Any senior leader will understand that not paying attention to financial data will have dire consequences eventually. I would argue that marketing data deserves the same attention.

Why pay attention to marketing KPIs?

There are three reasons why marketing data deserves your attention, even if you do not have a background in marketing.

1. It’s a leading indicator for financial and academic performance

Your enrolment may be OK this year, but if admissions is receiving fewer applications than last year, next year’s intake is at risk.

Look further ahead and the pattern becomes even clearer. If you are receiving fewer student enquiries, seeing web traffic drop or your school becomes less visible across the web, all else being equal, you may have an enrolment problem building.

Marketing performance can also affect academic reputation in a qualitative way by making your institution more visible and attractive to the students you most want to reach. For example, QS includes an indicator, which looks at both the share of international students and the diversity of their nationalities.

2. Earlier, smarter, and less drastic course corrections

Early warning gives you time to make measured changes and give them a chance to work. Marketing data enables you to see farther ahead and this can help to avoid drastic measures such as layoffs and budget cuts.

When you are falling behind, a marketing fix may be all that’s needed. For example, raising your advertising budget or shifting priorities.

At other times, you will need action across the institution, backed by active senior sponsorship. Think of changes in course portfolio, fee structure, target markets, or scholarships. Underlying IT issues can also greatly hamper marketing performance.

3. Proactively support (and challenge!) the marketing team

Like all professionals, marketers can get bogged down in business as usual. They may have learned to live with certain facts of life. But to achieve genuinely better marketing and recruitment results often requires challenging the status quo.

Some examples:

• IT: No one makes the time or investment needed for systems that could save substantial time and money within two or three years.

• Compliance: Data protection, and if you’re in the EU, GDPR compliance is important, but sometimes data protection policies overreach and hamper effective marketing.

• Message: If your institution’s positioning is unclear, your marketing will struggle to pursuade.

If you’re a marketing manager or director, you have a duty to highlight these challenges, time and time again, in language that non-marketers can understand.

If you’re a leader without a marketing background, your duty is to make every effort to understand the overall and long-term impact on your institution.

Each of these examples represents a deadlock that needs senior involvement to break. One party, or perhaps both, will need to go out of their comfort zone. That usually only happens with pressure and support from leadership.

Which KPIs to track?

If you agree that keeping an eye on marketing performance is important, the next question is, what to track, and how often? If you are not looking at marketing data yet, quarterly is a good place to start.

Below are the key metrics to keep an eye on, working outwards from enrolment to discovery.

Admitted students and offer take-up rate. You’ll never have more new enrolments than the number of students you admitted. But admitted students may have applied at multiple institutions or decide not to enrol for different reasons. The admission-to-enrolment ratio (offer take-up rate) will tell you how often this happens.

If offer take-up rate is low or dropping compared to previous years, it can point to a communications issue, such as not reassuring offer holders enough or a shift in the competitive landscape.

The best way to find out what drives a low offer take-up rate is to contact admitted students, or a sample of them, soon after their offer and ask for feedback.

Website visits and website conversion rate. Any applicant is highly likely to have visited your website at some point, probably multiple times. As I argue in my book , your website is therefore a crucial link in the student recruitment chain.

But it’s not just about how many prospective students visit your website, it matters just as much what they do there. The website conversion rate is the ratio of website users that take an action divided by total web traffic. Low conversion can point to poorly executed campaigns or structural website issues. A common cause is offering too few low-touch ways to engage, perhaps only an “apply now” button.

Pre-website visibility. It is increasingly important to pay attention to what prospective students see, and do not see, about your institution before they ever visit your website.

The media landscape is changing: AI is changing how students search and people are less likely to click out from social media platforms. There isn’t one single place or number that can capture your visibility across the web, but you can keep an eye on this through a composite of:

• (GSC) impressions: Google reports how many times your webpages were featured in its search result pages, even if people didn’t click through
• Social media visibility: Social platforms such as Instagram and YouTube report on visibility and impressions of what you post. Social listening tools can also track visibility and sentiment in posts by others.
• AI mentions: AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini don’t share stats on what people ask and what they mention in their answers. You can still identify the prompts that matter most, test them regularly and track whether and how your institution appears.

Taken together, online visibility level is often your earliest signal. Improving visibility will carry over to website visits, enquiries, applications, and enrolments.

What if you’re not capturing these KPIs?

It is not uncommon for education institutions to struggle with reporting marketing KPIs. But if this is the case, you are flying blind. The first order of the day should be to establish a basic way of measuring marketing performance – so you can benchmark performance year over year.

In short

Paying attention to these marketing KPIs can help you spot enrolment risk early. You will buy yourself valuable extra time and options to act, and by addressing inefficiencies such as low offer take-up rate or website conversion, you may improve recruitment outcomes without increasing your marketing spend.

