Keystone Education Groupā€™s 2025 data reveals a dynamic year for international student mobility, with some sharp declines across traditional powerhouses alongside rapid growth in emerging destinations.

The data, drawn from millions of annual student search indicators and enrolment data, shows that international student mobility is increasingly being shaped by a combination of supply-side policies and demand-side preferences among students.

Fredrik Hƶgemark, CEO of Keystone Education Group, said: ā€œThis year has been one of the most volatile weā€™ve tracked in our data. Students are weighing affordability and safety more than ever, and as return on investment becomes a necessity, this is leveling the playing field beyond the ā€˜Big Fourā€™.ā€

“Policy changes announced mid-cycle in 2025 forced students to rapidly adjust their plans, while we have also observed numerous anti-globalisation measures that have inadvertently affected international education.”

Since fall 2023, international interest in the US across Keystoneā€™s platforms dropped by -47%.
However, the growth of post-study work opportunities and OPT continues to influence enrolments in the US, particularly with the two largest source markets ā€“ India and China.

And, when we look at the second half of 2025 in isolation, interest in the US is showing signs of stability again and it remains the most searched destination across Keystone sites.

The decline in US interest, while extreme, is not the steepest globally. Canada and Australia also experienced similar drops in interest over the same period.

For Australia, this trend also might be starting to turn for 2026, with early indications in Keystoneā€™s Q3 2025 data showing a more positive outlook ā€“ with search interest up +8% compared to Q2 in 2025.

The UK was Keystoneā€™s second leading study destination in 2025, recognised globally for its academic reputation. Beyond its reputation, Keystoneā€™s 2025 State of Student Recruitment Report found the UK also ranks highest for reputation and safety of the Big Four.

Fredrik added:

ā€œWe have seen very strong trends for UK study across Keystone’s platforms this year and data from September 2025 also showed study visa applications are up 7% over 2024, so the environment had been looking stable for 2026. However, the news in October of a shorter post-study-work entitlement in the UK will likely have an impact on interest there. The question is how much impact?ā€

Europe as a collective also continued to amass student interest, particularly at the end of 2025, with five of the top 10 searched destinations in November in Europe.

Spain, Italy, Germany, and France all recorded more student search interest than Canada and Australia, with Spainā€™s search volume rivalling the UKā€™s popularity.

Nordic destinations have also experienced an upward trend, with a +33% rise in interest as of April 2025. Meanwhile, the UAE continues to build its profile as a global education hub, with Keystone data showing a near +90% increase in search interest for UAE study opportunities in June 2025.

It has also been a breakthrough year for the Asian Tigers ā€“ Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and South Korea.

Malaysia led the surge with a +64% increase in student searches from March to May on Keystone sites, followed by Singapore with +51%. Japanā€™s popularity also grew in this period, while South Korea entered the top 10 study destinations for the first time.

Fredrik added: ā€œIt is no surprise South Korea and Japan are growing in popularity. Japan has a very pro-international policy ā€“ it is launching more and more English-taught programmes and the good collaboration between higher education and the government is evident. South Korea is in a similar situation. Both have been fully embracing and supporting international education.ā€

West Africa was an unlikely player in 2025 but saw a surge in searches from international students, with a +25% increase in interest in the region on Keystoneā€™s sites between May and July this year.

For additional background, please see:

• ā€œGlobal trends in international enrolments and policies as we head into 2026ā€
• ā€œCanada and the US are losing international student enrolments to Europe and Asiaā€
• ā€œThe changing face of international student mobilityā€

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Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea continue to attract greater interest, and each is recording significant gains in Q2 amidst continued policy disruption and/or visa delays in other major destinations.

Drawing on student search data from its web properties, Keystone reports that interest in these four “Asian Tiger” destinations grew by 19% between March and June 2025.

Within that broader trend:

• Student interest in Hong Kong grew by 125% quarter-over-quarter
• Singapore saw a 33% increase in search volumes over the same period, indicating, Keystone says, “the country’s successful efforts to brand itself as an affordable yet high-quality education destination”
• South Korea was also singled out in Keystone’s annual State of Student Recruitment Report, having entered the table of top ten destinations for the first time ever

“When combined, the four Asian Tigers are currently more popular amongst searching audience than Japan and China,” adds Keystone. “Data shows that the Asian Tigers are attracting students from across the Asia-Pacific region, with students from India most interested, followed by Indonesia.”

