Maximising your potential to grow recruitment through new Public-Private Partnerships
Written by Tim Steele, CCG Associate
We are continuing to operate in an ever-unpredictable environment when it comes to the recruitment of international students. We are seeing the traditional receiving recruitment markets governments, Australia, Canda, USA and the UK make or imply significant immigration policy that is having a detrimental impact on the University sector and its financial sustainability.
Compared to Australia and Canada the UK and the US are in a more favourable position and we need to be moving into 2025/26 academic year with a degree of urgency to regain market share and competitive advantage. For some this is easier said than done, as we know institutions have been pulling out all the stops to maximise recruitment for September 2024, which is roughly 30% down in the UK and likely to be similar in the USA compared to previous years.
It is with this in mind that at CCG we have been looking at ways we can support our partners grow their international student recruitment numbers on their home campus, through the development of a Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and are starting to build up several case studies that show how such partnerships can operate, and the challenges different sizes of organisations are facing.
For many small and medium size institutions the ability to scale up their international operations is challenging on several fronts, for example
Ability to attract expertise and/or breadth of expertise to allow them to successfully operate in different regions,
Don’t have the appropriate processes and systems in place to support the applicant journey and are typically very slow,
Don’t have the available short & medium term financial investment that is needed to have impact within regions.
Many institutions have experience of working in partnership and already engage the third sector to deliver various aspects of the applicant journey, but few institutions have fully engaged a partner to provide a full end to end recruitment service. At CCG we are now seeing more interest in such partnerships and are assisting several institutions to establish such partnerships, that will support them grow their numbers of international students on campus.
I am a strong advocate of working in partnership and it is something that I have also tried to instil at the institutions I have worked at and with over the years. The benefit of these public private partnership is multi-faceted and allows an institution, be it small, medium or large grow their international recruitment through removing barriers that prevent institutions to grow. So why would you enter in to a PPP?
People – Such partnerships give you access to skills, talent and knowledge that you typically would struggle to recruit, depending on your size and status, but also at speed, no potential 6 month recruitment and onboarding processes.
Potential – We seek to attract the best applicants to our institutions, but in turn they expect us to provide them with an outstanding applicant journey, be that turnaround, active engagement through call campaigns and emails etc, which institutions can find hard to flex up and down as needed, as well as afford.
Place- Diversity is never far away from our lips, and having the knowledge, financial means, and established networks in smaller and emerging markets is challenging, which partners can bring due to their size
Pace Partners have access to greater point in time data that allows the partnership to reactive to both opportunities and threats but is also able to scale up resources at pace to meet changes in demands and needs that institutions typically struggle to do.
Price Such partnerships can be delivered through a revenue sharing arrangement, reducing your risk in terms of upfront investment whilst allowing you to grow student numbers as agreed through the partnership contract.
But as with any partnership there is a need for this to be managed and it is important that these are not seen as hands off relationships and that the institution puts in place the appropriate governance arrangements to manage, drive and to hold each other to account. The partner works as an extension of your international office and therefore further emphasising the need for strong oversight and collaboration to manage your brand and reputation.
These types of partnerships are not rigid and there is no one way of doing things, which gives institutions significant flexibility to scope out how they want the partnership to work as they start to look at potential partnerships.
If you would like to learn more about these types of Recruitment partnerships, please do not hesitate to contact us.