For additional background, please see:

• “���Ϲ��� Podcast: Are you using the right digital channels to reach international students?”
• “Survey highlights a growing ‘engagement gap’ between international student expectations and institutional response”
• “AI is changing how students search: What it means for marketing and recruitment”

The post Beyond enrolment: The marketing signals education leaders should watch appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

Our hosts are then joined by Nicolas Chu, CEO & Founder of , and Jennifer Parsons, Executive Director of Partnerships with , for a featured discussion on how we can harness the power of people, process, and platforms in order to better engage with prospective students.

The context for this discussion is that international student recruitment has entered a new phase, one marked by changing student preferences and also by much more intense competition. The result is a widening gap between student expectations and institutional performance, especially in terms of responsiveness to student enquiries and the channels that institutions and schools use to engage prospective students.

As recruitment professionals, we must now consider even more carefully than ever: how can we best meet students where they are, with timely responses on the channels they prefer?

You can listen right now in the player below, and we encourage you to subscribe via your favourite podcast app in order to receive future episodes automatically.

For additional background, please see:

• “���Ϲ��� Podcast: Students are switching to AI for search. Are you ready?“
• “Survey highlights a growing ‘engagement gap’ between international student expectations and institutional response“

The post ���Ϲ��� Podcast: Are you using the right digital channels to reach international students? appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

A new whitepaper from outlines characteristics of the Mexican market and best practices for engaging with students and parents.

Political and economic context

Mexico’s economy is forecast to grow by just under 2% in 2026, which, while modest, would be a better rate than in 2025. However, like the vast majority of countries, Mexico is vulnerable to the current US government’s tariff measures, so the forecast may change more than it normally would over the course of the year.

A couple of trade developments will serve as stabilising elements amid this volatility. These include:

• The “nearshoring” phenomenon, which describes foreign and multinational companies – often from Asia – setting up shop in Mexico to be closer to North American markets. Nearshoring has created more employment in northern regions closer to the US, and it has also revealed pronounced skills gaps in niche occupations.

• A strengthening relationship with Canada, as both Mexico and Canada seek to reduce their reliance on the US market. A high-level Mexico-Canada “action plan” is expected in late 2026, and Mexico’s Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard says it will focus on “joint initiatives related to minerals, investment in ports, infrastructure and supply chain security.”

Both of these trends have accentuated skills gaps that Mexico needs to address for economic expansion. A two-million-position shortfall of engineers and technicians is limiting growth in sectors such as AI, manufacturing, and technology.

Nearshoring activity is mostly concentrated in northern regions such as Nuevo León, Jalisco, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Querétaro, Aguascalientes, and Baja California. While some of these areas pose security risks because of cartel activity, they are also home to many students who will be particularly interested in niche fields of study related to the skills needed by the industries around them.

High demand for study abroad

While there is higher education capacity in Mexico, very few Mexican universities place in the top tiers of the QS World University Rankings, and there isn’t a great range of niche programmes that serve new labour force opportunities. These opportunities can be found in a growing list of sectors, including:

• Automotive
• Aerospace
• Electronics and medical devices
• Food and beverage sector
• Renewable energy
• Oil and gas
• Tourism

The SME sector (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) generates about 70% of jobs in the country, so business-related fields of study are also popular.

A busier recruitment environment

Marcela Tintinago, Account Manager at EdCo LATAM Consulting, says that she is seeing more and more top-ranked universities from the UK, Ireland, Canada, the US, Europe, and Australia prioritising Mexico as a student market: “It’s become a very competitive market, particularly as more Mexican students look to study in destinations beyond the US.”

Several destinations have posted growth from Mexico lately:

• Spain: There are almost 10,000 Mexican students in Spain, and this number is on the rise.

• United Kingdom: Almost 1,800 Mexican students were enrolled at UK universities in 2024/25, up +8% over 2023/24, a much stronger pace of growth than in 2023/24 (+1%).

• Ireland: In 2024/25, the small Mexican representation in Irish universities (360) was up +27% y-o-y in 2024/25, reflecting demand in Mexico for degree-level studies abroad and the growing popularity of Ireland for higher education. Mexico is among the top 10 fastest growing source markets for Irish universities. Ms Tintinago adds: “Mexican students are particularly interested in Ireland because it is more affordable than other major study destinations, has many companies promising good job prospects, and offers a unique cultural experience.”

By contrast:

• United States: Mexican higher education enrolments grew by only +1% 2024/25 according to IIE Open Doors data, compared to the +6.5% increase the previous year.

• Canada: There were about 11,400 study permit-holding Mexicans in Canada in 2024/25, down -26% over the previous year.

