Category: Higher education

UK universities can be much more innovative in marketing in India

“UK universities need to be more innovative, less conservative and worry less about the Post Study Work visa”

Indian student numbers to the UK have fallen substantially in the last few years because of tighter visa controls. India was left out of an expanded list in June this year relaxing Tier 4 visa rules. But this is the new normal now. British universities need not use these excuses to justify low recruitment in India but do need to become more innovative in how they recruit.

The Foreign Providers Bill was long seen as a panacea for UK universities to enter the Indian market. In 2015, India’s National Knowledge Commission in 2005 recommended the establishment of Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE), replacing the higher and technical education regulators. The Higher Education and Research (HER) Bill 2011 sought to do the same, additionally seeking to grant greater autonomy to well-performing institutions.

In June 2017, the current government announced its intention to replace both the higher and technical education regulators with the Higher Education Empowerment Regulation Agency (HEERA) instead. A month later, reports suggested the plans were on hold. Sometime thereafter, they were back on track. Then, formally earlier this year, the plans were finally superseded with a version more acceptable to the sector.

There is a very simple reason for this policy vacillation. The education portfolio in the Indian government is not as prestigious as many others. Governments don’t like spending political capital on reforming this sector when far greater political dividends can be achieved elsewhere.

In the Joint UK-India Trade Review earlier this year, the UK government identified several barriers to entry for increased UK-India education trade, including restrictions on repatriation of investment profits, lack of mutual recognition of one-year UK Masters programmes, twinning programmes not being recognised and foreign universities not being allowed to set up.

These are all fair points to make, but there is little prospect of changes happening in India any time soon. Instead, UK universities would be better served by being more pragmatic.

“It sounds simple, but UK universities should focus more on what Indian students want to buy, not what the UK wants to sell”

First, provide guaranteed placements or internships to Indian students. Indian parents and students care far more about ROI than Chinese students and are less likely to be worried about a poor TEF rating if the course guarantees an internship, however short. I have had multiple cold calls from London-based universities asking me to take on international interns. Leaving aside the GDPR implications, I’ve been surprised at how poorly those organisations have understood the CV they are pitching to me. Some universities outside the Russell Group, are slowly beginning to realise the power of this marketing.

Second, reduce dependence on agents. This model of recruitment in India (indeed, elsewhere too) focuses on what a university wants to sell, not what the student / their parents want to buy. Agent models of selling work better for the top-rated universities, not the second tier. Online avenues of marketing like Shiksha.com have far better reach and are significantly more cost-effective.

Third, understand the Indian psyche better. UK institutions are not always on point when it comes to understanding the thought process of Indian students. A prospective European student may see a marketing message about a variety of on-campus clubs, societies and extra-curricular activities, and think that represents the opportunity to develop as a person. An Indian student may see the same marketing message and think about how much extra money this will all cost.

Fourth, focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Yes, they might not have a nice Sheraton or Taj, but there are plenty of rich parents there, who want to send through children abroad. British universities are – amongst its global competitors – the most conservative when it comes to targeting these smaller cities.

Fifth, understand the power of PR and networks in India. I recently arranged a guest lecture for a visiting academic at a TEF Gold institution at short notice, at a leading college in Bangalore, at the request of their India office lead. The students had great feedback and the college Principal thought it was a wonderful collaboration opportunity. Subsequently, at least a dozen leading academics from the UK university have visited different cities in India, and no guest lectures have been arranged.

“These were missed opportunities to reach out to the right kind of enthusiastic student, without having to pay for stalls at student fairs or commission to agents”

Supplement this with more marketing through WhatsApp groups and a concerted PR campaign means that the universities can reach an audience that goes much beyond just a student fair.

According to Rohit Ramesh, Head of International Recruitment at Liverpool University, they were one of the first universities to successful try the PR route in India, paying significant dividends in terms of recruitment. Dr Sonal Minocha, Pro Vice Chancellor at Bournemouth University, has led an annual Festival of Learning in India and other countries, that enable UK students to experience India, and establish an innovative way of marketing the university in-country.

