In response, many businesses in the public and private sector alike have met these demands, allowing consumers access to information about everything from ingredients to sustainability and processing. In the midst of this global demand for transparency, higher education has somehow moved in the opposite direction. The path students must navigate to find their ideal university is as clear as mud. Concourse Global has built a system that challenges the current university application paradigm. The process of applying to university has become increasingly convoluted, and in an attempt to create more access, institutions have instead built new systems and rules…

The US Embassy Charge D’Affaires, Patricia Lacina, presented visas to two students in Mumbai who plan to study abroad in the US this year. According to Lacina, despite the pandemic, the US Mission issued more student visas in 2021 than ever before. More than 4,000 students attended student visa interviews across India at the US embassy in New Delhi and the Consulate General offices in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. Consul General, David J. Ranz, congratulated many of the students that came to Mumbai for interviews. “A degree from the US can take you anywhere in the world,” Ranz said.…

Short on time? Here are the highlights: European destinations such as Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and the Netherlands are steadily claiming a greater share of the world’s international students – especially with China closed and Brexit having increased tuition for EU students thinking of going to the UK International students continue to broaden the range of countries they consider as possible study abroad destinations. One very recent impetus for this was that, during the pandemic, some countries offered only online and/or remote learning for long stretches of time while others resumed at least some in-person classes earlier on. As we…

Though Canada is still the number one dream destination for students from India, particularly from Punjab, to pursue their higher studies, Australia is not lagging far behind, thanks to new student-friendly norms related to fee and living expenses Down Under. Lifting of the Covid travel restrictions has only added to the attraction to Australia. Although Australia has been keeping pace with the competition, it has not been able to capitalise on the boom because of detection of a number of fraud cases in travel documents in the recent past. The fraud cases have been getting in the way of students,…

The government recently announced that a freeze on study visa applications would end on 31 July and students with existing visas could also return then. However, Education agents warn that foreign students are not queuing up to return to New Zealand next year and the International student market unlikely to recover quickly. Immigration lawyer Alastair McClymont said the government’s changes were likely to slash enrolments from India and China, the two biggest source countries for international students. “The general feeling is that the export education industry is going to take a massive hit. There’s going to be dramatically reduced numbers…

From our main offices across mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Vietnam we’ve helped place more than 60,000 applications for 2022. This is turn has driven offer growth of 20%. So, students are committed, and they are qualified – it’s going to be a good year and one in which international education can finally put the pandemic behind us, right? The answer, as with so many aspects of the sector in the past few years is slightly more nuanced. For two years, our surveys of more than 1,000 counsellors across the region have consistently, and unsurprisingly cited Covid-19 as…

Scott Stirrett is the CEO of Venture for Canada.Canada should be the global leader in international education. Millions of people around the world want to study in Canada because of our leading educational institutions, social stability, and high quality of life.The number of international students living in Canada has surged over the past decade, to 621,000 in 2021 from 239,000 in 2011. Unfortunately, the infrastructure to support them has not kept pace with this rapid growth. Many international students struggle to access adequate support for their careers, health care, and housing.International students contribute approximately $21-billion a year to the Canadian…

Aggregators, pathways, universities and Governments tend to be relentlessly upbeat in their promotional material for international students but its worth considering things from the other end of the telescope. A sceptic might include information suggesting which countries have a record of over-promising, whose ability to assimilate students is coming unravelled or where are the warning signs of exploitation. What you can bet is that this information is not concentrated in an aggregators top five list in their sales pitch or the “Why Choose….” website page of a college that has been investigated for “questionable recruitment practices”. Canada has had a…

Advisory boards have a long history and can be genuine forces for industry insight, expert advice and sound counsel.  As we have seen with Theranos and Enron they can also be stacked full of notable and well respected names to provide comfort to outsiders without much impact on management behaviour. With private money flooding into edtech there seems to have been an increase in advisory appointments and it is to be hoped that they will bring benefits to universities and students.  Recent developments at ApplyBoard, THE Student and LeverageEdu and longer standing arrangements, bring higher education insiders firmly alongside commercial…