The following is adapted from a talk given at the National Association of Foreign Student Affairs (NAFSA) conference in Orlando, Florida, back in May. My thanks to Mike Alcott of ApplyBoard for the invitation to participate in the panel.
There are a lot of folks in the business of moving international students from one place to another who want more data. They think more data will help them target students better by predicting changes in international student demand. But is that true? And if so, what kind of data is most useful for making those predictions.
Basically, there are two kinds of data out there. The first type is survey-based data. For example:
- Surveys of international students (or at least prospective international students), such as IDP’s Emerging Futures surveys or QS’ International Student Survey, or INTO University Partners satisfaction survey.
- Surveys of agents and recruiters such as this one from ICEF, and this one from ApplyBoard.
- Various other players have more occasional surveys like BONARD on the state of international student recruitment, or the British Council’s Global Perceptions Study of 18-34 year-olds around the world,
These are all interesting in their own ways, but there is one serious drawback to these – they are all based on samples of convenience. I don’t just mean that in the sense that all surveys are “convenience” (that is, people have to agree to answer a survey, and the desire to answer a survey is not random). I mean it in the sense that the sample itself is drawn from people who have particular characteristics. Samples from ApplyBoard and IDP, for instance, are taken from people who access their corporate websites. QS surveys students at institutions that have signed up to participate in a survey. Those aren’t random samples! So, while the surveys are, I am sure, competently and professionally handled, the sample can’t really be said to be generalizable to the world as a whole. Nor, for that matter, can they easily be used as a time-series since the sample is not necessarily geographically stable.
Then there are sources of data which focus on administrative data of various types. Thes include:
- Studyportals releases intelligence reports which summarize student search activity on its own programme search platform. It also sells access to a variety of dashboards.
- ApplyBoard’s does an annual Trends Reports which is mainly looking at data on visas and other measures of mobility from the previous year. QS’ Global Student Flows reports does something similar, albeit more diced up geographically. Holon IQ’s Global Student Flows project maps flows across thousands of country-to-country corridors over a number of years.
- The British Council periodically publishes data on global economic trends affecting student mobility.
On a couple of these sources (notably studyportals), you have the same issue as for survey-based data – that is, the data is from a restricted sample (people who use studyportals) and is not necessarily generalizable globally. For the rest – especially the stuff that relies on analyses of government data – the key drawback is that the data is backward-looking and, in some cases, out-of-date. Unless you believe in straight-line extrapolations of past trends, this stuff doesn’t necessarily help you in terms of forecasting future trends, whatever the producers of this data may say.
None of the above is to suggest that any of these data sources aren’t useful. They all show a slice of reality. It’s not really a question about which data source is best: the important thing is to use a triangulation strategy, using as many different types of data in order to come up with a useful perspective that matters to your institution.
But that, of course, takes some judgement.
And the need for judgement really does not stop there. And that is because all of these sources – survey or administrative – are, for the most part, focused on changes to and the evolution of demand. That’s not an unreasonable thing to look at: listening to potential clients matters. But with international students, demand is only occasionally what matters. As almost everyone in the anglosphere knows by now (or should do), it’s the shocks to supply that will really mess you up.
Literally nothing has affected flows of students around the world more than changes in government policy. Just think about Canada for a second. Why did international student numbers explode in 2021? That massive explosion of interest from India didn’t materialize out of thin air: it came about because the Government of Canada, in a desire to make life easier for current international students (or, possibly, in an attempt to relieve wage inflation, it depends on who you talk to) decided to change visa rules and allow international students to work essentially unlimited hours, thereby turning them into a disguised form of Temporary Foreign Worker. Similarly, the now complete lack of demand from India is entirely a result of Marc “Nuke the Colleges” Miller’s decision to impose visa limits, alter the post-graduate work visa program beyond recognition, and wantonly trash the sector’s reputation internationally. It’s a similar story elsewhere: numbers in the US, Australia and the UK are down because of trump, visa changes, and desperately sad xenophobia, respectively. It is developments in the receiving countries, not the sending ones, that matter.
And what that tells you is that to get ahead of the trends that matter internationally, institutions need to be politically literate, globally aware, and astute enough to understand which way the wind is blowing. Quantitative data alone doesn’t get you there, not by a long shot.
