The Next Big Market for Students: Data, Surveys and Predictions

The education landscape around the world has changed more dramatically in the last several years than at any time in history. Those who wish to keep up need to monitor trends and issues that will affect students, families, secondary schools and colleges and universities. If what I have just written sounds like hyperbole, it isn’t.  The data published over the last year supports my contention. In this paper I will focus on one of the major shifts--the huge increase in students from India going abroad for education-- and talk about a few of the thorny issues professionals need to address as a result.

When statistics were released last year detailing the number of international students, by country, that had chosen to apply and then enroll in colleges and universities in the US, some leaders in education did not believe them:

 For the first time since the council’s reports began, in 2004, first-time enrollment by Chinese students in graduate programs at American universities actually dropped this year.

The writing has been on the wall for more than a year. In April 2013, the council reported that Chinese applications to American graduate schools fell 5 percent after seven consecutive years of double-digit growth. The drop was so unexpected that the council’s president at the time, Debra W. Stewart, didn’t believe it at first. The possibility that the dip was an aberration was proved unlikely this year, when the council reported that applications from China fell again.

Enrollment followed suit, declining by 1 percent, according to the latest report. So what’s behind the multiyear trend? “China has been spending big to improve its own research universities, a move that could persuade promising doctoral students to stay at home,” wrote The Chronicle’s Karin Fischer in April, citing one possible factor. ”American universities, meanwhile, have had to absorb cuts in research funding.”

Overall international enrollment increased 8 percent this year, according to the new report. That’s largely because of Indian students, whose enrollment has boomed over the past two years. It was up 40 percent last year, and grew by 27 percent this year. But concluding that India has replaced China as the new driver of international enrollment might be premature. Indian growth has been much more erratic and unpredictable, and it’s unclear whether the double-digit spikes will persist in coming years.

While the shifts mean a lot to graduate schools, which count on surging international enrollment, they haven’t yet been observed at the undergraduate level. If undergraduate enrollment from China begins to mimic what graduate schools are seeing, that could spell much larger trouble.

For those of us who have been closely following education in China, the drop in graduate applications that started a few ago and therefore the drop in enrollment this year did not come as a surprise. The Chinese government has pledged a trillion dollars toward education. Universities are opening up state of the art labs, getting research funding and hiring top PhDs to teach who have received their degrees from top universities in the West. Rather than send students abroad, they are now trying to keep them at home. The government is also making it more difficult for students to prepare for studying in the West by clamping down on certain programs in national secondary schools that offer Western style classes. The move toward greater nationalism also applies to the most important test in the country, the Gaokao. There will be less emphasis on English and this will make the students less likely to be fully fluent should they apply to English speaking countries. Finally, the inability of the US government to increase the number of work visas for international students has led to many families deciding it is not worth the money or the risk to spend years getting an education if no jobs  or work experience /internships are open to them.

As a result, colleges and universities have wisely decided to diversify their market and India is and should be the place to go. The 67% application growth rate of students over the last two years demonstrates that India may serve to help fill in for China should the numbers there continue to drop. India now makes up 12% of the total international student cohort studying in the US, still far behind China at 32%, but ahead of all other countries (Korea is next at 8% and that percentage is dropping too.)  To put this in concrete terms in the 2014/15 academic year, 132,888 students from India were studying in the United States, a 12% increase from the previous year.

There are several reasons for this growth which, I believe, predict that the upward trend will continue, at least in the short term. In the last decade, millions in India have moved up into the middle class and above. Families are in a position to send their children to good primary and secondary schools to prepare them for higher education both at home and abroad. The future dreams those families have for their children often center on getting the best education. As with most places around the world, the way “the best education” is defined often comes in the form of rankings. While the US News rankings dominate what people look at for schools in the US, the rankings that generate interest in India are those compiled by Phil Baty who oversees the Times Higher Education rankings. What is of particular note is that India has yet to crack the top 100  of world universities:

None of the Indian universities could make it to the list of top 100 most prestigious global universities in the latest 'world reputation ranking' by Times Higher Education.
The rankings for 2015 based on invitation-only survey of senior academic opinion, placed Harvard at the top, followed by University of Cambridge and University of Oxford in the second and third place respectively.
The latest results come even as the government has initiated a series of measures to place its institutes among the top globally.

