, as well as see the average and total values over time and by market, and therefore ensure that your pricing and scholarship strategy is optimised for your recruitment strategy. Making use of the competitor segments is also a handy way to establish how you stack up against similar institutions, offering a quick way to analyse whether you could be missing opportunities.
3. Identify Relevant Market Opportunities
Evaluating global market trends is vital for identifying which recruitment regions will drive future growth. Traditional methods like analysing HESA data, while an imperfect solution due to significant delays in the data, nevertheless can provide a useful resource to view historical key market trends over time. International education fairs, and partnerships with overseas agents can also help pinpoint new opportunities.
For those looking for real-time analysis, evaluating your institution’s market-level insights in Enroly Data Insights compared to the industry average can show you how you are performing compared to the average for a particular market in just a couple of clicks. But remember, if you don’t work with Enroly yet or have the Data Insights extension, you could be getting this data monthly by signing up to Enroly events >
4. Invest in Team Performance Improvements
Optimising team performance is key. But are you doing everything you can to measure performance, optimise service levels and issue offers and CAS faster than your competitors? Ensuring your team has clear objectives and measurable metrics is a crucial starting point, then you can identify areas in your processes that need improvement.
Enroly’s tools offer a data-driven approach to performance management. By comparing service levels with other institutions, universities can identify areas for improvement and deploy teams where they can make the most impact. This ensures that resources are used efficiently, enhancing overall performance and student satisfaction.
5. Invest in the Student Onboarding Experience
A smooth and frictionless onboarding experience is critical for reducing international student attrition and for your institutional reputation among students and agent partners. Investing in this part of the process not only helps you convert more of the students in your pipeline, but strengthens trust with your agent network leading to new business in the future.
The Enroly platform can enhance these efforts by providing workflow automation that streamlines the CAS, visa and arrival process and balances conversion and compliance. Enroly’s UK University clients see a 62% drop in unnecessary staff-student email traffic as students self-serve the process. Partners also experience a 75% drop in student attrition due to more efficient processing.
So what next?
Join Enroly’s monthly Data Insights webinars.
Get ready for an overview of market performance, conversion rates, product trends, and more—all delivered in just 15 minutes and supported by expert analysis. These sessions will enable you to compare performance at your institution to Enroly industry data and assess how your strategy is stacking up as the intake progresses. Sign up here >
