Global Perspectives on Recruiting International Students: Challenges and Opportunities

It is salient to be acquainted with the key elements that determine educational tourists’ decision in selecting an overseas destination while considering the rise of international competition amidst nations concerning international students. There has been a growth in the number of nations committed to attracting educational tourists. This issue is evident in countries involved in higher education (HE), such as Northern Cyprus, identified as an edu-tourism destination. Northern Cyprus can attract a whopping number of tourists, and the higher population is most likely to be made up of international students regardless of its interdiction on direct flights and political pressure. This chapter centres on analysing educational tourists’ motivators in selecting a tourism education destination abroad and on revealing effective recruitment and promotion plans towards attracting them. The chapter includes the descriptions and discussions of educational tourism, the HE industry over the years, globalisation and internationalisation of educational tourism, factors influencing educational tourists’ decision-making process and key elements influencing educational tourists’ decisions in HE institutions. At the end of the chapter, a case study is presented that reports the findings of interviews with educational tourists, overseas recruitment agents and Eastern Mediterranean University staff responsible for promoting the institution. The results identified eight factors affecting educational tourists’ decisions on study destination. Those factors comprise cost, ease of access, location, social factors, quality of education, instruction language, cultural environment and communication quality. The sub-factors of the main eight factors are scholarships, destination’s scenery, safety, friends’ and relatives’ influence and cultural differences. This chapter brings a significant knowledge about the motives that affect educational tourists in selecting at a particular HE destination. Based on the study’s findings, educational institutions may consider various recommendations to redesign their strategies towards attracting educational tourists more effectively. Generally, this study promotes an apprehension about the diverse elements that affect educational tourists’ selection of a destination study. An in-depth understanding of these factors will help education institutions’ decision-makers better develop plans of action to provide desired services to educational tourists, attract and keep them in return.

The study examines how the tourism concept developed amongst Chinese students in the United States from 1905 to current juncture. Through the contrasting views presented in two landmark mega-reviews of Chinese students in the United States and France, the authors concluded that tourism enhances understanding of the host countries resulting in more comprehensive and overall success of Study Abroad Program. After the reopening, China encouraged touring the host country but with extreme financial constraints in the beginning. Tourism of Chinese students became popular and fashionable only in late 1990s with China’s economic prosperity and policy changes to open tourism to foreign countries. As tension with China grew during the COVID pandemic, Chinese students in the United States were used by the Trump Administration as a lever in trade and diplomatic negotiation, and touring became wishful.

This study investigates the influences of social media marketing activities (SMMAs) on brand preference by focussing on the mediation influence of brand recognisability and the moderator influence of brand signature in higher education institutions in Germany. A total of 257 students were surveyed and the data gathered were tested through partial least squares structural equation modelling. The findings demonstrated that higher-education institutions’ SMMAs had a significant effect on both brand recognisability and students’ brand preference. The findings also empirically proved the significant mediator influence of brand recognisability and the moderator influence of brand signature upon the association of higher education institutions’ SMMAs and students’ brand preference. It is anticipated that the findings of this research could be utilised as a significant solution in the improvement of higher education institutions’ SMMAs, specifically focussing on the significance of each component of SMMAs.

International students make valuable educational and economic contributions in higher education institutions (HEIs) all across the world. They contribute to the diversity and add different perspective in classrooms. Attracting international students is one of the objectives of HEIs. International students being present all over the world access information about the university online. Hence, all the relevant information must be available on the HEI website. Institutions are also present on social media platforms for interaction purposes. The owned media, including website, social media, discussion forums, etc. of institutions must be regularly monitored and analysed. Equally important is to analyse what students are discussing online about institutions, that is, what are their sentiments. This chapter is an attempt to develop a guide for HEI to draw the interest of international students for an institution through web analytics and social listening. Web analytics will help in understanding the behaviour of the visitor to the HEI website. Key performance indicators that will help in achieve the objective of attracting international students will be identified. On the other hand, analysing social listening on different platforms will help in understanding international students’ perspectives towards a specific institution.