• Australia: About 3,900 Mexicans studied at all levels in 2025, stable from 2024. Only 900 Mexicans are enrolled in Australian universities, compared to about 2,400 in vocational education (VET) and 1,300 in English-language studies (ELICOS). The EdCo LATAM report notes that it is interesting that the number of Brazilian and Colombian students in Australia is significantly higher than that of Mexicans (26,000 and 20,000, respectively). The report suggests: “The presence of established Latin American student cohorts in Australia would be a major drawing card for prospective Mexican students and should be leveraged in marketing campaigns to this market, alongside other attractions such as Australia’s high-quality institutions.”

However, there is a high degree of price-sensitivity in Mexico regarding study abroad. VET and ELICOS enrolments are trending down given recent policy developments in Australia that make it far more expensive to apply to study there.

Study abroad decision factors

Affordability: EdCo LATAM’s Latin America Account Manager Scarlet Ramirez says that Mexicans try to steer clear of debt and are on the lookout for scholarship opportunities:

“Taking out a loan in Mexico is very rare, we tend to save up or obtain funding for our studies. Studying abroad is a huge investment for Mexican students, and they want to ensure they are getting the best value for money possible.”

Return on investment: There is also a wealthier market segment and the higher a family’s socio-economic status, the more they will look at a foreign university’s ranking.

Teachers: EdCo LATAM observes that Mexican high-school students are used to close relationships with their teachers:

“In Mexico, your teacher often becomes more than an educator, they become our mentors and someone we can rely on beyond the classroom. Mexicans are very warm people and always looking to create strong relationships, so when we go abroad, we really value it when lecturers are approachable and supportive.”

Family: The families of students want to be closely involved in discussions with institutional representatives, whether these are central staff, in-country representatives, or agents. Parents’ opinions are highly valued, and parents ideally want to see their children study at a highly ranked university, “especially when they are contributing financially.” Post-graduate work opportunities are similarly important.

Safety and community: Safety is naturally prioritised by parents. Knowing there are other Latin American students on campus goes a long way – and this should be communicated across all marketing channels. Examples of Latin American graduates achieving success after their studies are highly effective as well, especially using audio-visual.

All these motivating factors for study abroad from Mexico have implications for recruiters:

• Social media is important for awareness. The report says, “Instagram and TikTok are the go-to platforms for marketing undergraduate courses to Mexican prospects, while Facebook and LinkedIn are best suited for promoting postgraduate opportunities.”

• However, a committed in-person effort is required, including one-to-one meetings with parents and students. Account Manager Julián Nivia says: “This approach is much more effective than trying to market your institution in a crowded room with hundreds of other institutions.” Tailored recruitment facilitates “the effective representation of your university’s value proposition in the region.”

• Communication is everything – from quality and personalisation to speed. Universities should endeavour to make students feel special, and timely follow-ups are essential (no more than 2–3 days).

The report notes: “Pre-arrival communications should include how Mexican students will be supported on arrival, details about orientation week, available mentors, details about the international office and support systems and societies that may be of interest. Mexican students really appreciate it when universities have someone from the international office they can rely on.”

For additional background, please see:

• “International student recruitment in Mexico: Demand for language study still leading the way“

The post Mexico: A personalised, supportive approach is the key to success in this growing study abroad market appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

AI is not arriving into a clean, joined-up recruitment function. It is landing in environments where systems do not talk to each other, ownership is fragmented, and key information lives in a mix of CRM notes, web pages, PDFs, team inboxes and locally managed spreadsheets. That matters, because AI does not solve complexity. It scales it.

The sector is at risk of repeating a familiar pattern: investing in new tools while leaving the foundations untouched. AI then becomes another layer sitting on top of the same friction points – just with quicker outputs and higher expectations.

AI in recruitment is less “wow” than it sounds – and that’s a good thing

The public conversation often gravitates towards chatbots. They are visible, easy to demo and appealing for 24/7 coverage. But the most valuable AI use cases in recruitment are rarely headline-grabbing. They are operational.

AI earns its place when it does one of three things:

• reduces response time without losing quality
• improves relevance by matching students to the right information faster
• removes admin drag so staff spend more time on high-value conversations

That can mean intelligent enquiry triage, appointment scheduling, follow-up prompts, application workflow support, and content personalisation based on what a prospect has actually engaged with. In a competitive international environment, these are not “nice to haves”. They directly influence whether a student stays in the funnel.

And it is worth saying explicitly: the goal is not to replace people. The best-performing model is “human + machine” – AI provides speed and consistency; staff provide judgement, reassurance and nuance.

The uncomfortable truth: AI exposes what institutions have tolerated for years

Where AI is introduced, it tends to shine a light on issues that were previously manageable because humans quietly compensated for them.

