AGGS Sessions: Student recruitment – the status quo and the future. An assessment of agents, direct and progression recruitment and campus vs online course recruitment

With Moderator

Chris Bandy, Executive Director, Australia and New Zealand • Sales

Panellist

• Panganamala Sudha, Consultant, University of Southern California 
• Sandeep Bhalla, University of Sydney 
• Mahima Kapoor, Regional Recruitment Advisor, University of York 
• Riddhi Khurana, Recruitment Advisor, Ontario Tech University 
• Coordinating CX Manager: Palak

Join the distinguished panel of experts who will delve deep into the intricacies of student recruitment strategies. The discussion will explore the evolving landscape of higher education recruitment, the roles of agents, direct and progression recruitment methods, as well as the changing dynamics between campus and online course recruitment.

Moderating the discussion is Chris Bandy, Executive Director, Australia and New Zealand Sales, who brings a wealth of experience in the field. The esteemed panellists include:

Panganamala Sudha, Consultant, University of Southern California, Sandeep Bhalla, University of Sydney, Mahima Kapoor, Regional Recruitment Advisor, University of York and Riddhi Khurana, Recruitment Advisor, Ontario Tech University.

Each of them brings a unique perspective and valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities in student recruitment. Collectively they assess the current state of affairs and gaze into the crystal ball to discern the future trends that will shape how universities connect with prospective students.

Five Key Takeaways

1. Diverse Recruitment Strategies: The panel highlighted the importance of diversifying recruitment strategies. While agents continue to play a vital role, universities are increasingly exploring direct and progression recruitment methods to reach a wider and more diverse pool of students.
2. Digital Transformation: The discussion underscored the accelerated digital transformation in student recruitment, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Online course recruitment has gained prominence, making it crucial for universities to invest in robust online platforms and marketing strategies.
3. Personalisation and Student Centric Approach: Panellists emphasised the need for a more personalised and student centric approach in recruitment. Tailoring information and support to individual student needs can significantly enhance the recruitment process and improve retention rates.
4. Data Driven Decision Making: The panel stressed the importance of leveraging data analytics and technology to make informed recruitment decisions. Data can help universities identify trends, target the right audiences, and allocate resources effectively.
5. Adaptability and Resilience: Finally, the discussion highlighted the necessity for universities to be adaptable and resilient in their recruitment efforts. The future of student recruitment will likely continue to evolve, and institutions that can pivot and adapt to changing circumstances will thrive.

Below is the transcript

Chris Bandy

From our perspective, where we’re really going to be delving quite deeply into the on the ground operational student recruitment, how we’re doing it, how we’re working with our different partners across the sector, but also, really talking about making compliance great again, and why our compliance is very sexy at the moment, and why you should all be very interested in that. 

But before we get started, as mentioned, my name is Chris Bandy, I’m the Executive Director for Acumen based in Australia, but I look after Australia and New Zealand. My wonderful panel will just introduce themselves very quickly. So Sandeep, did you just want to do that with the mic? There’s one there.

Sandeep Bhalla, University of Sydney 

I’m Sandeep. I’ve been working with the University of Sydney for the past three years. And I have an overall experience of close to two years in the industry now. It always feels like I’m new. So I’m learning every day. Thank you to all of you.

Riddhi Khurana, Recruitment Advisor, Ontario Tech University
Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Riddhi Khurana and I represent Ontario Tech University as the Recruitment Advisor.

Panganamala Sudha, Consultant, University of Southern California

Hi, everyone, I’m Panganamala Sudha and I work with, I’ve worked at USC on campus for many, many years. And then I moved back to India and I now work with Acumen. And I continue to work for USC Viterbi. It’s the School of Engineering. So my focus is graduate. So Master’s and PhD programmes only in the School of Engineering.

Mahima Kapoor, Regional Recruitment Advisor, University of York

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining in. I am Mahima, I work as a regional recruitment advisor with University of York. I have been part of Acumen for about eight years now, actually. So I have been part of this industry, specifically working with the UK for about eight years now. Thank you.

Chris Bandy 

Fantastic. So as you can see, we have a really good cross section of not only countries represented here today, but also, universities that are centuries old, and universities that are quite young and really growing and aggressively developing in the market. 

I’m looking forward to some really interesting discussions. As I guess we all know, the agent network is exceptionally important in the work that we do. And just to get us going, I really wanted to start kind of looking at the agent network, but really kind of delving into how you use your agent network, how you ensure you get the best results and how you assess their success. 

