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Consulting for Higher Education

Receive strategic, but also hands-on expert guidance on actionable portfolio and international marketing strategies, recruitment concepts, branding and positioning, alumni engagement, and a wide range of other services tailored to the higher education sector.

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Data-Driven Consultancy for Higher Education Challenges and Opportunities

We provide data-driven evidence-based consultancy services to universities, business schools and higher education providers to support them with institutional and market challenges and opportunities.

Our work helps institutions identify improvement strategies for enhanced performance, resilience and acceleration.

We use our unique global Studyportals data combined with other public, institutional or client data, analytics and management consulting to provide broad consultancy capabilities from strategy design to benchmarking analysis.

Our core domains

Student Marketing, Recruitment and Diversification Strategy Development

This service is designed to assist higher education institutions to target a more diverse and qualified student cohort using various dimensions in light of the numerous demographic and economic challenges the industry is facing.

We focus on the following key areas, employing a data-driven and evidence-based strategy:

Geographical Diversity: Broadening the geographic reach of your recruitment efforts to include a wider array of regions to attract a rich mix of students.

Demographic Representation: Implementing strategies to enhance enrolment from underrepresented groups, ensuring a diverse demographic mix that enriches the learning environment.

Each strategy is crafted to meet the unique needs and goals of your institution, ensuring sustainability and long-term success in a competitive educational landscape.

Accreditation and Ranking Management for Quality Assurance

Our comprehensive consulting service supports universities and business schools specifically, aiming for institutional and/or programme accreditations (e.g., AACSB, EQUIS, AMBA) and improve ranking performances, with comprehensive strategy reviews and change management tailored to enhance institutional standards and outcomes.

Key areas include:

Gap and Benchmarking Analysis: Starting with a thorough audit to assess current practices against accreditation standards and a benchmark analysis against competitors and peers, setting the foundation for targeted improvements.

Accreditation Strategy Development: Crafting a customized strategy for navigating the accreditation process, from initial preparation to the final visit, ensuring all standards are met and exceeded.

Ranking Analysis and Improvement Plans: Analysing ranking positions in relation to competitors and identifying strategies for climbing up the rankings ladder, leveraging our Competitor Analysis Module and Institution Benchmark Module for insights and action plans.

Organizational Performance Alignment: Including alignment of operating models, research strategy, teaching and learning offerings, academic and administrative culture and workforce to its mission.

This service is tailored to transform your institution into a recognized leader in the higher education industry, enhancing its appeal to prospective students and faculty alike by achieving esteemed accreditations and improving its position in global rankings.

Institutional Strategy Development

Our service provides comprehensive solutions to our clients to be globally competitive in the international higher education environment. We enable clients to map development aspirations into strategic plans. Through facilitated discussions with key stakeholders, we provide you with a comprehensive report which sets out a range of strategic options, operational recommendations and implementation guidance to support your institutional objectives.

We focus on areas such as:

Institutional Strategies, Mission and Vision: Develop a clear set of institutional strategies, combined and aligned with KPIs and strategic objectives.

Faculty and Staff Development: Increase the competence of faculty and staff through training, workshops, and exposure to global academic standards.

Student Diversity and Mobility: Strategies to diversify the student body by encouraging more international enrolments and facilitating student exchange programmes to enhance their global outlook.

Curriculum Internationalization: Revamping curricula to include international perspectives and case studies, thereby preparing students for global challenges and opportunities.

Internationalization and Transnational Education: Introducing global learning experiences on campus, developing double and joint degrees, virtual exchange, and cross-cultural groups, to provide a true international study environment.

Global Partnerships and Collaborations: Developing strategic partnerships with institutions worldwide to support academic exchanges, research collaborations, and joint degree programmes.

Our service aims to systematically integrate internationalisation into your institution’s academic life, enriching learning experiences and improving global readiness.

Programme Portfolio Strategy

We help institutions refine and enhance their programme offerings to ensure they meet market demands and institutional goals through rigorous strategy reviews and data-driven decision-making.

The focus areas include:

Data-Driven Assessment: Assessing the client’s programme portfolio to identify current strengths and weaknesses and to assess potential growth options within the current provision, including the integration of online and blended programmes and delivery pathways.

Market and Needs Analysis: Conducting analyses to understand the current and future needs of students and employers, ensuring that programme offerings remain relevant and competitive.

Programme Review and Adaptation: Reviewing existing programmes to assess their effectiveness and making necessary adjustments to align with market trends and institutional strategy.

New Programme Development: Assisting in the development of new programmes that fill gaps identified in the market analysis, tailored to evolving industry demands and student interests. For this, we will also leverage our data, in particular our Portfolio Development Module, to provide data-driven insights and recommendations for programme adjustments and new programme creation.

Stakeholder Engagement: Facilitating engagement with key stakeholders including industry experts, alumni, and current students to gather feedback and incorporate practical insights into programme development.

Our service ensures your institution remains a preferred choice for prospective students and a trusted partner for employers by continuously evolving and adapting your educational offerings.

Strategic Benchmarking and Competitor Analysis

Our benchmarking allows clients to take an evidence-based approach to gain a more nuanced understanding of their comparative performance relative to peer institutions on a national and international level and reflecting their medium- to longer-term strategic goals. Our service provides institutions with a comprehensive analysis of how they measure up against others in the industry.

We focus on several crucial aspects:

Research Output Comparison: Assessing your institution’s research performance relative to your competitors, including publications, citations, and research funding.

Rankings Analysis: Targeting entry into international rankings or improvement of ranking positioning by evaluating where your institution stands in national and international rankings, identifying strengths and areas for improvement.

Tuition Fee Analysis: Comparing your tuition structures with those of peer institutions using our Tuition Fee Module to ensure competitiveness and transparency.

Competition Analysis: Leveraging our Competitor Analysis Module to identify competing programmes and institutions and compare performance, fees, entry requirements, and rankings.

Institution Benchmark: Utilizing our Institution Benchmark Module to provide detailed benchmarking reports that help you understand your position relative to your peers and competitors.

By employing our service, your institution will gain valuable insights into its competitive position and identify strategic opportunities for growth and improvement.

Learning and Development

We provide open registration or tailored, in-house, professional development training and workshops in almost any field of internationalization of higher education: international marketing and student recruitment, international strategy development, leadership development, branding and positioning, etc.

Topics include:

Introduction to international marketing & recruitment: An introduction to entering markets, international recruitment and promotions. It also offers advice on strategic planning and models for success in this field.

From enquiries to enrolment: This workshop will teach you marketing and sales skills you require to successfully help students make the right decision, such as speed to contact, listening and questioning skills, objection handling and closing the deal.

Data-driven decision making for student recruitment: This workshop presents both enrolment and real-time insights into student interest for selected countries and cities and how to use these insights to target international students, to determine what courses to offer online or on-campus, where to open new campuses around the globe and how this influences your strategic marketing.

Strategic marketing: This workshop will focus on the ‘strategic why’ of international marketing and provide policy makers and recruiters with a solid theoretical background, supplemented by practical examples.

Branding higher education institutions: This course offers an overview of the key aspects of branding, while demonstrating that a strong brand is essential in the increasingly competitive higher education environment.

Return on investment of your marketing activities: This workshop will give you practical guidance on how to measure and compare the costs and benefits of the most frequently used marketing channels: agents, education fairs and advertising (offline and online).

Online marketing: Having a good website and knowing how to generate traffic and convert leads is crucial to anything you do, even offline. This workshop will offer you the latest insights in online marketing.

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