• Inconsistent information: entry requirements differ by page; fees are updated in one place but not another; scholarship details live on in a PDF long after the policy has changed.
• Fragmented journeys: marketing owns one part, admissions owns another, faculties own programme content, student services owns “experience” messaging – and the student experiences it as one journey anyway.
• Siloed data: multiple CRMs, multiple lead sources, inconsistent definitions of “enquiry” and “qualified”, and limited integration between systems.

AI can help, but only if the institution is prepared to treat these issues as structural – not cosmetic.

This is where many implementations falter. AI tools are purchased as point solutions, deployed by one team, and expected to perform magic in an ecosystem that is not ready to support them. The result is predictable: patchy adoption, uneven quality, and a lingering sense that “AI didn’t work for us”.

Often, the tool is not the problem. The conditions are.

Readiness is not a slogan

Before investing further, institutions benefit from stepping back and asking four simple questions. They are simple to ask, harder to answer honestly:

• Will this improve outcomes that matter?
Response time, conversion, quality of guidance, staff workload – and how those will be measured.
• Is it easy enough to use in the real world?
During peak cycle, with staff turnover, shifting priorities, and competing demands.
• Is there clear support and ownership?
Not just “buy-in”, but named accountability across marketing, admissions, IT/data and governance.
• Are the foundations in place?
Clean data, accurate content, integration capability, and governance that is operational, not theoretical.

When AI adoption stalls, it is usually because the last question is answered with a quiet “not really”.

What changes when universities use AI (and students still use it too)

Two things happen at once.

First, student expectations rise. If AI can answer instantly, waiting two days for a response feels outdated. Prospects still want humans – but they want humans at the right moment, with continuity and context.

Second, measurement becomes harder. As more decisions happen inside AI tools, fewer people follow a neat trail from ad to website to enquiry form. That does not mean marketing is failing. It means the web is no longer the only (or even primary) interface between student and institution.

In this environment, accuracy becomes strategic. AI will surface what it can find, whether it is current or not. The institutions that win attention will often be those with fewer contradictions, clearer ownership of content, and consistent signals across the web – not necessarily those with the biggest budgets.

A pragmatic way forward: start small, fix foundations, scale carefully

A full “AI transformation” is not required to make progress. But a full commitment to foundations is.

Three moves tend to deliver genuine momentum:

1) Treat the data layer as recruitment infrastructure
Integration and data hygiene are not “IT projects”. They are recruitment capability. In practice, this means ensuring that core recruitment and admissions information — prospect records, programme data, entry requirements, fees, communications history, and application status — is accurate, up to date, and connected across systems. Where this is weak, staff compensate manually, and AI tools inherit and scale the same inconsistencies. Where it is strong, institutions can respond faster, personalise more effectively, reduce duplication, improve measurement, and give students more consistent guidance. Modest progress here often unlocks disproportionate benefits elsewhere.

2) Choose one high-impact journey point.
Enquiry response, programme matching, international applicant support during peak periods – pick one, do it properly, and learn fast. For example, Georgia State University’s “Pounce” chatbot focused on a single high-friction point – the pre-enrolment period between admission and arrival – helping admitted students complete required tasks and get answers quickly; Georgia State reports this contributed to a significant reduction in “”. A non-chatbot example can be seen in European qualification recognition workflows, where ENIC-NARIC centres in France and Norway have explored AI/RPA (Artificial Intelligence/Robotic Process Automation) ) for rather than broad front-end deployment. The common lesson is the same: define the bottleneck, improve it step by step and use the learning to build up capability.

3) Put governance in writing and into practice.
Define what AI can and cannot do, when humans must review, how escalation works, and how bias and data protection risks are handled. Governance should enable adoption – not suffocate it.

In short

Students using AI for search is only half the story. The other half is whether universities are ready to use AI to recruit responsibly and effectively.

The competitive advantage will not come from buying the newest tool. It will come from doing the basics exceptionally well: accurate content, joined-up data, clear ownership, and an operating model built around the student journey – with AI used to scale what already works.

For additional background, please see:

• “AI tools in action for international student recruitment“
• “AI is changing how students search: What it means for marketing and recruitment“
• “The ChatGPT Generation: How AI Is quietly rewriting the global student search experience”��
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It isn’t just computer sciences feeling the impact of students’ jitters about AI. Across the board, universities are moving to position their programmes as relevant to students intent on “future proofing” their study choices.

The disruptive effect of new technologies

Between 2005 and 2023, the number of students graduating with computer science degrees in the US quadrupled. These degrees remain very popular among international students: as we speak, 1 in 5 international students in the US is enrolled in computer sciences.

Enrolments in the field first spiked in tandem with rapid Internet adoption, driving a ballooning of job openings in tech companies in the US and around the world. Coders, programmers, designers, etc. enjoyed a heyday of intense competition for their skills. But now that AI can fulfill some coding tasks and lighten the workload of programmers and designers, there is deep concern among students and workers about whether they should begin or continue a career in computer sciences.