There is plenty of scope for UK universities to expand in India. To do this, UK universities need to be more innovative, less conservative and worry less about the Post Study Work visa.

About the author: Pratik Dattani is Managing Director of EPG Economic and Strategy Consulting, and has worked with educational institutions around the world on establishing innovative models of partnerships.

Switzerland’s tradition of learning: “a point of reference on the global stage”

“All too often, graduates of traditional academic degrees feel that their studies have left them unprepared for the workplace”

For the eighth year in a row, Switzerland has been ranked the world’s most innovative country by the World Intellectual Property Organisation. It is a country famed for its economic health and political stability.

Some may be surprised, then, to learn that less than a third of Swiss people under the age of 25 enter traditional academic higher education, or what the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development calls “tertiary-type A” education – theory-based programs lasting at least three years.

It’s not that Switzerland doesn’t value education. Quite the contrary: Switzerland has long recognised the importance of providing a range of educational pathways for different needs and objectives. Apprenticeships and vocational training play a key role in the country’s education system, with approximately 70% of young Swiss people participating in these programs either before or instead of attending university.

Vocational education gives teens the opportunity to combine classroom learning with entry-level responsibilities in the workplace, preparing them for careers in technology, services and health as well as traditional trades and crafts. It enables students to develop the skills they want and the skills employers need. As a result, youth unemployment in Switzerland is among the lowest in the world (8.1%, compared to the OECD total of 11.9%), and the Swiss educational model has become a point of reference on the global stage.

The Swiss tradition of learning by doing has also shaped the nation’s higher education landscape. Switzerland excels in research, with the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (EPFL and ETH Zurich) ranked as among the best engineering and technology universities worldwide. In addition to academic universities, the country offers a number of universities of applied sciences specialising in practice-oriented bachelor’s and master’s degrees, where apprentices who hold a Federal Vocational Education and Training (VET) Diploma or Federal Vocational Baccalaureate may qualify for admission. These industry-specific programmes enable graduates to make a smooth transition from studies to their career.

“We have found that this dual approach is key to ensuring that students can apply their classroom learning to real-world contexts”

In the area of hospitality management, for example, four out of the world’s top ten institutions are based in Switzerland. At both Glion Institute of Higher Education and Les Roches Global Hospitality Education, the Swiss model of combining practical and academic learning forms the backbone of the curriculum. Bachelor’s degree students are immersed in hospitality operations, such as guest service, culinary studies and housekeeping, as well as business theory, such as finance, entrepreneurship and luxury branding.

This experience enables them to develop professionalism, communication, adaptability and other essential soft skills as well as business management expertise. In addition, students are required to complete two internship semesters and are encouraged to work and study abroad to further enhance their employability.

We have found that this dual approach is key to ensuring that students can apply their classroom learning to real-world contexts. Specialist programmes that maintain close ties with the industry are better equipped to prepare students with the necessary skills for their chosen profession. It’s an educational experience that is valued by students and companies alike: in the 2018 QS World University Rankings, Glion and Les Roches rank first and third respectively for employer reputation among hospitality management institutions worldwide.

“Youth unemployment in Switzerland is among the lowest in the world “

All too often, graduates of traditional academic degrees feel that their studies have left them unprepared for the workplace. The Swiss model of blended theoretical and practical learning has become increasingly attractive not only in Switzerland but around the world. Today, Glion offers its curriculum through a branch campus in London, UK, while Les Roches also has campuses in Marbella, Spain and Shanghai, China. For career-focused students, the integration of vocational and academic education offers a compelling alternative.

About the author: Dr Pierre Ihmle is Chief Academic Officer of Sommet Education, the hospitality education group that includes Glion Institute of Higher Education and Les Roches Global Hospitality Education

 

 

 

Finding Study Abroad Scholarships for Indian Students

“Study abroad scholarships can be an absolute boon, providing students with the much needed financial resources”

What do Indian investor and philanthropist Ratan Tata, journalist and television news anchor Arnab Goswami, politician Shashi Tharoor and actress Ameesha Patel have in common? Well, they all received their higher education in a university abroad!