For those in India looking for top universities these rankings will encourage them to look abroad. Rankings, as has been the case for many years in the US and other places around the globe, drive applications and serve as a kind of feedback loop. The universities near the top will see increasing interest from around the world and in this case, especially from India. I would predict, therefore, that applications from students from India to schools in mostly English speaking countries will continue to go up. I would say this is particularly true of graduate students. With the recent Brexit vote it may be that more students will look to the US.

The reason for the higher interest from graduate students is that The Times rankings uses rubrics to measure schools that reward factors like  faculty publications and high level research --things which affect graduate students more than undergraduates. In addition, there are universities in India that are held in high esteem not just there but anywhere. These, of course, are the IITs. Getting in to one of these universities is among the toughest educational challenges in the world. The joke that circulates among some students in India is that MIT is a back for an IIT. But this joke applies to those looking for an undergraduate education. Nevertheless, India is a bit like China, only it is following their lead from a generation ago. Graduate students were the first to go outside China for their education and only after a period of time, when the economy improved, and families could pay the fees, did the boom in undergraduate education begin. Whether there will be a huge boom in students in India going abroad for undergraduate education is difficult to gage but there will be at least some increase given the perception of how good the schools outside India are and  how tough the competition is to get into top schools in India. This growth will also depend on how quickly the Indian Government can revamp education throughout the country. Recently plans were announced to examine how to do this:

For the first time in more than two decades, the government of India is drafting a new education policy which will include reforms on the internationalisation in higher education, digitisation of education and skills development.

The government has released 33 discussion themes– 13 for secondary, 20 for post-secondary– to the public for consultation, a process which the government expects could take up to a year.

If these changes are substantive, then the boom of students going abroad may change, but given that it will take one year just to begin to focus on how to do this the changes will not happen in the short term.

Up to this point, I hope I have provided enough information to convince educators that they need to either improve or begin their efforts to recruit more students from India. There are thousands of wonderful students who are hoping to study at universities around the world. What I hope to do now is to give some data on who these students are and what they are looking for.

The data I am going to cite comes from a  survey conducted by Chegg last year.

Almost all who filled out the survey are looking to study abroad. The information contained in the whole survey will be valuable for those looking to learn what are the most important facets these students look for in terms of major, location, funding etc. In this white paper I wish to focus on just a small part of the research, since discussing this will help colleges and universities prepare to recruit students, but also  to learn about issues that they need to approach with an ethical and informed background.

Of the students who completed the survey, 23% said they used the help of an agent. While this figure may not seem high (A person I trust to know the facts in China says about 90% use agents), the raw number of students using agents will still be in the tens of thousands. As more students look abroad, more students will use agents, and if the agents are perceived by others in the coming yeas to help student gain admission to top schools, this percentage will increase quickly. No matter what, however, agents play a significant role now and what they do for students and how they do it will be my focus.

Even if the percentage of students using agents may not be high, the overall number of students leaving India for study in other countries still means that the actual aggregate number is large. It might be useful, however, to define what an agent is as the term has several meanings.

On the one hand, there are agents that have been contracted by colleges and universities to recruit students. These agents work in country and their job is to provide information about schools. In some cases, these agents receive a per student fee for each one who enrolls at a contracted school. Over the last several years there has been a great deal of debate about whether NACAC should permit schools to use agents like this. After much controversy, however, NACAC, while not endorsing their use, has said they will not take action against schools that use them. While these agents are essential to some universities and colleges, especially those who need students to fill their enrollment goals, they are not typically what the students and families refer to as agents.