So maybe Riddhi, if I go to you first, that’d be great. And then we’ll, we’ll move from there.

Riddhi Khurana, Recruitment Advisor, Ontario Tech University

Thank you so much. So I work predominantly for the undergraduate market for the university. We do work with agents. But at the same time, we have a very strong school network, because our recruitment is only around the undergraduate market. So as we started in 2019, for Ontario Tech, we started to notice that the agent market is really strong and can be really helpful for us to draw some attention from India as a recruitment base. We started connecting with agents from then on, and it’s been really good for us now that we are, working with a lot of agents. And still, again, coming back to the point that I only work for the undergraduate recruitment for the university. So we have both the direct recruitment and the agent recruitment market.

Chris Bandy

And what do you say are the main differences in how you engage with your agent network versus how you engage directly with the undergraduate schools network?

Riddhi Khurana, Recruitment Advisor, Ontario Tech University

Well, it serves well in both scenarios for us, because we started off as direct recruitment for the university, but at the same time, because the agent network in India is really strong, and it really helps us to mark our presence in the subcontinent. 

I would say that, yes, developing an agent network was really helpful for the university, and, you know, establishing it as a brand.

Chris Bandy

And Mahima your thoughts? How do you ensure that the agents are giving you what you need and bringing you quality students? And how do you assess that?

Mahima Kapoor, Regional Recruitment Advisor, University of York

So we as an institution, we do work with agents, in fact, 65 to 70% of our recruitment is through agents. So, yes, our reliability is a lot there. We do have direct recruitment as well, but still we rely a lot on the agents and our partners. There are different parameters on which we assess their performance. We take out the cost per acquisition. When I say cost per acquisition, how much time, money, resource and effort that I’ve invested in an agent, the different categories or scale of agents so there are small scale agents who probably would be seen I would say a boutique agent or a regional agent. Then there are mid scale agents like you know who are probably present but not pan India present. And then there are big scale agents who are present in India. 

The amount of investment that we are making on an agent and how many enrollment numbers are we getting. And when we say investment, it could be based on the number of visits that were made. training and development of their team, their agent events. And overall, the total number of applications that they have submitted, how many of them were good quality applications, because the admission team is also investing a lot of time and effort on assessing those applications. How many of those out of those offer holders like turn into enrollment, so the conversion rate, so all those parameters, we do assess their performance. 

But another important parameter, which has been said to become very, very important, offline is quality. The quality of application, the quality of enrolments that we’re getting from those agents is a very important parameter on which we assess the performance. There are certain regions which are considered to be high risk regions. So if the agent is giving me a lot of enrolments, but if these are from those high risk regions, I may not consider the performance as very good or great, I would still work probably will give a feedback where we would want, you know, a whole diversification and the certain regions where we would want to focus more but so those if they have to align their strategy with the strategy that the university have, that we as a university is kind of working closely with them training their team and trying to align our strategy with their strategy. Those are the factors on which we would assess their performance.

Chris Bandy

And in those high risk, or those areas where the performance isn’t quite what you would like it to be, how do you then rectify that? How do you work with the agents to ensure that you are getting what you need?

Mahima Kapoor, Regional Recruitment Advisor, University of York

So of course, there’s regular assessment that happens.  We have these monthly assessments where we review their performance, we give them regular feedback about where we are heading in what direction we are heading, if required, we even kind of, obviously everything is documented. But if there’s regular feedback needed, well, we give them with examples that are the examples where we do not want something which has been coming from your team. So probably your team needs more training and development. We arrange those training sessions for the team so that they can actually understand what it is that we want. And they can align their strategies and the areas that they’re covering specifically for the pan India agents, because they may focus on one region, which may not be my focus area for recruitment. 

I would want that region. They need to be more diversified, like diversify their areas from which they are recruiting for me. And there’s certain regions on which I would like them to focus on. So then we arrange training, development, give them regular feedback, and arrange those regular catch ups with our agent partners, that’s what we do.