Ever since the colonial era, Indians have been travelling abroad for education. Apart from the obvious boost to one’s career and academics that an education abroad can provide, the charm of experiencing a foreign culture can also be quite a factor when it comes to attracting Indian students to foreign shores.

But for the most part, this is limited to those with considerable financial resources available to them, and consequently, accessible only to the privileged. There’s one exception to this rule – an alternate method for students to access quality education for close to free – study abroad scholarships.
International scholarships are those scholarship opportunities that are open for students studying in a country apart from their own. For international students, study abroad scholarships can be an absolute boon, providing them with the needed financial resources to pursue their higher education from prestigious universities abroad.

A scholarship to study abroad can cover a meritorious student’s expenses including tuition, flight, visa, accommodation and living expenses.

“Unlike an education loan or study loan, the aid received through a scholarship doesn’t need to be paid back as well, making them the perfect solution for financially constrained meritorious students”

Of course, with many applicants for the same positions, the competition to win scholarships is quite high. Many students are further hindered by the lack of information about available scholarships. Yet, there is no dearth of available scholarship opportunities for Indian students to study abroad.

Study abroad scholarships can be discovered by browsing the scholarship portal of your state or the national scholarship portal, through a web search by keywords, through the student counsellor at your school or college, and on scholarship websites or apps.

One resource to find information for study abroad scholarships for Indian students is Buddy4Study. Started as a website in 2011, Buddy4Study is also available as an android app on Google Play Store. The portal contains complete information on international scholarships for Indian students.
Here are few of the top study abroad scholarships:

1.Stanford Reliance Dhirubhai Fellowship
This scholarship is offered by Reliance Industries Ltd. in the name of their founder, Dhirubhai Ambani. The scholarship is offered exclusively to Indian students who wish to pursue an MBA from Stanford University in the United States of America. To qualify for the scholarship, the student must be admitted to Stanford Business School. Stanford’s Business School is one of the most prestigious schools in the world, with its MBA Degree frequently ranking among the very best in the world. Reliance CEO Mukesh Ambani, as well as his daughter, Isha Ambani, are among the alumni of the Stanford Business School.

2.Narotam Sekhsaria Scholarship
This scholarship is for graduate students who are looking to pursue a postgraduate degree from a prestigious institution – whether in India or abroad – in any of the listed disciplines. The disciplines include a vast umbrella of courses falling under Pure Sciences, Applied Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities, Law, Architecture and Management.

The scholarship provides financial aid up to INR 20 Lakh to each selected scholar. The applications for this scholarship are open between the months of January to March each year.

3.Lady Meherbai D Tata Education Scholarship
This scholarship is provided by the Tata Education Trust, one of India’s oldest, philanthropic organisations, and is exclusively for Indian women graduates. The scholarship provides financial aid to women graduates from prestigious institutions in India to pursue their postgraduate studies abroad in either the US, the UK, or Europe.

The candidate must also possess at least 2 years of work experience in the respective field which are covered under the program, including social work, social sciences, education, gender studies, child health, public health, rural development work, communication of development, etc.

4.Chinese Government Scholarships
These scholarships are offered on behalf of the Government of China by the Ministry of Human Resource Development as per the joint pacts between the countries in the sector of education. There are multiple full and partial scholarships available for Undergraduate, Masters, Doctoral, General Scholar and Senior Scholar programs.

While the full scholarship covers the entire tuition fee, accommodation, monthly stipend, and medical insurance expenses, the partial scholarship would only cover one or some items of the full scholarship.

What International Students Should Know About College Admissions

” It’s your college experience, so make it what you want, not what anyone else says it should be”

Applying to college is an exciting time in a student’s life – especially if you’re looking at studying in a different country. With additional requirements and transitioning into a different culture, the college admissions process and attending college for international students can be a bit stressful if you’re not aware of some important points.

