How to Enroll More International Students

0:00:11.2 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. Today we feature a discussion with a leader of a private education provider that serves more than 170,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade in schools across the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. He shares advice with US colleges and universities on how to connect with, engage, and enroll more international students. So give these folks a listen and enjoy.

0:00:47.2 Rebecca Kelley: Hello. Hello, and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Rebecca Kelley, and I’m the Senior Manager of Counselor Engagement at Concourse, which is part of EAB. So my job involves supporting college and university counselors around the world as they advise high school students on finding the best fit institution that really matches their needs, their interest, and their budget. One of the ways that we do that is by helping students use our free Match platform to showcase their academic achievements, their interests, and engage with institutions from all around the world that match those preferences. So participating colleges review the anonymized student profiles on our platform, and they make proactive admission and scholarship offers to students, typically within just a few weeks after the student profile is posted. This removes the need for an application, so it’s a really easy way for students to put themselves out there and see what options they might have around the world. So we’ll explain a little bit more about how the platform works later, but first, I want to introduce everyone to today’s guest, who represents one of the largest private education providers in the world. Schools affiliated with GEMS Education serve more than 170,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade in schools across the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

0:02:17.6 RK: So it is my absolute pleasure to welcome to the podcast the Director of university partnerships at GEMS, Mr. Chris Goodbourn. Welcome, Chris.

0:02:27.1 Chris Goodbourn: Hi, Rebecca. It’s great to be here.

0:02:29.9 RK: So great to have you. So, Chris, would you mind telling us a little bit more about your organization and about your role there?

0:02:37.5 CG: Yeah, absolutely. So GEMS Education has a really interesting and long history. It started in the late 60s, early 70s with two migrants moving to the UAE from India and setting up a school in their back garden to teach the local expatriate students English and other academic subjects because there wasn’t a school available to them back then. And as the school expanded and more people moved to the UAE, the government here said we need to step in and actually really organize the this process a lot better. And so our founder, Mr. Sunny Varkey, was the son of these two teachers, and he said he’d step in and help organize the school. And the first RN English school was established in the late 60s. And since then, we’ve expanded to, as you said in your introduction, to be the largest education group in the world. We’ve got 46 schools across the UAE and Qatar, which is the primary focus of our role here in the Middle east, serving 142,000 students available across a whole wide range of different price points. And that’s the bit that I love about GEMS education is there’s really something for everybody. So we have some students that are paying maybe only 8 or 10,000 US dollars per year for their final year of high school, going up to some students who are in our premium schools that are paying 30,000 plus each year.

0:04:13.3 CG: And so we’ve got this massive range of students that are looking at a host of different options for their higher education all around the world. We have four, maybe five different curriculums that they study in, from the British, the Indian, the US and the IB curriculum. And so my job is really exciting and challenging because I’ve really got to try and think, how do we help a few thousand students every year with their higher education options and help them figure out what’s best for them next? And it’s been fantastic working with Match and Concourse over the last couple of years to really help offer different opportunities to those students. And it’s always great to see the outcomes that they have every year as they go through the key application process that they’re going through at this time of the year now. So hopefully that gives a nice overview about GEMS and what we’re all about.

0:05:11.6 RK: Absolutely. I feel like I’ve worked with GEMS counselors for a couple of years, but I somehow didn’t know the origin story, so. That’s amazing.

0:05:18.6 CG: It’s an interesting one. Yeah.

0:05:20.4 RK: Yeah. So could you tell us a little bit more about your role within GEMS?

0:05:24.6 CG: Yeah. So I oversee a program within GEMS called the GEMS for Life program. And this is a program that’s essentially looking at how we help the students prepare for the end of their high school experience and what they do next, and as the name might suggest, supporting them for life through their studies. So there’s three key areas that we look at. It’s employability and careers. So helping a student try and figure out what his or her passions are and what they might want to do when they graduate from school through to the higher education piece, the university partnerships, and how do we give opportunities for students to decide where they might want to go and study. So we partner with, know two groups of organizations. There’s, universities and colleges that offer scholarships and engagement in our schools through to the students to help them figure out what their options are. And then organizations like Concourse that help students with their their, their opportunities that they might have when they graduate. And so it’s about trying to create an ecosystem that allows our and a 6,7000 students that we have graduate figure out what they want to do next.