The agents that students themselves use are ones that are not (or at least not in the majority) contracted by individual schools. Instead, these agents are what some in other parts of the world call independent counselors. They provide services to help students get admitted to schools. Depending on the agent, these services can cost a huge amount of money. What the students get from them varies, but most help develop a list of possible schools to apply to, provide help in making sure all forms and information are submitted in a timely fashion, and in some cases, provide things like test prep, essay editing, and resume and interview help. Some also strategize on the best ways to get financial aid, be it need-based or merit based.

What I have just described summarizes what ethical agents do to help students. There are thousands of people like this who work tirelessly to help students and families through the process. I am lucky to know a large number who fit in this category and I know how invaluable they have been to changing lives and providing opportunities. I know of some like this who work in India.

Just how important are these kinds of agents? This is a question that is difficult to answer. I say this based on the responses I received from a question I asked on the website Quora.com, a site that focuses only on questions and answers and has millions of people in India who contribute.

The question I asked focused on the number of students who use agents and whether they are necessary. Here are a few of the responses.

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This is a tough question to answer. Especially because I'm not one of the person who went to an agent to study outside India. It's really tough to say even the approximate percentage.  Same goes for other countries.

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Although agents can be of great help in the tedious process, very few students have agents helping them. The major reasons for this are:

1) Lack of awareness- A large number of applicants don't even know that
agents exist.

2) Financial in-capabilities- Many students can't afford an agent.

3) Exceptionally talented students/ Achievers- Students from India who get admitted into top schools abroad are mostly Olympiad medalists or they have been in prestigious competitions, most of these students have enough achievements to get in with all the flaws.

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For Masters & Phd, I haven't come across anyone using the agent. As long as your undergrad background is good with decent score in GRE & Gmat, you should be fine without an agent

I can't put an exact number but with so many online forums, I don't think agents would do any better. 

  

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Well in the case of Undergrad, you will surely need one.

It may depend on you in case of PG, if you have already decided which college to go and can write a decent SoP and arrange with all the financial requirements. You may not need an agent.

However getting an agent is recommended because you may encounter several challenges in the process, and an experienced agent may help you. If you know someone who has already gone through the process, he will be a great help. And moreover agencies have tie ups with various colleges so they are helpful there. Yes, they will be a great help if you need financial assistance.

I will recommend you to get an agent, they usually charge nearly ₹20K. I think you can manage with that too, if you are ready to pay heavy amounts abroad.

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What is the significance of these answers? For me, the range of responses tells me that there is no simple way of determining how important agents are to individuals. For some, agents provide necessary services and for others they are not useful at all. And that is about how it is in all parts of the world. Most students, except for China, do not use agents. But depending on the ability of the student and the expertise of the agent the usefulness will vary.

The Chegg survey demonstrates this in a somewhat different way. Of the approximately 23% of the students who said they used agents about 75% rated the services received as good. In other words, within this percentage there are students who feel they received valuable help getting information about schools, about the admission process, about funding and testing; on the other hand, there are some who feel they were not helped much at all. Agents, then, vary greatly and my advice for families and students who wish to use them is to do a lot of research first.

It is true that very few students volunteer to peers that they are using an agent. And reputable agents should never ever reveal the identities of clients to others. Nevertheless, there is still word of mouth that gets around about some agents who have been exceptionally helpful. In addition to this, I would advise any families or students to investigate the agent. One way of doing this is through LinkedIn. Students should learn to set up a profile anyway, as this site is useful for outreach to professionals in all fields. I have quite a few contacts on my account and I have many from India who are agents. In reading over their profiles I can learn a great deal. Their educational backgrounds, training in the field, the services they cover are often highlighted. If there are errors in the profile, if there are de facto promises about placement or if there are other things that raise questions then I would advise families and students to look somewhere else. Students may also use social media to find out more about a particular agent. There are many people who will respond to questions on various forms (such as Quora). Whether each respondent can be trusted is another issue. Free advice from strangers is not always a great resource to trust. Perhaps the bet thing a student can do is to meet with the agent before signing a contract. Many agents do not charge for the first meeting; finding out if there is good chemistry between the student and the agent can make the subsequent experience useful and enjoyable.

