Cara Skikne
4 years ago

Diversification of Student Recruitment – Africa Focus

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[REPORT] In light of the recent Coronavirus outbreak, the world of international education has had to face an indisputable truth: global student mobility is massively influenced by one country, China, which has been the world’s largest sending country of international students for the past thirty years.

The need to diversify is now greater than ever before as universities can no longer afford to be reliant on just a few source countries for their international student body. And not only do universities need to look for geographic diversification, but they also need to take into account academic, product, marketing, and financial diversification to mitigate risks. Managing risk might require different solutions: offering more courses online; diversifying marketing channels; reducing dependency on recruitment agents; finding a better balance between undergraduate and postgraduate courses; finding alternatives to semester’s fee income, and having a much broader portfolio of degree courses and not just a few so-called “cash cow” degrees.

For future proof strategies, it is even more important to expand the sources of student recruitment. This report offers some suggestions for geographic diversification into a selection of African countries with both promising demographic and economic outlooks: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana and Cameroon. The countries in this report have been chosen based on their booming demographics and following the recommendations of industry experts. This is not to say that they will not be impacted by the global COVID 19 pandemic but can prove a useful resource in better understanding potential countries for expanding international student diversity.

This whitepaper aims to help universities investigating new countries for their international strategy in better understanding key African countries that might be part of their plans. The analysis presented in the following pages draws from a multitude of internal and external sources but does not claim to be exhaustive. Studyportals collected and prepared this study to help universities update their strategies, make informed decisions on international recruitment, and provide recommendations on how to include key countries in their digital student recruitment strategies.

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