0:06:42.8 CG: And then the third stage is the alumni program. So how do we support those students? How do we keep them engaged with the schools? How do we get them to give back to the schools so that they can come in and talk about their experience of studying overseas or studying a particular academic subject. Once they’re finished. And that closes the loop and that value cycle both for the students, their families and for GEMS.

0:07:07.9 RK: I love that. I think that transition from secondary school to university and then also university into the workforce, those are massive transitions. So I love that you focus on the support that you can give to those students and they know that they’re still connected to their broader GEMS community. I think that’s really special.

0:07:26.2 CG: Absolutely.

0:07:27.9 RK: So, Chris, one of the challenges that US colleges and universities are facing right now is here we have kind of a growing disillusionment with the cost and the perceived value of a university degree. More and more high school students here in the US Including a rising number of students from middle class and wealthier families, are choosing to opt out of college entirely. What percentage of GEM students would you say fully expect to attend university? And what might be some of the key differences in how your students think about higher education versus is, say, a teenager in the US?

0:08:11.3 CG: I’d say we’ve got a very traditional kind of mindset here. And partly that’s cultural, partly that’s actually structural in terms of the government engagement. But I’d say 90 to almost 100% of our students are very seriously thinking about higher education when they graduate. We are seeing a slow increase in students looking at kind of vocational courses. But there’s still a very kind of traditional mindset here that the students will be going into a university to finish their studies. That’s the cultural view of a lot of the families here. And we’ve got, I forget the number, but probably 170 different nationalities that we have studying with us. And a lot of them have that mindset of finishing your education finishes at university. It doesn’t finish at high school or college, it finishes at university level. There’s also an expectation from professional working and Government services here in the UAE that in a lot of cases, if you’re going to remain here in the UAE to work afterwards, you have to have a degree to actually qualify for a work visa. And so there’s many, many factors I think, behind why we do see a large number of our students progress to higher education.

0:09:30.5 CG: There’s a few differing factors that affect some groups. If you. We have probably about 8 or 9% of our students are Emirati and they have to go. The boys have to go into military service when they finish, for example. So sometimes that changes the track that some of those students will do. Many will go into family businesses, but they still have that idea that actually you need a degree to qualify for your working visas, your residency visas and so on. So a very high percentage of our students would be looking for higher education.

0:10:04.5 RK: How involved are the parents of GEM students in helping decide if they’re going to school?

0:10:12.0 CG: Hugely. I think if you speak to our careers counselors and something I try and make sure I’m keeping in touch with them every day, they will say that I think that’s slowly changing. The Internet, social media is definitely playing a part in that shift in what students are or where students are going to make their decisions. Finances, as we’ve mentioned a couple of times here, are obviously a massive factor. And so the parents are very much the influencer behind where they’re trying to push their child as to what they can afford. And we are seeing an increase in students enroll in kind of more affordable destinations or locally here within the UAE we’ve probably got 30% of our graduates are remaining here for their higher education. Now we’re seeing an increase in destinations like mainland Europe where they’re offering very affordable options. And so the parents are a big factor in that process. The school, I think, and particularly the careers counselors that we have, I think then are also then a very major factor as well in terms of helping the students structure their decision making process and their research. How do they help understand what that student may be interested in, what he or she might want to do and then try to pull that mosaic together in a way that actually allows a counsellor to say, well here are some options, go and research them.

0:11:44.9 CG: And so I think it’s multi-factor, but I’d say parents are the first, if not second driver in that decision making process.

0:11:55.5 RK: Yeah, that’s good to know. So when we’re talking about the most important factors and criteria that influence students, college choice one, how important are rankings and Then two, what other factors are students looking at? I know you mentioned finances, so that’s going to be a really big piece of what they’re looking for. But are there any other really important criteria that, that really impact where a student might end up enrolling?