As Boston College Professor has written, of all study fields, computer science is “the most likely to be impacted by artificial intelligence, which uniquely targets high-wage cognitive tasks, unlike past technological revolutions that automated physical labor.”

Worries about the extent of AI’s erosion of computing-related jobs is already manifesting in enrolment data. According to the Computing Research Association, a nonprofit that gathers annual data from about 200 US universities, 62% of computing programmes recorded . What’s more, 66% of respondents said that their students graduating with computing majors were struggling to land jobs.

Writing in about computer sciences enrolments declining at Duke, Stanford, and Princeton, Rose Horowitch said:

“If the decline is surprising, the reason for it is fairly straightforward: Young people are responding to a grim job outlook for entry-level coders. In recent years, the tech industry has been roiled by layoffs and hiring freezes. The leading culprit for the slowdown is technology itself. Artificial intelligence has proved to be even more valuable as a writer of computer code than as a writer of words. This means it is ideally suited to replacing the very type of person who built it. A recent Pew study found that Americans think software engineers will be most affected by generative AI. Many young people aren’t waiting to find out whether that’s true.”

Reason for optimism

Rather than panic, says Tom Griffiths, director of the Princeton Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence, students should consider that technology jobs will not disappear, but rather change. He acknowledges that there will be a decrease in so-called cognitive jobs because of AI, but he predicts an increase in “metacognitive jobs, such as knowing enough about software engineering to instruct automated software engineers and systems.” In an interview with the , Mr Griffiths said:

“I can understand why students are trying to model out what the job market is going to look like in a few years when they finish their degrees. But I also think there’s going to be all sorts of things that surprise us in terms of the kinds of jobs that become possible with particular skill sets.”

Similarly, Harvard Business School Professor Suraj Srinivasan has that found that new jobs are emerging as well as becoming scarcer as a result of AI. He found that after the public launch of Chat GPT in 2022, job postings involving “structured and repetitive tasks, likely replaceable by generative AI,” decreased by -13%. At the same time, employer demand for jobs that require more analytical, technical, or creative work – potentially enhanced by AI – grew +20%.” Professor Srinivasan says: “Rather than solely eliminating jobs, generative AI creates new demand in augmentation-prone roles, suggesting that human-AI collaboration is a key driver of labour market transformation.”

Universities are beginning to create new programmes with this human–AI dynamic in mind. For example, in 2025, the University of South Florida in Tampa attracted more than 3,000 students to its new Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing College. The State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) received US$5 million in funding from New York State Governor Kathy Hochul to launch a standalone Department of AI and Society that offers seven interdisciplinary AI degrees.

The interdisciplinary structure has merit: asking for candidates with AI skills – and these listings span a multitude of sectors (e.g., tourism, communications, healthcare).

Future proofing

The spectre of AI disrupting the labour force was already on students’ minds in 2024, at a time when the use of generative AI had just hit the mainstream. In a survey conducted in 2024 among more than 1,000 college students , almost two-thirds (64%) of students belonging to the class of 2027 (i.e., graduating that year) said AI had at least somewhat impacted their academic plans.

Knowing how quickly AI is changing the workforce, students are considering the future as much as the present when considering course options. For example, Travis White, an AI and Responsible Communication major at UB, explained the rationale for his choice of programme on : “My thought was that adding this new major would set me apart from the competition and give me some skills that could get me a niche, higher-paying job that may not even exist yet.”

Students are also looking outside of computing and AI

Some students are considering “interpersonal and hands-on” jobs that seem less likely – at least in the near term – to be jeopardised by AI. This trend is underlined by labour market data, as noted in a February 2026 :

“While AI is still just one factor among many that are leading to layoffs, ADP, the largest payroll company in the US, found that professional and business services roles, alongside information services jobs in media, telecom and IT, collectively lost 41,000 jobs in December 2025. In that same month, employment grew in healthcare, education and hospitality, per the firm’s data.”

The Guardian interviewed Jasmine Escalera, a career development expert at professional development firm Zety. Ms Escalera spoke to research by the firm that found that “close to half (43%) of Gen Z workers who are anxious about AI are moving away from entry-level corporate and administrative roles and toward careers that rely on ‘human skills’ including creativity, interpersonal connection and hands-on expertise.”

Study after study shows that employers remain interested in hiring people with strong “soft skills” (e.g., empathy, teamwork, communication, and creative problem-solving) – and it may be that the rise of AI will increase this demand. Fields such as the humanities and social sciences – which have been losing enrolments for years – are the very ones that cultivate soft skills, and some universities in the US are leaning into this in their marketing and programme design. They are boldly countering the narrative that the humanities are useless with an assertion that the very reverse is true. As reported in in 2025:

“The number of undergraduates majoring in the humanities at the University of Arizona has increased 76 percent since 2018, when it introduced a bachelor’s degree in applied humanities that connects the humanities with programs in business, engineering, medicine and other fields. It also hired a humanities recruitment director and marketing team and started training faculty members to enlist students in the major with the promise that an education in the humanities leads to jobs.”