This chapter considers internationalisation strategies to promote international student recruitment and mobility as the central tools of contemporary universities operating in a global and competitive context. It presents an overview of these strategies in the public university context in Italy, which serves as a case study to highlight how universities increasingly give relevance to the internationalisation of education in their strategic plans to attract overseas students and encourage incoming and outgoing student mobility. The document-based analysis of the Italian case reveals a prominent commitment from public universities to promoting internationalisation through different strategic performance objectives that contribute to the internationalisation of students and fuel their mobility and recruitment on a global scale. This research provides empirical evidence of the saliency of the internationalisation of education within the strategic missions of universities. It also addresses the connection between the internationalisation of university education and performance-based funding.

This chapter compares how three institutions from three countries, Canada, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, use international student recruitment as an institutional capability. Institutional capability to recruit students from international markets is determined by a mix of national policy, internal cultures and institutional resources and capabilities. This chapter explores the complex nature of institutional operations in higher education institutions (HEIs) by considering the perspectives of senior leaders, administrators and international student recruiters and how they implement their international student recruitment plans while facing increasing competition and unstable government policies. The results show what is needed is for institutions to improve their institutional capabilities to respond to national policies and to adapt to the changing global landscape. It also discusses the importance of understanding highly localised, institutional culture and practice and how national policy is one dimension that shapes international student recruitment. International case study allows you to draw these conclusions and to examine how strategy and policy contexts shape individual institutional capability. Institutional context shows capabilities in international student recruitment practice are unique and institutional responses to policies and competition are based on their internal cultures. Institutional actors view government policy as the ‘playing field’ to achieve their institutional strategies; however, there is more to international student recruitment than merely national policies such as the ability to communicate and coordinate activities within institutions. This chapter highlights the importance of understanding the capabilities of the institutions themselves as they attempt to recruit students from international markets. This chapter reinforces the notion that it is not only what the policies say or do, but also how these policies are interpreted at the practice level that shapes international student recruitment.

Iran, with its young and highly literate population, constitutes one of the main higher education markets in the Middle East region. Having now developed a highly comprehensive higher education sector, a result of the efforts to advance the higher education system following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, it is of no surprise that more than four million Iranians are currently enrolled in higher education institutions in Iran. Regardless of these developments, however, meeting the increasing demand for tertiary education has been a challenge leading to a large number of Iranians pursuing tertiary education opportunities overseas. This has created a vast and promising market for student importing countries, which has proved to be too difficult for international student recruiters to penetrate due to international sanctions imposed on Iran and local economic problems coupled with certain restrictions imposed internally by the ruling authorities. Despite the challenges of not being politically recognised as legitimate except by Turkey, North Cyprus has been one of the most popular destinations for Iranian students particularly in the last decade. Relative to its size, North Cyprus has proved to be one of the most internationalised higher education system in the world with more than 30,000 international students from more than 100 different countries and more significantly, Iranian students constitute one of the largest cohort. This chapter explores the student recruitment process from Iran with a specific focus on the external and internal challenges faced by the students as well as by the recruiters. North Cyprus is particularly evaluated as a case study to present how some challenges may have been overcome and student flow can be achieved even to a country that has been struggling against the externalities of international political non-recognition.

International Education is worth billions of dollars to the world economy, and many countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia have government initiatives that look to stimulate and guide international student mobility, research and technology transfer. The involvement of the state into student mobility does not come without risk. Government foreign policy and international relations between sending countries and English-speaking study destinations threatens to upset the historical norms of international mobility. What is more, world events such as the global pandemic of 2020, will have a profound impact on the future of international education, and may change the international landscape altogether. This chapter will frame the challenges facing institutions who benefit from international mobility in the context of geopolitics and world events. It will explore how institutions can leverage strategic enrolment management tactics to help mitigate enrolment risks posed by global disruption.