 

Chris Bandy

Yeah, I think that the communication aspect and the ability of having consistent representation on the ground enables us as an organisation to do that, and get the best for our university partners and Sandeep, the the University of Sydney experience,

 

Sandeep Bhalla, University of Sydney

the way I personally see it, and I probably would end up speaking as an educator, because I do believe counsellors need to be empowered, whether they are working with agents, or they’re working with schools. So I would rather talk about how we provide support to them, or how we not just assess, but support. There are counsellor recognition schemes that we run, wherein we try to understand all the work they have done, it does not have to matter that they have submitted just, let’s say, five quality applications, and they have converted, but it’s also about what they are doing. We can also give them the necessary recognition. And the other part is around ideally, helping them with understanding the product as well. I mean, counsellors these days, I just speak for Australia, there are 41 universities. So if we expect them, that they will be able to help and, remember, every information right at the moment will not be possible. We’ll have to timely interact with them, provide them with the necessary support, so as to ensure that there is no lagging behind information that goes and they are always updated about the new products that come in or the new courses that have been announced.

Chris Bandy

And sooner I think, Sudha, I guess is where we’re beginning to develop this session. Something you said to me I thought was just quite wild to be fair, given the sector we work in and in that you don’t use agents at all. So talk me through that. What’s the when you’re not using agents in the market? How do you get the results that you need?

Panganamala Sudha, Consultant, University of Southern California

So I started working in India in 2005. And when they hired me, they just said well go any way you’re in India, so just figure it out. So I was probably one of the very first recruiters or a university rep in India at that point. And so I started looking, I spent about three months just trying to understand the market. And I said, Well, you know, maybe we can use agents and the university said, no, we don’t use agents. I said all we can give scholarships and said no, we don’t give scholarships, said all we can give RAs and TAs to our students, they said, no, we can’t do that. 

We are on the slightly more expensive side when it comes to university. University education. So, I really spent a lot of time trying to understand what our strengths are and where we are going. And you know, if we can use agents, then we need to get the students to come to us. What was really important, was how do you brand build? How do you use your alumni network? How do you do direct recruitment? How do you connect with other universities here in India, so that you are able to attract students from there, how do you showcase what your strengths are, and we did have a lot of strengths. 

But also understanding what the student wants, the Indian student does want career outcomes, and that is a very, very important thing. So we were luckily doing a very good job with that. But we were just not showcasing all of that. I’ve spent a lot of time making sure that we are showcasing our career outcomes as well. 

When I did my conversion events, I just finished a whole round of conversion events in various cities. One of the parents came and actually talked. And there was another in Chennai, in Bangalore, we had one of our parents actually talk in Chennai, we actually had a parent sitting in the audience because they were there for their second child. And I didn’t even have to do anything. By the time I finished my thing, there were three other parents who were a little hesitant about sending their kids to a big bad city like Los Angeles. But the Mom just converted all the three of them for me. 

Chris Bandy

It’s a pretty good afternoon in the office, when you get three students in one go. But it sounds like coming through all of that, It’s this communication aspect that is very key, right? 

Regardless of who you’re engaging with in the market, what we’ve seen in the last few years is the real, I guess, explosion in the aggregator networks and the aggregator markets. Now, when we speak to a number of institutions, we get some mixed feedback. Institutions are occasionally talking about the negatives in that they feel like their recruitment pipelines are very, very full, and that not necessarily all those applications are of the quality that that institution needs. But I guess through our discussions, you seem to have a different standpoint, or a different viewpoint on that. So Mahima, how do you engage with the aggregator network? And how do you ensure that they are putting into your pipeline applications that will ultimately turn into students?

Mahima Kapoor, Regional Recruitment Advisor, University of York

I’m glad you asked that question. Because that has been like, you know, there have been a lot of discussions about working with aggregators, some may want to work, some may not want to work. So I would say we started as a university and wanted to explore this only when pandemic started. When we moved from brick and mortar to actually a virtual world, and that was a very sudden shift. That is when we were required to experiment and explore with agents who actually could support us virtually, with an AI tool, and that’s when we experimented. And that, I believe, they will also at that point in time at the developing stage, because we did face some concerns in terms of quality. And that has been when it comes to aggregators, I believe Sandeep and few others mentioned that quality has been a concern. But I would say with time, now that I’ve been working with them for about three years now, I think that has worked well, because the regular feedback was shared with them. There was, of course, support organised for them, where they can help them train how they can, assess the applications in a better way. 

Now, they also have some checks in place, they understand what university you want, they understand that it’s not just about quantity, it’s also about quality. And then we also, as a university, have some checks in place for applications coming from aggregators, we have some compliances in place where we actually probably be more vigilant through the applications. The admission team is more vigilant for the applications coming through some agents or some aggregators, so that we have our checks in place, they have their checks in place, and that has helped us get numbers and get quality numbers.