Not every college admissions process is the same, so it’s important to pay close attention to the details your prospective colleges require. Here is a list of some key factors to look for when researching.

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How TNE & International Education will penetrate Egypt in 2019

“Students will be able to live out their dreams right where they are”

Egypt’s education sector has been facing a discrepancy between supply and demand for the past few years in terms of accessibility and quality. The solution to amend this is to seek education abroad, even though in most cases, the student’s choice of academic disciplines is offered in Egypt.

It is quite a bummer since not all students are able to afford the luxury to “study abroad”. This is due to a multitude of reasons, parents being the main concerned party. They wouldn’t let their children go on their own out of fear and security as well as being incapable of sustaining the financial implications. Torn between wanting to get their money’s worth, and not knowing if studying in Egypt is doing that for them, they wonder if there is a way to bring the best of both worlds: high-quality education and staying in their country.

And there is!

The solution to all these issues is the new government direction happening in the New Administrative Capital. The New Capital is envisioning 2,000 academic institutions to be built ranging from schools to universities and among them, 6 are licensed to apply the International Branch Campus (IBC) model. An international academic institution would partner with an Egyptian investor to collaborate together in providing an education similar to the home-based campus.

“Student employability is the ultimate measure of success for the academic and non-academic participants”

The institution would be responsible for the curriculum, faculty, teaching techniques, the works up until awarding the accredited degree. The curriculum is set to meet market needs, country national projects and students’ needs, and encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration between students and faculty. Thus, the students would not only focus on their academic discipline but also their subjects of interest and shape them for tomorrow.

One of the six licensed investors is El Sewedy Education, and they decided to approach the IBC model in a unique way, to position their campus as a global knowledge hub with academic partners from different parts of the world to provide a truly global experience to the community participants, an experience that will be available for students in September 2019.

Since students are the most important stakeholders in the eyes of the Egyptian authorities and the six participants, their employability is the ultimate measure of success for the academic and non-academic participants.

Additionally, the students will be able to live out their dreams right where they are, while their parents would be offered a way to improve their children’s chances of success aided by the provision of quality education without having to leave their hometown.

 It might sound surreal now but it won’t be long until it becomes the norm.

About the author:  Jayda Shaalan serves as the Junior Business Development Coordinator at El Sewedy Education.

Access to education: one idea, many actions

“What we didn’t have back then was a way to reach people in refugee contexts as it’s unlikely they’d know to look for our learning content”

This Refugee Week, Chloe Shaw, partnerships strategy manager at Cambridge Assessment English shares how a suggestion from a colleague has turned into a flourishing staff-led initiative focused on helping give refugees and asylum seekers access to education.

Back in 2016, we were in the throes of an organisational change program and a key part of that was around hearing from staff about what matters to them and what kind of organisation they wanted to be working for. It was also a time when the global refugee crisis was rarely out of the media.

One of our colleagues, Sarah Rogerson, put forward the idea that, as a global education organisation, we could be doing more to help forced migrants. Very quickly a small team formed around this idea and began to plan.

MOOCathon

Given what we do is help people learn English, we already offer a lot of free learning materials and different kinds of teacher support. What we didn’t have back then was a way to reach people in refugee contexts as it’s unlikely they’d know to look for our learning content or be studying in a typical classroom situation.

So our starting point was to talk to lots of people – our existing partners, NGOs, charities and grassroots organisations – to build up our knowledge of the challenges learners face in these contexts. We also went to events, such as the British Council Language for Resilience conference and a Techfugees Hackathon, to learn more and network. We quickly found that we could play a role in bringing people together.

So not just us partnering with other organisations to make things happen but also facilitating conversations and bringing people together who might not otherwise meet. This led us to organise our own conference with Techfugees so we could get refugees, teachers, educators, NGO, charities and investors all together in the same room to work on some specific language education challenges.

One of the most exciting solutions to come out of the event was our free online courses.