This chapter examines a 5-year case (Stake, 2005) which examines the structure and culture of the graduate admissions process of Indonesian applicants to a College of Education degree program in the Midwest United States. This chapter focusses on what steps are involved in the sponsorship, application and admission of international applicants to a graduate program. It was determined that the sponsorship of in-bound international students is a highly detailed and complex process engaging multiple agencies on tight timelines. This process is further complicated by single points of failure, slow decision-making and structural barriers. It was determined that because there are internal unpublicised ways to address some challenges, it is helpful to recruit and retain highly knowledgeable advocates to support the process.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine international students’ satisfaction on the quality of a private university in Turkey and the factors which influence their satisfaction. The study also investigated international students’ suggestions to improve their studies and life in Turkey. For these purposes, focus group interviews were conducted with 27 international students. Deductive coding was used to analyse collected data. The findings show that international students’ satisfaction is shaped by a number of different factors including, perceived quality of teaching, living and support service experiences and scholarships. Results also showed that participants considered extracurricular activities as an important part of their experiences when it comes to improving their campus life and learning experience.

International education is one of the largest and fastest growing economic sectors in the world. Degree-seeking students have become a large and growing export opportunity. Asian countries, especially China, are amongst the top countries sending students out, as a result, most countries aim to attract their students. Nevertheless, moving from Asian countries to the western ones is not an easy move. Chinese students face different types of challenges that need to be analysed to smooth their adaptation. This chapter analyses their performance, satisfaction and the challenges – pedagogical, language, cultural – they face to deploy the appropriate strategies to reduce failure and drop-out. Results show that the first 2 years are key for they adaptation. Language is the main barrier, it seems that the time devoted prior to their universities studies and their integration with national students is still a pending task.

International students face challenges when they attend a university outside their home country. Some of those challenges can be language barriers, expectations of professors, university rules and living situation. All of these can add strain to an already stressful situation of studying abroad. Student integration into a local society can offset some of the anxiety of studying overseas (Mattis, 2019). Students who have made friends are comfortable living within the locale in which they are studying and have reported more satisfaction than those students who have not integrated into a local society (Fischer, 2012). This chapter will study the ways in which students should work to integrate themselves into the local society and how the university and professors can help international students find a way to become familiar and content within the local society. Learning the regional language, culture and social activities help enhance the student’s satisfaction.

Esbjerg is located in the Wadden Sea region and is a regional centre with approximately 72,000 inhabitants. Commercially, the city has recently ranked first amongst major Danish cities in the creation of jobs. However, in Denmark, it is mainly other cities that attract younger students, and Esbjerg has some of the same structural problems due to outmigration as Danish rural areas in general. It is, therefore, important for Esbjerg to be able to attract international students so that businesses and institutions in the region can recruit skilled employees. In this book chapter, the authors aim to reanalyse data from 10 semi-structured interviews with international students at higher education institutions in Esbjerg conducted in 2016. The authors position their empirical findings within the literature on international student integration to investigate the obstacles to international student integration into study, business and leisure life in Esbjerg and potential solutions given Esbjerg’s peripheral location. The chapter, thus, aims to improve the understanding of cultural, work-related and everyday life challenges that are present in university town environments where international students study, mainly from the perspective of students.

This chapter explores the impact of cultural adjustment on international student recruitment and first-year success. The research design consists of a full-year cohort follow-up qualitative methodology study using both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a two-part interview process and survey of both faculty and service providers, which included 100 research participants. Researchers identified factors associated with international student recruitment and success and how they are being addressed by the research site institution. Recommendations for professional practice are discussed, along with potential areas for further research.

As the development of internationalisation in higher education, the mobility of international students around the world has been more active than ever. Chinese international student community is growing larger and larger in the popular destination countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Cultures vary from east to west; Chinese students might find it difficult to adjust in a new cultural environment. When international Chinese students are struggling with cultural adjustment issues, they might have difficulties finding the support that they need, as schools might not have culturally relevant international students support service. Using an exploratory case study approach, the researcher intends to investigate some uncommon issues that Chinese undergraduate students were facing in their cultural experience in the United Kingdom. This research is aimed to raise the awareness for institutions to supply more through international students support service to reach a higher level of students’ satisfaction.

Many universities in the world depend on tuition fees paid by international students as the main source of institutional operating budgets. The current study aims to predict the future of international student recruitment from education agents’ perspectives. The study is qualitative and nineteen interviews were conducted. Results show why students contact international student recruiters before making their decisions regarding which HEIs they will join. Results also highlight the effect of COVID-19 on recruiting international students and finally, four predictions were suggested by interviewees regarding the future of this industry. Discussions and conclusion are presented.