The growing popularity of these — and other — destinations in Asia, can be attributed to investment in higher education and in initiatives to promote regional mobility. Keystone adds, “Their location also offers easy access for Asiaā€™s growing middle-class population seeking quality international education closer to home.”

In a related development, Keystone is also reporting strong growth in interest for destinations in the Middle East, and especially in the United Arab Emirates. Overall search volumes for the region were up 90% between March and June 2025, with the UAE accounting for about two-thirds of that surge. Of particular note to recruiters the world over, Indian students are the leading source of that Middle East-focused search traffic as well.

For additional background, please see:

• “New analysis forecasts international student mobility through 2030“
• “Global survey underscores demand shift from ‘Big Four’ to ‘Big Ten’“
• “Student mobility in MENA boosted by foreign partnerships and branch campuses“
• “Beyond the Big Four: How demand for study abroad is shifting to destinations in Asia and Europe“
• “Closer to home: Intra-regional mobility in Asia“

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For the past decade, the outflow of students from Asian countries to Western ones has been nothing short of staggering. Hundreds of thousands of students from Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Pakistan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and especially India and China travel overseas every year for degrees, contributing billions of dollars to host economies.

Western destinations have been popular because they offer so many highly ranked, high-quality universities. Asian students have traditionally chosen these schools because of the prestige attached to their degrees, a prestige that often translates into better earning potential for graduates.

But the idea that a Western degree is automatically better and more advantageous than one obtained in Asia is losing ground. Asian students now have an array of appealing options within their region for study. There are a number of reasons for this:

• A dozen of the worldā€™s 100 top ranked universities are now in Asia ā€“ in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea.

• Asia is the worldā€™s fastest-growing regional economy; China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea are driving the most expansion. Students realise that Asian universities can help them to access industry internships and jobs in the region.

• China, the continentā€™s powerhouse, invests heavily in its massive, multifaceted soft-power initiative known as One Belt, One Road, which stretches through more than a hundred countries and through South and East Asia. China is creating thousands of scholarships to attract Asian as well as African students. It is increasing higher education capacity and tempting Asian students from within the region to choose China rather than go overseas.

• Students everywhere are gravitating towards programmes with strong and immediate employment outcomes. Asian universities are performing very well in this regard. QSā€™s 2019 Graduate Employability Rankings include four Asian universities ā€“ Tsinghua, Peking, Hong Kong and Tokyo ā€“ among the top 20 institutions. QS notes that ā€œAsian universities are among the worldā€™s best at enhancing their alumniā€™s job market prospects.ā€ All told, 163 of the 500 universities in the rankings are in Asia ā€“ including 26 in China, 16 in Korea, 14 in Japan, and 13 in India.

• More than half a dozen Asian countries have national strategies aimed at making them major destinations, with several setting international student targets. China is now the worldā€™s fourth most popular study destination after the US, Australia, and Canada.

• Many Asian institutions offer lower tuition fees than those in the West, and China in particular is drawing students through scholarships.

• Asian universities provide the benefit of being closer to home for students from the region who worry about homesickness and culture shock.

Measuring risk

The top English-speaking destinations ā€“ the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada ā€“ have historically relied on Asian countries for students. For example,

• China, India, and South Korea are the top sending markets for the US, with Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan in sixth, seventh, and eighth place, respectively. China, India, and South Korea make up 71% of all international students in the US. When Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan are added, the six Asian source countries contribute 80% of the total.

• India, China, and South Korea are also the top sending markets for Canada. Together the three countries composed almost 60% of international students in Canada in 2018.

• Eight of Australiaā€™s top 10 sending markets are Asian: China, India, Nepal, Malaysia, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. The first three make up 48% of all enrolments, while students from the eight countries together represent 64% of Australiaā€™s international student population.

• A 33% increase in the number of Chinese students in the UK is the main reason that the number of non-EU students grew by 9% in the UK in 2018. China now accounts for one in five international students in the UK, and one in three non-EU students. India, Malaysia, and Hong Kong are also among the UKā€™s top 10 non-EU sending markets.

Altogether, there are more than a million Asian students studying in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK.

If China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Malaysia reach their international student targets by 2025, they will enrol close to 1.5 million students ā€“ the bulk of them from neighbouring countries.

