Let’s assume that a Chinese family, anxious to provide their child with a world-class education, searches the web to determine where to start. They also base their search on anecdotal reports of friends, among numerous other factors. But the Chinese family is unlikely to visit the United States to participate in an extended college tour to allow the child to “know it when you see and feel it” before making a choice of where to attend college in America.
Students across the globe repeat this experience each day.
How then do American colleges and universities compete for growing foreign student markets as a way to infuse talent, diversity and often cash to meet the colleges’ strategic goals and add revenue to their bottom lines?
The fact is that American colleges and universities, especially smaller ones known for personalized attention, good counseling and strong alumni networks, are doing a miserable job at recruiting students that they would welcome and who would add tremendous value to the campus community.
There are four problems.
First, American college and university enrollment officers note that foreign recruitment is expensive and the rate of return may take a number of years to play out. As they ration enrollment resources, the support necessary to build out a foreign profile is difficult to find, sustain and administer.