0:12:24.4 CG: Yeah, I mean, ranking is one of the big factors. I mean, looking at our 2024 graduate group and this is QS World ranking stats we had 31% of our US destination students went into a top 100 university. In the UK it was 38% went into top 100. Over half of our students went into a UK Russell Group university. So the students that are going overseas, a big, big proportion of them are going into a top ranked institution.

0:13:02.4 CG: Location I think is then probably another big factor in this process. The UK is just geographically closer to the Middle east than than the US is. And so I think that plays a factor in that. We see more students go to the UK or India or Europe than we do to the us but there is still a very strong core of people that are looking at the US each year. Brand name is important here. The families being able to go home and boast to their siblings, families, friends that that their child has gone into a top ranked university or a brand name, at least that they’ve heard of is a big, big factor in that.

0:13:49.6 CG: But then you’re going into all the little details around kind of how engaged is that university what scholarships are they offering, what’s the price, what’s the course mix? Does that really match what they’re looking for in terms of their higher education? So rankings is a big part. My personal view on rankings is that they’re they’re very easy to play with and manipulate as an institution, but they’re a factor. And when you’ve got a more traditional mindset in terms of how you decide what an institution is, having a list of the best universities is a very simple way of starting that process. So it’s still a big factor. And we do see a lot of our students that go to the US they’re enrolling in traditional universities. I spent a bit of time earlier when we were researching for this trying to find colleges in that list and actually they were very limited. It’s very much an institution that has a university in their name and has that kind of traditional campus experience is what the families are typically looking for from this part of the world.

0:15:00.6 RK: Gotcha. I remember when I was a counselor and working with students. So many of them, these top schools are really the only schools they know about too. They didn’t know about. There’s so many universities out there. Right. Not just in the US but around the world. It’s so impossible to know all of them. So these are the schools obviously that students have heard about. And they’re the ones that they rally respect because that brand name recognition, I’m sorry, brand recognition is so big there.

0:15:33.9 CG: Absolutely. And we had this year we had about 6,000 graduates come through over 900 different universities in about 50 or 60 different countries. So there’s a huge breadth of choice, but there’s probably 20. Well, it’s probably a bit low, but maybe 30 or 40 of those institutions that are getting very large percentages of the students and they’re picking up 2 or 3% of our cohort here and they make up a lot of the big numbers. And a lot of them are either local institutions that have a good brand name or they’re high ranked universities in, in US, UK, Canada, that have a big brand name. And people are really thinking, oh yeah, I’ve heard of King’s College London or University of Toronto or whatever.

0:16:25.8 RK: Yeah, that’s still a wild range though. That’s a huge range.

0:16:30.9 CG: Yeah.

0:16:31.6 RK: Was that students are going to.

0:16:33.8 CG: Yeah. It’s fun in a way though, because it shows the breadth of diversity that we have within GEMS. It shows the range of different nationalities. A lot of people will be thinking, well I’m from a particular country, I’m going to go home and, or home. And home as an expat is always a very tricky question to answer. A lot of our students will have, have lived their whole lives here in the UAE, but will hold the passport of another country. And that, that idea of going home sometimes it’s just, well, I want to experience my my passport country as I call it, sometimes.

0:17:12.5 RK: Yeah, absolutely. So you said that you are still seeing a good number of students who are looking at the US So what percentage of students would you say choose to study in the US and what are some of the biggest challenges that US universities face that you’ve seen in kind of convincing international students to come here?

0:17:34.3 CG: Yeah, I mean we’ve got the data. So over the last three years, it’s about 10% of our graduates each year are going to the US as a physical number that is going up. But I think that’s partly just because we’ve got more and more graduates finishing our schools each year. So that that number’s going up. The percentage is pretty stable. And so they are typically students that are coming through from our premium schools. You know the Dubai American Academies, the GEMS World Academies, you know that those schools that have a slightly higher tuition and the families almost have that expectation of I want the perceived best for my kids. And so they do look very seriously at the, the US. Challenges to answer your question, I put a poll out to all of our careers counselors over the last week or so just to try and really understand what the push away from the US is. And distance was number one. The proximity of getting on a flight for 10 to 15 hours to fly to the US is a long way. It comes with a cost. Very close second was the perceived high tuition fees of the US combined with high living costs. That was a big factor.