Similarly, notes the Report, “Georgia Institute of Technology has also started drawing a connection between the humanities and good jobs … which has helped boost undergraduate and graduate enrolment in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts by 58 percent since 2019.”

The Report cites a real-life example of a student who achieved the ROI she was looking for through a humanities programme: “Olivia Howe was hesitant at first to add French to her major in finance at the University of Arizona, fearing that it wouldn’t be very useful in the labor market. Then her language skills helped her land a job at the multinational technology company Siemens, which will be waiting for her when she graduates this spring.”

Ms Howe commented: “The reason I got the job is because of my French. I didn’t see it as a practical choice, but now I do. The humanities taught me I could do it.”

Quick thinking

The increasing use of AI in workplaces does not mean that human skills are becoming obsolete. Smart universities are setting their students up to work alongside AI and/or in jobs that remain high-touch and hands-on. They are reviewing programme design, positioning, and career services to align with the most important theme in higher education: career outcomes are the top driver of student choice and student satisfaction.

The post How is the rapid adoption of AI affecting international students’ career and programme planning? appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

Our hosts are then joined by Tim O’Brien –��Senior Vice President of New Partner Development with – and Education marketing coach and author for a featured discussion on how AI-based search is affecting international student recruitment.

Today’s students are moving away from scrolling through pages of search results and are instead heading straight to generative AI for answers. Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are no longer just homework helpers, they are becoming early stage advisors for a new generation of prospective international students.

You can listen right now in the player below, and we encourage you to subscribe via your favourite podcast app in order to receive future episodes automatically.

For additional background, please see:

• “AI is changing how students search: What it means for marketing and recruitment“
• “The ChatGPT Generation: How AI Is quietly rewriting the global student search experience“
• “���Ϲ��� Podcast: Stop losing applicants: How qualification recognition drives seamless international enrolment“

The post ���Ϲ��� Podcast: Students are switching to AI for search. Are you ready? appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

The findings rely in part on a recent Sinorbis survey of a small sample of international students at Australian institutions, but they are backed by a wider field of evidence from the latest edition of Edified’s ongoing Enquiry Experience Tracker study.

One in three students responding to the survey said they abandoned an application to a prospective university because of communication issues.

The challenge begins with responsiveness. Seven in ten students said they expect a response from an institution within a couple of days, but only about a third (34%) actually received a reply within that window.

That gap alone carries a significant cost. Nearly six in ten respondents (59%) reported disengaging from a university because communication felt “slow or difficult.”

An even greater proportion (71%) said the quality of communication played either a major or moderate role in their final decision on where to study, and 66% said that “response speed genuinely matters when choosing a university.”

Those expectations loom even larger given the increasingly competitive marketplace for student recruitment. Nearly all survey respondents (94%) said that their shortlist included five or fewer universities, and the findings make it clear otherwise that a delayed or ineffective response can be enough to shift a student’s attention to another institution.

“The enquiry stage is an incredibly influential moment in a student’s journey,” notes Elissa Newall, senior partner at Edified. “When a prospective student reaches out for the first time, it gives them a glimpse of what it might feel like to be part of an institution’s community. A clear, responsive experience builds trust; a poor experience simply pushes them away”.

The study report adds, “Student expectations are changing at a much faster rate than many institutional processes. While universities have expanded their recruitment activity and added some new communication channels, students are now judging their experiences against a much higher standard…For university marketing and recruitment teams, this creates some very real pressure. Students are engaging across more channels, expecting faster responses, and comparing experiences more closely than ever before. Yet many institutions are still operating with engagement models that were designed for a different era.

Although email remains central, as student preferences shift toward messaging, new channels are added, but systems, resourcing, and processes often struggle to keep pace. The result is a growing disconnect. Enquiries go unanswered or are answered too late. Conversations break across channels. Students are asked to repeat information, and what should feel like guidance instead ends up feeling transactional.”

Introducing the omnichannel

In part, those findings reflect a growing student preference to communicate outside of email, and especially via messaging apps such as WhatsApp or WeChat. The issue for recruiters is not only managing communications with students across a widening array of channels, but that that ideal channel mix varies by market as well.

Even so, there is no mistaking the shift. As the study report explains, “Email once the default channel for formal interaction, is no longer the main reference point for many prospective students. Instead, expectations are now increasingly shaped by the messaging platforms that students are using every day. These more modern environments have the benefits of being immediate, conversational, and perhaps most importantly, highly familiar. They set a standard for how quickly and easily information should flow.”