Filming the MOOC

We announced the first in April 2017. ‘Aim higher’ helps refugees and asylum seekers access higher education in the UK. SOAS University of London, UCAS, University of Nottingham, British Council, The Student Room, Article 26, Techfugees and Star Network all helped to make this course a reality and over 3,000 people registered for the first two runs of the course.

We’re also helping people prove their skills by offering exam bursaries for several of our English exams, including C1 Advanced and OET (Occupational English Test). Through our IT department, we now clean up and donate our old laptops and mobile phones and donate them to refugee charities in places like Lebanon, France and Greece. Staff in our Assessment department have also been teaching refugees online and face to face.

We were delighted to be shortlisted for a PIEoneer Award last year for all our work in this area which has spurred us on to achieve even more.

PIE AWARDS

This Refugee Week, we’re putting a call out to people who might like to help us launch an online ‘Language for employability’ course. We know from speaking to teachers at IATEFL this year that there’s already a lot of interest.

So, if you think you can help, please do get in touch. In fact, we’d love to hear from you if you have other ideas of how we could collaborate to help refugees access education – you can reach us at partnerships@cambridgeenglish.org

Refugee week is a program of arts, cultural and educational event and activities that celebrate the contribution of refugees and promotes a better understanding of why people seek sanctuary. 

In-Demand Degrees & Landing Top UK Jobs

“Non-EEA international students often find themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to applying for British graduate jobs”

As Brexit negotiations continue, many international students are feeling concerned about their place in the UK post-graduation, particularly those looking to work in graduate roles. Luna Williams, content writer and correspondent at Immigration Advice Service offers advice to relieve some of this concern.

As it stands, any non-EEA international graduate can take on permanent, skilled work in the UK provided they have received a job offer and a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) from their prospective employer. Once they have this, they will be eligible for a Tier 2 Work Visa, which will allow them to take on their desired role and remain in the UK for a further five years to fill it. For those looking to settle in the UK permanently, this route is ideal.
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How does duty of care extend to American higher education international offices?

“Many students understand that it is expensive in the US, but they struggle to understand how their insurance plan does not protect against the cost of that system”

As students become more mobile, the concept of ‘duty of care’ becomes all the more important. Jeff Foot, executive director of international student insurance provider LewerMark, says educators need a critical eye to assess what plans they have in place when international students face risks they are not accustomed to.

The #youarewelcomehere campaign attempts to soften the swirling rhetoric around the recent executive order travel bans, removal of DACA, increased nationalism, and unease generally around immigration issues. I think international education voices are correct to share competing messages, but a more proactive risk management approach is needed to offer a level of real comfort to current and potential international students.
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Inventor’s life could inspire business schools worldwide

“His passion for education and inspiring future generations to take a chance was legendary”

Trevor Baylis left school without any qualifications but went on to become one of Britain’s most renowned inventors. Kamal Bechkoum, head of business and technology at the University of Gloucestershire reflects on the mark that Baylis left on the world and what higher education institutions can learn from his genius.

I was tremendously saddened to hear of the recent death of Trevor Baylis OBE, creator of the wind-up radio that helped millions in the developing world access essential and life-saving information.

His passing marks not just the loss of a great inventor; it also offers an impressive life story that business, science and technology schools across the globe can learn from when encouraging their students to fulfil a need, doggedly protect one’s own intellectual property, or face down the seemingly impossible. 

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U.S. is Losing an Opportunity for Economic Growth

“International students studying in the US become powerful contributors to the economy…impacting foreign relations in ways that can lead to global growth. “

It is easy to view the value of international students in terms of economic impact says Gretchen M. Bataille, senior consultant at Navitas USA. But, as she explains, international students contribute much more than tuition fees, and unfortunately, the US seems to be missing the memo. 

Education is not often considered an export. However, contrary to images of barges laden with goods, the United States’ most valuable exports are services, including education. In July 2017, services accounted for over one-third of total exports at $65.8 billion.

International students studying in the US become powerful contributors to the economy and contribute new ideas, lifestyles, values, and experiences to their home countries, transforming their local economies and impacting foreign relations in ways that can lead to global growth.

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