0:19:04.1 CG: Safety came up as a factor within that unclear post study work options was coming up. And I think we’re going to come on to a question about what might come next for the US very shortly. But it’s all of those things are big factors in thinking, well, do I go to the UK or the US and what’s the difference between those options and what I get out of it? The one I think that’s not mentioned here, but it probably is, coupled with cost is duration. A US undergraduate degree is four years, master’s is two years. That’s two years longer to get your masters than it is to go and study in the UK, for example. These are all big factors I think, in what the decision making that families go through.

0:19:52.1 RK: Yeah, that’s really helpful insight. We’ve seen in the past that the outcomes of presidential elections, politics here in the US can really impact whether or not students choose to study in the US. Here we are in January 2025. We are getting ready to have a new administration take control. So have you noticed any change, for better or for worse, in terms of student attitudes, feelings about studying in the US after our most recent presidential elections?

0:20:26.9 CG: Yeah, I did another snap poll across a lot of our school counselors and I had about half of our schools respond back and two very clear answers. I gave them three options of are they seeing more interest, less interest or no change? No change was the top one that had about, about 60% of the council said there was no change. Less interest was the other 39, 40%. So I’d say there’s a bit of a split opinion. There’s many that are waiting, I think, to see what happens. There’s many people that are just thinking, no, I’m out, I’m looking elsewhere. But I expect probably part of that is part of those macro trends of looking for more affordable options elsewhere. Whether we see a shift in the type of institution that a student goes to in the US over the next few years whether people are looking at the community college route a little bit more they’re looking for lower ranking, more affordable institutions that then they could potentially flip to another university or transfer to another university once, once they’re getting into that second or third year, it will be interesting to see one of the things I’ve heard a few times recently and President Trump has said many things around a whole host of different policies that he may or may not implement.

0:21:53.5 CG: But the idea that you could clear up that post study work route by the potential of there being a green card available if you graduate from his top universities, I don’t know how they define that, but that could be very appealing and a very clear path to immigration that ticks a lot of boxes for a lot of people. And I think my gut feeling is I think we’re going to see very stable enrollment numbers into the US or an increase if policies become a bit more favorable in the macro world. You’ve got Canada restricting. These are the same as happening in Australia. The same is happening in the Netherlands, the UK very much on the fence around which way to go. That the US is potentially in a very strong position to maximize on that global student mobility and attract a good number of students into the US over the next few years. So I think it’s going to be interesting to see what happens and what comes next.

0:23:00.7 RK: Yeah, that’s really great insight. I love that you sent out those snap polls because it’s always so nice to hear directly from counselors who are on the ground working with students every day. So that’s really.

0:23:10.3 CG: And my role these days is less front facing with the students. And so these guys are my key kind of conduit into what the students are saying. And we’re in quite a privileged position that with so many schools and so many people working in this area that you get real insight into what’s happening. And it was the premium school saying interest was the same so that perception of actually I want to go to the US still is still very much forefront of those schools that are the key target audience for a university or a college that’s trying to recruit out of the Middle East.

0:23:47.4 RK: Yeah, I think that’s really helpful information for US Institutions to know because I imagine there is some anticipation thinking about the next year and their travel and recruitment and what they’re going to be doing with that. So that’s really good information, I think, for universities to have and to know.

0:24:02.5 CG: Absolutely.

0:24:03.8 RK: So what other trends can you tell us about US Universities that tend to attract more GEMS graduates apart from the rankings? And what, if anything, can other US Institutions do to maybe replicate that formula?