That standard, however, collides with the reality that many recruiters face today of large and growing volumes of enquiries from prospective students. Edified reports that two in five institutions now receive more than 25,000 enquiries from prospective international students each year, yet, four in five say they lack “a single view of the customer” – that is, a way to effectively manage communications with prospective students at scale.

The authors argue for an “omnichannel” approach that allows recruiters to meet students where they are at, in terms of communications channel, but where all channels are strongly linked to and owned by the institution, where the use of that wider range of channels is properly resourced, where all are integrated into recruitment systems (especially CRMs), and where those aligned workflows and systems can support more effective and meaningful student communications at scale.

“Automation supports this process by enabling both speed and structure, especially during peak enquiry periods,” adds the report. “Beyond simple acknowledgements, segmentation and automation allow institutions to prioritise leads based on factors such as level of intent, programme interest, country, or stage in the journey. High intent enquiries can be surfaced quickly, while earlier stage prospects can be nurtured over time without manual intervention. This ensures that the attention is focused where it is going to have the greatest impact, even when teams are under pressure.”

As the students engagement with the institution continues – as they progress along the enrolment funnel – that alignment between channels, workflows, and systems can equally support a more targeted engagement with well-qualified prospects. In other words, this is the stage at which automation gives way to more one-to-one communication. The study report adds that, “By prioritising personalised dialogue at the bottom of the funnel, institutions create space for meaningful reassurance rather than transactional exchanges. This human connection often becomes the final factor that turns intent into action, helping students feel confident in their decision and supported in taking the next step.”

For additional background, please see:

• “Mystery shopping study finds broad improvement in student enquiry handling this year“
• “Three international education trends for 2025: Revenue optimisation, marketing personalisation, and on-the-ground local intelligence“
• “In a time of shifting student demand, a speedy response to enquiries is a must“

The post Survey highlights a growing “engagement gap” between international student expectations and institutional response appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

In September 2025, we conducted a cross-institution survey of over 1,600 newly enrolled international students in the US and UK. Our goal was simple: to understand how students are using AI in the crucial, early part of their journey –��identifying and applying to university –��long before they ever step into a lecture hall.

Approximately one in six respondents (17%) indicated they used AI (Chat GPT etc) as part of their initial search, but that varies significantly by home country.

The most critical finding however appears to deliver a clear message on the value students ascribe to Large Learning Models (LLMs): 96% of AI users found the guidance they received from AI tools (ChatGPT, etc.) either met or exceeded the quality of information provided by traditional sources (websites, brochures, agents).

This figure –��derived from 81% who found AI more helpful and 15% who found it about the same –��presents a potentially profound challenge to the legacy digital experience offered by institutions and advisers.

While 17% of newly enrolled students used AI for their search, this 96% endorsement appears to validate the technology as functionally superior for pre-application research. For those who embrace the tool, it has become the standard.

The context: AI is already central to most university students

To place the 96% figure into context, it is important to understand that AI is not a novelty for today’s students; for many, it is already an ever-present companion in their academic lives. This survey of 1600 international students simply suggests that recruitment and admissions may simply be the final frontier of adoption.

• Turnitin produced of how students use AI. They reveal that an overwhelming majority – 86% of students globally – are already regularly using AI in their studies, with 54% using it weekly.

• In the UK, the use of generative AI tools for assessments has seen an explosive increase, with recent reports indicating that 88% to 92% of undergraduates now use AI for their coursework in some capacity.

• According to , Students commonly utilise AI to explain complex concepts, summarise articles, suggest research ideas, and search for information.

• The fact that only 17% of newly enrolled students in this survey reported using AI for their initial university search suggests this phase is the last part of the educational lifecycle to be fully integrated with this standard technology.

The new asymmetry: East Asia leads the adoption race – for now

While only 17% of newly enrolled students reported using AI for their search, this near-unanimous endorsement within this early-adopting sample (n=1622) suggests that for those who embrace the tool, it is becoming new standard pre-application research.

Beneath that single number lies a more nuanced adoption story. Usage rates vary sharply by region: nearly 30% of students from South Korea and the Philippines report using AI, along with 28% from Taiwan, 25% from Vietnam and 22% from Japan. Mainland China sits at 21%, while South Asia, Latin America and Africa show more modest uptake.

The pattern is probably familiar to those who track technology diffusion: low overall penetration, but pockets of explosive early adoption. These are the indicators of a curve that has yet to reach its inflection point. Most of us working in higher education know that time will come – and sooner than we expect.

The strategic student (and parent): How students report using AI in their search

Yet perhaps the more important insight concerns how students are using AI. Far from relying on it for superficial tasks, students are deploying it for strategic decision-making. Among those who used AI during their search:

• 61% asked about university rankings and reputation
• 39% sought programme or course details
• 34% investigated career outcomes
• 34% explored student life

These are not trivialities; they are the structural determinants of a student’s choice – with career outcomes near the top of the search.

