A university’s best advertisement is its graduates yet at best many institutions treat their alumni as if they are a cash cow to be milked at increasingly frequent intervals. Across the board universities are failing to understand that much higher value – both direct financial...
Within the etymological heart of the plural noun alumni is the Latin verb alere, which has the sense of “to nourish” or care – ideas which took root in the late medieval period when masters nurtured their upper-caste students through the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic)...
When it comes to international education and promoting Australia as one of the best destinations for students in the world, Coldplay have probably summed up the task ahead as well as anyone – Nobody said it was easy. The Australian Federal Government certainly seems to...
It is well understood that international students carefully consider factors such as ranking and financial commitments when deliberating an offer. However, in HECG’s view, equally important are off-campus factors. For starters there is the city and country in which the university is located, followed closely...
Marketing to the point when a prospective international student is made an offer is relatively straight- forward for experienced practitioners. This is because an offer from a university marks a prestigious milestone in a person’s life. As we point out in HECG’s new digital marketing guide...
The prospective student buying cycle for a higher education degree, an expensive and highly-emotionally involved decision, resembles that of a car or house purchase. It is no surprise, therefore, that it takes on average 12 months from the initial contact by the university for a...
A young woman in Chennai, India is delighted beyond measure when she learns she has been made an offer to study in a well-regarded Australian university. Her family are equally excited and they hold a celebratory dinner that evening in her honour, with her parents,...
Sharon Kerr speaks with Professor Steven Schwartz Recently I was privileged to interview Professor Steven Schwartz for HECG. I first met Professor Schwartz when working at Macquarie University and remembered well his alert to the Higher Education Sector in 2010 of the changing times ahead. At...
HECG’s International Marketing wizard George Hernandez asked a very interesting question in a blog on this page last year – considering that most students choose a country before choosing an educational institution, shouldn’t the marketing and recruitment departments of these education providers make a better...
An article in The Australian Higher Education Section today cites work by HECG’s Kylie Colvin, which analyses the return of investment of university marketing strategies. HES editor Julie Hare, quoting Kylie’s analysis, writes that Charles Sturt University had the most effective marketing strategy in 2012, getting...