0:24:18.5 CG: The number one thing that I always say to any institution, regardless of where they’re from, in terms of they should best recruit a student from the Middle east, is time in front of the students and their parents. The Middle east still has a very, it’s an amazingly open, friendly culture. But one of I will travel to meet with you. And it’s almost that traditional Berber camel train through the desert of, of going to meet with people and a family will be sat there thinking, well, if I’m going to travel or send my kids to go and study at an institution for a number of years, the very least they can do is come and meet with us. And so time in front of the students is critical, but also quality time in front of the students is really important. And before I did this, I was recruited for universities and schools myself. And the amount of what I would now call show and tell presentations that I did, where you’d stand in front of a group of students and say, hi, we’re the University of wherever, and we’re ranked this and isn’t our campus pretty.

0:25:26.3 CG: The students these days know that already or they know that University of where has come in and that they’ve put the prompt into their, their phone on chat GTP and they say, what are the top 10 reasons I should go to this institution? They know this stuff before the the university walks into the room. And so being helpful is my number one piece of advice. Don’t talk about yourself. Talk about a topic or a field or a subject that your institution is very strong at.

0:25:58.3 CG: Delivered by the University of Wherever. It’s going and do a business entrepreneurship workshop with a group of students who are interested in starting their own businesses. Don’t mention who you are. They’ll work out who you are, they’ll know where you’ve come from. But that kind of workshop or masterclass adds so much more value to the students decision making process. They’ll remember the value that you’ve brought them. And of course at the end of the session they’re all going to come and ask all the questions about what your tuition fees are and what the admissions requirements are and so on.

0:26:31.8 CG: But you’ll have helped them in that process and you’ll have helped the school fill up a lesson time for a period of time that helps a group of students that have a particular interest but you’ll also critically, it helps the students through your own branding and your own experience. A great example I’ve used a couple of times recently was we had a UK university that came in and they had a psychology professor and the topic was how to cheat in exams kind of. And of course it attracted hundreds of students that came in. Many of the schools were like this was great. But it was the psychology and the science behind how people learn and how they retain knowledge. And so it was how Rebecca, how you would learn in one way and I would learn in a different way. And it’s helping people understand that. But of course something like a very catchy tagline that helped, it was a topic that appealed to a lot of people and they, they spoke to a lot of our students. They, they met a few hundred students across multiple schools and it was helpful.

0:27:41.6 CG: And of course it’s not about the university, it wasn’t about why you should study with them. It an academic session, all on the university slides. And so of course they’re getting their brand name out, they’re getting the time in front of the students. But it was very, very helpful. And so that’s the kind of thing that I’d always say an institution needs to do. I appreciate that comes with a time and a travel investment to get people there that are of the right people. But it’s invaluable if you’re going to really be successful at recruiting in this part of the world.

0:28:16.8 RK: I love that it sounds like it’s really the genuine connection, right. The genuine engagement students is what is one of the most important things.

0:28:26.5 CG: Correct. And that allows you to build up the relationships with the careers counselors, with the academic leads within the schools. If you have somebody who’s teaching psychology, they build that connection with that university and then suddenly you’ve got a pipeline of psychology students coming through over the next few years. So it’s a really invaluable way of building that relationship. But it does take time, and I think that’s the key thing that you need to do if you’re thinking about how you come and recruit out the Middle East.

0:28:58.9 RK: We always talk so much about how there are so many universities out there, it’s impossible for students to know all of them and all of their options. It’s the same for counselors. Counselors are helping students who are going to xyz number of countries, and they have to figure out all of these things they have to know about the university. So coming to do a presentation like that, it also helps the counselors learn about the school.

0:29:22.6 CG: Absolutely, yeah. And they’ll remember you because you helped them with. I’m not going to call it a problem, but their group of psychology students that they were trying to figure out where they go, suddenly they’ve got clear options. They’ve got students who understand whether they’re willing to sit in a university for three, four, five years to study that subject. It’s a good outcome for everybody. Even if they decide they hate psychology in this example, it’s a good outcome. Right.

0:29:50.7 RK: I love that. So let’s talk about the Match platform for just a minute. So for anyone listening, you probably heard me mention Match at the beginning of this podcast. Match is our reverse admissions platform where students join, they create short profiles listing out things like their grades, their interest, their budget. Once they have a complete profile, participating universities can then review anonymous versions of these profiles, and they’re able to send direct offers of admission and scholarship to students, all without the students needing to fill out an application. So would you mind telling us a little bit about how GEM schools are using Match and what kind of impact that MATCH is having in helping your students connect with universities around the world.