Chris Bandy

And it’s probably a good time to mention that if you’re an institution using aggregators and you are looking for additional support. That’s exactly what our PACE team can do to ensure that that pipeline is free from applicants that you know, pretend actually won’t convert. But, really you were very, you were very strong with me that, you know, the negative feedback was not actually accurate and that you were getting some fantastic results out of aggregator said, Yeah, tell me about the university’s experience.

Riddhi Khurana, Recruitment Advisor, Ontario Tech University

Thank you. As my mom mentioned, you know, the quality is one of the reasons that we need to keep regular check-ins with the aggregators, because they’re humongous applications coming in from them. My only point, why I would prefer a model with aggregators would be that they their outreach is extensive, they are able to reach out to cities into cities in India, tier two and tier three cities where, maybe physically I’m not able to reach out because of some limitations, the capacity limitations of the university. I’m really happy with the fact that there is an outreach with aggregators, because you don’t need to be present there. They work with numerous other agencies, definitely, there is a follow up check, and, you know, certain training levels that we need to maintain. But at the same time, I would still side with the outreach factor, which for the university, has been really helpful, because we’re still trying to build a brand in the country. We’re a young school, we’re 20 decades, two decades old. So for us, the more outreach is better, as versus okay, we’re looking at quality, and we’re looking at quality control at a bigger scale. But yeah, that can be managed for us. Outreach would be a better way to go back.

Chris Bandy

We’ve had brand building twice now. So we’ll play brand building bingo and see if we can get everyone to mention at least one time, but you don’t use aggregators. No, we don’t know. So I guess in lieu of not using the aggregators, can you give a focus on undergraduate recruitment? Can you talk more about sort of a school mums group and I guess not aggregators, but more the peak bodies representing all of the schools networks, and how you kind of work with them and the different counsellor groups and I think it’s the red pen group and these types of organisations?

Sandeep Bhalla, University of Sydney

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the way I see it, and I just don’t see them as aggregators, and like all the third party networks, what I try to say is that our idea of working as ICR’s is to ensure that we are able to support the most important stakeholders, that is the parents and the students. Now, when we are engaging with schools, we do engage with counsellors, we do engage with students, but we actually end up forgetting the most important stakeholder which is a parent. So now, what happens is when we’re engaging with third parties, such as high school moms, what they are trying to offer to us is they are trying to engage with these people as well, they are important stakeholders for us. And also while working with aggregators as Riddhi and  Mahima mentioned, there are other stakeholders as well, which we end up forgetting. And these are the people who are actually helping students to clear their language proficiency tests. 

Most of the aggregators have these people come in and join them. Now, we’re able to target them through tier two and tier three, tier three cities, and also tier four cities if you would want to take them. Aggregators have that penetration, like IDP being one of the biggest agents are planning to open another 100 offices in India, you might still not find them everywhere. And it is important for us not just as a university, but as a university which is offering multiple support to everywhere equity, and access is one of the most important things that focus apps. 

While we are not working with aggregators, at the moment, we are definitely trying to expand our horizons by partnering with high school moms at a certain level, minder or even see alpha. So we are providing them the support that is necessary so that they can empower the most important stakeholders for us, whether they be the students or the parents.

Chris Bandy

Fantastic. Let’s move on and have a look at more kinds of, you know, what the overwhelming demand from students in India is actually doing to some of your institutions? So we’ve seen the numbers, you know, it’s probably been a postgraduate market, but we see the undergraduate market increasing year on year and, you know, there’s significant demand for specific courses, a lot of these institutions. So, really, I think we were talking about Mahima you know, what your universities have done in response to just the overwhelming demand that you see coming out of India at the moment in regards to the course composition and, and what they’re looking to do. So maybe you want to go first or?

Mahima Kapoor, Regional Recruitment Advisor, University of York

Yeah, certainly. So is it overall demand growing and sustainability is what you’re talking about?

Chris Bandy

Well, it can be sustainable. So as a result of the 10k voices survey that we did internally, we saw that sustainability was something that it’s very important to this generation of Indian students coming through. 