 To sum up, for schools, families and students finding an ethical agent who is professionally trained can be a useful way of not only finding out about different schools and the ways to fill out an application, but also a way of finding the best sources for funding. The number of agents in India is hard to gage but I would say there are thousands and the number is growing by the day. The range of services and the expertise these agents offer varies widely. Some of them work with hundreds of students and others with just a few. Some have a track record of success and others do not. Some keep a low profile because they know that the reputation of agents around the world is,  problematic. Some in admission do like the fact that people with economic means get extra help when applying to university. It increases the gap between the have and have-nots in terms of getting into highly selective colleges and universities

If anyone wishes to get a sense of how agents are often perceived in the media simply Google "agents and China." Over the past several years, virtually every media outlet has written a story about how agents in China help students cheat their way into schools.  I authored an article on this topic for NACAC’s Journal of Admission last year, but let me simply say here that the default mode among educators is that many agents are not ethical. And in China this may well be true. The question is whether this is also true in India. My answer is that India is, like the rest of the world, in that there are ranges of agents. I cannot begin to speculate on the percentage of them who do things the right way, but there are certainly some who do things to that are against the standards of NACAC and other professional organizations.

What sort of things do they do? In some cases they will provide forged documents—transcripts, letters of recommendation being the top two. In some cases they write the essays for the students and create a resume of activities and experiences that is largely fictional. These unscrupulous agents have hurt the reputation of all agents and that is unfortunate. Many school officials think that virtually all agents are not to be trusted.

Because of the fraud and cheating issues that have received so much press, colleges and universities, or at least many of them, especially the selective schools, are doing a great deal of work to verify documents and other submissions. There are many workshops that provide training to people to detect forged documents. In addition, some schools outsource the verification to organizations like the World Education Services. Schools do need, however, to devote more resources to make sure fraud is not rewarded with offers of admission. If the word is out that cheating works, then this will only increase the problem and hurt the schools and students in the long run.

 In addition, I encourage schools to spend far more time on the ground in India. They need to visit schools find out more about them but also they need to begin to talk to some of the agents who do the right things. By forging trust among all the stakeholders—families, students, schools and agents the amount of fraud will decrease. While it may be true that this will cost money at the front end, having students who were admitted with fraudulent documents may cost more. If these students cannot do the work they will drop out and this will hurt the reputation of the school as graduation rates and placement are now at the forefront of evaluating schools.

It is important to note that students who are enrolled in universities in the US who are subsequently found to have submitted false documents are suspended and their transcripts are frozen. In other words, a student may have completed 3 years of work but if fraud is detected in the admission application, all the work and all the money have been wasted. More schools need to underscore the penalties for cheating to students.

I would also advise schools to do more training of staff to learn about the range and scope of credentials in India. The way grades are reported, the exams that are given, and even the tests students take range from region to region and sometimes from school to school. For example a significant change in testing options was announced last year:

“For the first time in its history, the Graduate Management Admission Council has acquired a rival entrance exam used in India for an undisclosed sum. The exam, taken by roughly 45,000 test takers annually, was purchased outright from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS).

At about $35 a test, the NMAT exam costs just a fraction of the $250 GMAC charges test takers to sit for the GMAT. But the deal, announced today (March 11), gives GMAC greater market share in one of the fastest growing markets for management education in the world. The acquisition nearly triples the number of test takers in India for GMAC since only 25,268 GMAT tests were taken in India last year.

Both students and the schools themselves need to keep up with the many changes ahead.

As India becomes a more important country for schools to recruit from there will no doubt be more pressure for students to do whatever it takes to get into schools. Those in education can be proactive to make sure that their active presence in country making trusted connections is needed. Admission in some ways drives the behavior of those trying to get in and having a strong stance against fraud and having the resources to detect it will make sure that everyone who is ethical benefits. India will be, no matter what, a great resource for schools looking to recruit students; whether some of the problems that are going on in China now will follow is largely up to the schools and educational professionals. The schools can help with education reform and with making sure students feel compelled to submit accurate documents that will be scrutinized. Schools should also reach out to those agents they are sure will help students in ethical ways.