0:30:36.5 CG: Yeah, I mean, we’ve probably got Match working really well across 10 or 15 of our schools. Now, we’re actively trying to grow the number of schools that we have engaged in this. And I didn’t mention earlier, we have a huge number of students, probably about 40% each year, that shortlist the US as a study destination, but only about 10% that go. And so there’s this gap of availability that we’re trying to fill in terms of how do we help a student achieve that outcome, and so encouraging the students in their final year to be able to get that opportunity to apply to those different schools, as you said, There’s a huge amount of choice overseas in terms of how a student makes a decision. And so Match is fantastic because the student can complete their profile, put in their budget, their interest, their subject focus, and they suddenly get 10, 20 universities come to them that they’ve never heard of, they’ve never thought about, and it allows them to really go through that offer and think, is this right for me? And yeah, I think we found that really fantastic. The counsellors love it. They do have to chase the students quite a lot to actually respond to the universities.

0:31:55.6 CG: I think that’s the big time challenge that the schools have in terms of trying to make sure the students are going through and actually accepting shortlisting, rejecting an offer from an institution. But it’s worked fantastically so far.

0:32:11.1 CG: This last term that’s just passed, we had 1,770 offers made through to those students and 116 million US dollars worth of scholarships offered to the students. So when I’m sat there thinking, how do we fill this gap of students that want to go and do their higher education overseas but aren’t necessarily getting the opportunity? This is all about giving opportunity for those students. And I think that’s, that’s wonderful. One of our schools alone just had $14 million in December made through to their students. So it’s really exciting to be able to think we’re having a strong impact here. And it goes back to that thing we talked about at the beginning of how do we give a student choice? How do we help them make a really good, informed decision about what’s next for them? I think Match is doing that really, really well.

0:33:08.9 RK: That’s wonderful. I always love hearing those numbers and those outcomes for students because like you said, it’s just, it’s more access, right? It’s more access to students. They’re able to have offers in hand and then go from there and then learn about the institution. So I love that, Chris. You and I could talk about international student recruitment probably for hours, but I want to be respectful of your time. So before we go, is there any other advice that you might offer to us colleges and universities about how to attract and enroll more international students?

0:33:43.5 CG: I mean, we’ve, we’ve talked about a number of things here that the factors behind a student making the decision. I don’t think there’s a silver like a single thing that helps a family make a decision. It’s a multi step, multi factor decision. And so I think it’s trying to get as many of the little things right as possible. And some of these are big things. Tuition and pricing is obviously a big factor. Location is good. But how do you connect with students in a particular course or subject area in a really meaningful way to make sure that that works for them? And I think that’s a key factor. How do you engage with schools? How do you build your brand name across a region? Through your alumni, through successful case studies that have come through to your university to study? And I think it’s many of those different factors that you need to pull together to make it work. How do you make the arrivals process easier? How do you make the travel process easier, the visa process? It’s always little steps of trying to make sure that you’ve got everything together.

0:34:57.2 CG: And I also say, never assume that a student knows something. I’ve worked in higher education for over 15 years now, and there’s still acronyms I hear coming out of US Universities. And I’m like, what does that mean? I don’t get that. And so how is a 16 or 17 year old student supposed to understand that if you’re not being clear? So being clear, explaining different steps of the process trying to make it as clear and easy as possible for somebody to understand is really important. And never assume that somebody knows what you’re talking about. It’s always good to start explaining something and someone say, oh, I know what, I know all about that and you can move on to the next question rather than trying to assume that they know what a standardized test acronym means or whatever it might be.

0:35:50.7 RK: Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate you giving us your time and also your super unique insights into all of the students that you work with. So we really appreciate it and thank you so much for coming on today’s podcast.

0:36:06.9 CG: It was my pleasure and good to chat to you today.