Mahima Kapoor, Regional Recruitment Advisor, University of York

The scenario that we are going through right now sustainability is very important. In fact, as a university is a public university, founded for public good, so sustainability has been embedded and will continue to be part of our responsibility and values. So we as an institution follow, like, you know, we are one institution who follows 17 UN SDGs. That’s something that we follow as an institution, but also to something that we have embedded in our code teaching and research functions. We have a number of courses as well that we are offering, for example, sustainability studies, sustainability sciences, corporate sustainability, environment sciences, and recently started a course on sustainability studies and business. So that’s something that we are trying to embed in our teaching. We have a target of being, I would say, an ambitious target of being carbon neutral by 2030. So for that, we are trying to put it in our teaching, but also, at the same time, empower our students to have that impact, positive sustainable impact on society. And also give them that skill, the practical knowledge to help put that into action, of sustainability. So these are some of the things that we are following. 

We are of course, a lot of other practices that I’m sure a lot of other universities are also following where we are trying to cut on the carbon emissions and move on instead of printing our brochures, we moved on to creating QR codes where we instead of giving out brochures, we just give out a QR codes at the events where they can just scan and go to the information. So those are some of the things that we are practising. And I’m sure the other institutions who would probably be able to add to this.

Chris Bandy

Yeah, really, I think we were talking and you said that just because of the demand coming out of India that your institution has actually basically changed the courses that it is delivering to satisfy that demand. Can you just talk me through that process? Because it’s, it’s just, it’s quite an interesting point that a university would actually change what they’re teaching based on the demand coming out of one country?

Riddhi Khurana, Recruitment Advisor, Ontario Tech University

I mean, I wouldn’t say change. But yes, definitely adding on to the programmes that we’re already teaching at the university, as well, a young school Ontario Tech makes sure that everything that’s coming from the recruitment market is being implemented at the university. So there are often meetings where we discuss what are the new trends that the students are asking for? What are the new programmes that are going around in the market? And as we are a young school again, you know, we take in this feedback that is coming from the students and schools and institutions. As part of that practice, we started programmes into sustainability recently. And this is as a minor. This is not where we started as a specialisation. But at least there is an effort to include programmes that are of interest for the students all over the world. And that’s something that is really credible as an institution for an institution to cater to the interest areas of students and the growing interests of different programmes.

Chris Bandy

And we won’t go into sort of sustainability driving to any initiatives, because I’m sure that my colleagues will cover that in the next panel discussion, but Sudha, we were talking and you know, your university might be the only one that’s won a Grammy or an Oscar for something. Now, of course they’ve got it so can you just talk us through that? Because I think, as universities, and what we’re set up to do, we are there to try and solve some of the world’s big challenges and the big problems, we’ve got the war in the Ukraine, we’ve got an ongoing refugee crisis in parts of Africa and even parts of Europe. So yeah, talk us through what your university is doing in that regard.

Panganamala Sudha, Consultant, University of Southern California

There’s a fantastic course offered by the School of Engineering at USC, it’s called lives not grades. As engineers, our students have skill sets across all the problem areas that a refugee camp would have. So we took our undergrad students to a refugee camp in Greece, and had them help out with problems dealing with water purification, about how do you have cheaper housing, which you can build very quickly, and so on. And these students went there and learned how to solve real world problems in areas around the world.

Chris Bandy

And can you just tell us the name and the platform that it’s on so that anyone can have a look? So I think this is a really good marketing tool for the university.

Panganamala Sudha, Consultant, University of Southern California

Yeah. So this programme was called lives not grades. And it was a programme that NPR ran, so I would recommend all of you to actually look at it. It’s fantastic. So it won an Emmy Award, and we’re just super proud about it. And my Dean always brags, because he was named as the producer. So he says he’s the only engineering Dean, who won an Emmy.

Chris Bandy

It’s very, very cool and does show that, you know, there’s a lot coming out of the university sector that we can, that we can all be very proud of. But Sandeep, do you think that, you know, universities and society more broadly being aware of these global challenges, sustainability, climate change? Do you think that’s impacting on the way that universities are now looking to recruit students, and you can take that from a global perspective, or more specifically to India.