The picture that emerges is one in which AI acts as an early-stage adviser –��a synthesiser of options, a comparator of institutions and a curator of the overwhelming abundance of online information. Before applicants speak to an agent, attend a webinar or download a prospectus, many have already engaged in a long-form, personalised dialogue with an AI model.

An interesting counterpoint, and one worth emphasising, is that students are discerning in their use of AI for search. They understand where AI is helpful, and where it may be more risky. Only 16% used AI for application essays, and only 17% for visa information. These are domains where inaccuracies can be costly or where plagiarism detection software is sophisticated.

Far from reckless AI adopters, these respondents appear thoughtful and strategic. They are not blindly outsourcing high-stakes decisions; they are using AI precisely where it provides clarity without penalty.

Students value the advice they receive from AI

Students (and their parents) are not using AI simply because it is available; they appear to rate the advice highly. When asked to compare AI guidance with university websites, brochures, and even agents, a majority of students indicated the advice was more helpful than traditional sources. This is quietly significant: for many early adopters, AI is already the more effective source.

As AI moves into the top of the recruitment funnel, the first impression of an institution may no longer come from an optimised Google search, but from a generative AI model such as Deepseek, Gemini, or ChatGPT.

It means students are more likely to ask questions in natural language – “Which universities are best for engineering given my budget?” – and receive answers drawn from a diffuse and imperfect online footprint. This means the accuracy, consistency, and clarity of publicly available information has never mattered more. We all know AI gets it wrong, but it is improving.

The implications for the advisory ecosystem of agents, high school counsellors, career coaches and so on are equally profound. AI has begun to take on the foundational advisory tasks of summarising facts and comparing institutions. Agents and counsellors will increasingly be valued not for reciting facts, but for providing emotional context, personalised judgement, and reassurance – all things AI still cannot do well.

Meanwhile, students accustomed to personalised, instant AI responses will bring heightened expectations to every subsequent interaction: faster turnaround times, clearer messaging, and communications that feel conversational rather than bureaucratic.

A mandate for digital clarity?

The overwhelming student preference for AI’s speed and clarity is a structural challenge that those recruiting or guiding students need to address:

• The New Baseline: For 96% of users, AI either matches or surpasses the information quality of official institutional sources. For a student to choose the official website over AI, the official source must now be unambiguously superior in both information quality and user experience.

• Neutrality is a Challenge: The 15% of users who found AI “about the same” are unlikely to be a neutral group; they are users for whom AI’s superior convenience and 24/7 access make it functionally equivalent to a slow, complex official source.

• Regional Contrast: The urgency is pronounced in regions like the Middle East and Africa (MEA), where a majority (54% of users) found AI “Much more helpful.” Conversely, in South Asia, a higher proportion found AI “about the same” (29%), suggesting that traditional agent networks remain strong and the AI experience has yet to deliver a revolutionary step-change.

• The Critique: With only 4% of users finding AI less helpful, the market will demand speed, clarity, and conversational access, which AI delivers and many institutional systems currently do not.

As AI moves to the top of the recruitment funnel, the first impression is increasingly formed by an LLM synthesis, not a controlled website visit. This means the clarity and consistency of publicly available information has never mattered more.

What can universities and advisors do now

Given how students are already using AI – wisely and in growing numbers – we need to act proactively. The following recommendations respond directly to the patterns in our survey data:

1. Optimise content for AI models, not just humans. Clear, structured programme descriptions, updated entry requirements and unambiguous tuition details improve how LLMs summarise your institution.
   
2. Test how AI currently describes you. Run prompts such as “What is University X known for?” or “Which universities are strongest in Z?” This reveals inconsistencies or outdated perceptions.
   
3. Focus on process. Machine learning AI tools can help transform the often-arduous application process, delivering a faster, more accurate experience for students and their agents, supporting institutional compliance and smarter monitoring of the conversion/yield funnels.
   
4. Support advisers to complement, not compete with, AI. Counsellors should focus on interpretation, empathy and nuanced guidance.
   
5. Publish clear, ethical guidance for applicants. Students are already wary of using AI for essays and visas; universities should reinforce good judgement with transparent policies.
   
6. Prepare for higher expectations. AI-using applicants arrive better informed and less tolerant of slow, generic or opaque responses.

The challenge is not if AI will reshape the student journey, but how quickly. The data from this survey points to a strong directional shift, validating AI as the preferred functional research tool for a growing segment. The ultimate structure of the recruitment ecosystem, however, is not a fait accompli; it hinges on the ability of human advisers and institutions to evolve beyond static information delivery and offer value –��speed, nuance, and humanity –��that AI cannot replicate.

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