Sandeep Bhalla, University of Sydney

I don’t want to talk about it from a global perspective. The reason being, very recently, I think last year, we introduced a course called Master of Social Justice. And it was ironic because it happened when the Ukraine war started. So not only was it previously just focusing on global studies before, but now it has started offering specialisations within peace, and also social justice as well. So there are three specialisations within that if you get time, I would definitely advise you to visit the course. It’s amazing in terms of what it offers, and the number of scholarships it offers as well. So and the way universities are not just Sydney, for that matter, but most of the Australian universities, I know, they have been trying to go carbon neutral. So the University of Sydney, for example, had set an ambitious target that they would try to go 100%, electric free. By 25, they have already made that target and three years before, which is in itself, it’s pretty great.

Chris Bandy

Yeah, the USC is a fully solar campus. So just a real exemplar of what we can do as a sector to, to lead the way in a lot of these changes. Because as we know, these universities are, you know, some are multibillion dollar operations, and if it’s good enough for them, and should be good enough for everyone else. Now, the part that I promised where we would get to, you know, making compliance sexy, again, is what we will have a quick chat about now. But some of you may have seen some of you may not, but there’s been a lot of reporting, particularly in Australia in the last few days around compliance, genuine students, the fact that students are coming in and then working full time. And now that’s been driven by some regulatory changes that the government and that have allowed that to happen. But it’s also creating some concerns for a lot of our Australian institutions, but I’m sure in the UK as well, where these GTENCAS come. Compliance is in so I think, here, I’ll start with you, the UN, I don’t want to use the word burden, because I don’t think it’s the right one. But do you think you have to adhere to the CAS and ensure that your students are genuinely going to the UK for the right reasons? Do you see that as being? Does it impact your ability to do your job in the market? Or does it impact on your ability to recruit as many students as you would like to?

Mahima Kapoor, Regional Recruitment Advisor, University of York

Well, right now, one of the panellists, I think HK, mentioned during one of the discussions that UK universities are right now facing the issue of plenty, which is a good problem to have. So, yes, we are definitely compliance is very, very important. And like I mentioned earlier, quality has become one of the concerns, we want to recruit students. Yes, I may not be if I compromise on quality, I may be able to recruit more students, but that’s eventually going to hamper overall recruitment in the longer run, which we don’t want. So we’d want to grow sustainability sustainably but not exponentially. So compliance is a very important factor. In fact, we are, I believe, one of the first Russell Group Universities to introduce compliance interviews starting this year, before issuing CAS, so we want to be sure that students are joining the university for the right reasons that education has to be the priority. 

We are happy to explore with mature students and students coming with dependents, which is absolutely okay, if the reasons are right. So compliance is a very important factor we have introduced, of course, we become more vigilant with the applications assessing the application now that we are working with aggregators. And you know, we are trying to penetrate the interiors of India, where the possibility is that we might end up compromising on quality and we don’t want to do that. And that’s our reason why we want to introduce compliance interviews because we want to recruit more students, but not at the cost of quality.

Chris Bandy

Now fantastic and the University of Sydney does this, does it change the way you do anything in the market? And I guess my follow up to that would be how do you as an institution, support the student or the agent or whoever it might be with ensuring that they’re getting the right quality students for you?

Sandeep Bhalla, University of Sydney

That’s an interesting question because I probably think we are the only university at the moment, not just in Australia. But I think all across that we are the only team, which has a school engagement team and a recruitment team. Now, when we talk about cooling engagement, or even about recruiting through agents, one of the major focuses as everyone identified is on GD. And I think, again, we are the first country to exactly have a very specific process where not just the visa processing guys, but also university agents and students are also responsible for their compliances. And it’s not just about finances, we try to empower students through this process, as you rightly said, it’s not a burden. It’s actually just allowing students and parents to make an informed choice, why they are going to that university. And if you would have ever gone to the GT form that we asked students or parents to fill out, it has a specific question, why are you going to that university? Why are you choosing the course that you are choosing? And why are you going to that specific university and to that country, when you are actually selecting that course. 

So it’s not just about doing compliances or accepting the quality students, but it’s also about letting students know that they have the option to make an informed choice. I know in one of the panels that we were speaking before, people did mention that students are not even aware at times what their student number is. So when they are going through these student checks, they are aware of where they are applying and why they are applying. Throughout those processes, when you have specific processes, when you first get an application, then you assess and give them an offer. All those processes are actually sorted right at the beginning. And for us at Sydney, we do that process at the very beginning stage as well. 

So the moment a student applies, they get an application form to fill out. And they have to confirm their reasons for why they’re applying to Sydney. And the best part, we have recently announced Sydney International Student Award by virtue of the answers to those questions. And if they are eligible, they will end up also getting a 20% tuition free contribution from the university not just for the first year, but for the entire course duration, so it pays as well.

Chris Bandy

Fantastic. Really, when we were doing our prep, I made the comment that this must just make your life really easy without having to have any of these concerns. And again, you were very quick to shut me down which shows my understanding of the Canadian market, but can you talk me through both just talk me through what you told me and talk to the audience through that because I found it really fascinating.

Riddhi Khurana, Recruitment Advisor, Ontario Tech University

Well, interestingly, one of the reasons there is a lot of attraction for Canada is that it’s a very simple recruitment process like it is. It’s simple to apply to the university, and it’s simple to apply for a visa. Definitely the latter part of it is, you know, it’s burdening I would say for people who are processing the visa, because everything is stuck in the pipeline. So there is no pre-check, there is no you know, GTE, so to speak with us. And that just puts everybody in the same spot for the process thereafter by IRCC. So interestingly, yes, it favours us in some way that the students find it easy to apply to Canada, but at the same time, it’s interesting to note that IRCC, you know, there have been certain delays in terms of visa processing, and we deal with that situation later on. But initially, yes, I would say that it is one of our favourites to the recruiter in the region.

Chris Bandy

Awesome. We’re getting the music. So we’ll probably hear I can’t keep my hands to myself very shortly, but Sudha what’s next? So for USC in India, what’s next, what are you focused on? And, you know, what do you see for the market more broadly?

Panganamala Sudha, Consultant, University of Southern California

So, if I look at our programmes, computer science, like most universities, is just bursting at the seams, we have way more applications than we can handle. So we are not going to grow those programmes anymore. I think this fall, we will likely be admitting students to our spring semester, even though they applied to the fall because these are outstanding students, and we just cannot have space for them. So the question is, how do we diversify? What are the other programs that I could push here in India, keeping in mind that you know career outcomes are very important and what the student wants? I went through my list about a couple of years ago, and I said I targeted engineering management. And so how do you market engineering management? When I go to fairs, I see that maybe 1000s of students are saying they’re interested in management, right? Maybe they are interested in an MBA. But if they have an engineering degree, I wrote to them, and I said, Well, maybe you want to start thinking about engineering management, because you don’t need job experience. And B, you’re done in two years, and you get these great jobs. So I did an entire programme on that. And this year, when I met our admitted students, I saw a huge uptake in the number of students in engineering management. My challenge is going to be to identify those programmes that we have the ability to grow, and then we have a good fit for the Indian students. I mean, of course, my Dean would love for me to get more students into our civil engineering department. But reality is that civil engineering programmes, even in India, have been shrinking. So analytics, though, you know, there’s biomedical engineering, there’s a quantum engineering programme that we started, partly around the same time that India announced its quantum initiative. So hopefully, those are the ones that we will grow. I am sorry, VLSI, is the other program that I’ll be focusing on a lot, because the semiconductor industry is seeing a huge focus both in the US as well as India.

Chris Bandy

And I think that’s a good message for us to finish on is that, you know, there’s lots of opportunities in the Indian market, but unless you tailor your product offering, you’re not going to be able to capture everything you need to do. 

I thank you for the commentary around agents and aggregators in GTA and compliance. And I think, although universities are all competing for students, I think we’re in a really privileged position because we have so many different universities working together on our platform. And I think we should look at it in a more of a cooperation sort of model where we can leverage each other’s experiences and leverage best practice to ensure that all of our universities thrive and everyone on our platform thrives together. If that’s an expensive if not in our platform, that’s okay, because then they come across too. 

Thank you, everyone, for your time today.  Round of applause for the panel. And, you know, you’ve seen these impressive people and if there’s any questions, please feel free to reach out to any of them because I’m sure they’d love to have a conversation.  Thank you.

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About the Acumen Global Gateway Summit: India

The Acumen Global Gateway Summit, held at the renowned JW Marriott hotel in New Delhi, marked a milestone in the Acumen@15 celebrations. This exclusive invite-only event brought together the Acumen Global Team, distinguished guests, government officials, and experts. Client partners convened to discuss international higher education, exchange innovative ideas, and shape a vision for expanding access to higher education. The summit fostered collaboration, inspiration, and knowledge dissemination among higher education professionals. With its unique setting and thoughtful discussions, the event offered an exceptional platform for networking and setting the course for a future of inclusive and transformative higher education.

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