Competition increasing

In addition to the many Asian institutions scoring highly on world university rankings, still more Asian schools are competing on price, a strong position given that affordability remains an issue for many Asian families.

The following table provides a high-level summary of the relative competitive position of established and emerging study destinations within Asia.

More than ever, universities in Western destinations must provide a compelling offer to students in Asian markets (e.g., through reputation, student testimonials, internships, destination marketing, scholarships, or discounting) and ensure that once students are enrolled, they keep those promises and provide excellent student supports and graduate outcomes.

In addition, coordinated national strategies aimed at attracting international students are crucial. Well-designed visa, work, and immigration policies can make a huge difference and are the major reason that Australia and Canada continue to increase their market share, in contrast to the UK and the US.

Finally, choosing new markets to invest in is an absolute necessity to reduce the risk of exposure created by the heavy concentrations of Asian students in leading destinations.

For additional background, please see:

• ā€œUp and down the table: Growth trends across major international study destinationsā€
• ā€œDiversification and the next five marketsā€
• ā€œIs Asia ready to be the next higher education superpower?ā€

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Those ten countries ā€“ Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam ā€“ have a total population of more than 600 million people. Their combined economies would currently rank as the seventh-largest economy in the world, an economic footprint that is projected to grow to become the fourth-largest in the world by 2050.

The ten member states of ASEAN

Education is a key arena for increasing collaboration across ASEAN, and there are significant efforts afoot now to harmonise curricula and qualifications and to expand intra-regional mobility initiatives.

For example, the ASEAN Qualifications Reference Framework () Committee held its first meeting in Jakarta earlier this year and work is now underway on formalising and implementing the framework in collaboration with participating ASEAN members. The AQRF is designed to support expanded student and labour mobility within the region. It is accompanied by a number of related initiatives, including the ongoing development of the ASEAN Credit Transfer System (). Both efforts are meant to address a widely recognised challenge with respect to intra-regional mobility today: it is still too difficult for students to move from institution to institution within Southeast Asia and to bring credits earned abroad back to their home institutions.

Speaking at a second meeting of the AQRF committee earlier this month, Philippine Department of Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones said, ā€œThis effort aims to harmonise our own qualifications framework to those of other ASEAN member countries, enable to promote lifelong learning and to make it possible for our learners and professionals to go from one country to another based on a harmonised framework.ā€

Mobility within the region was also in focus at The First ASEAN Student Mobility Forum, held 14ā€“15 June 2017 in Manila. The Forum hosted 200 delegates from across ASEAN, and was an opportunity for students and educators to share their experiences of study abroad within the region (presentation decks, videos, and other programme details are now available online).

The Forum was co-organised by the Support to Higher Education in the ASEAN Region (SHARE), an EU-funded organisation with a mandate to ā€œstrengthen regional cooperation, enhance the quality, competitiveness and internationalisation of ASEAN higher education institutions and students.ā€ The EU is a long-standing supporter and funder of regional collaboration initiatives in Southeast Asia and, in a mobility context, the EUā€™s Erasmus+ programme is widely referenced as a model and for best practices in support of greater movement of students within the region.

For the moment, the most prominent regional exchange initiative is the ASEAN International Mobility for Students () programme. AIMS links the government ministries of six participating ASEAN members ā€“ Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Brunei, and Philippines ā€“ along with South Korea and Japan. The programme extends to 68 universities in those countries and encompasses ten fields of study.

Through AIMS, students can participate in one-semester exchanges abroad with a participating institution. As the following chart illustrates, the programme is still modest in scale, with somewhere around 1,000 regionally mobile students each year.

Annual number of inbound and outbound students on AIMS exchanges, 2010ā€“2016. Please note that the flag icons indicate the years in which the corresponding countries joined the programme. Source: SEAMEO RIHED

However, the numbers also reflect that AIMS is expanding quickly over the last two years.
Programme administrators intend to expand AIMS to all ASEAN countries, and, particularly as credit transfer and qualification frameworks continue to strengthen, we can expect continued strong growth in intra-regional mobility going forward.

A leading global economy

As we noted earlier, if ASEAN were a single country it would safely be counted among the worldā€™s largest economies. Its combined (and youthful!) population of 600 million is larger than that of the European Union or North America, and surpassed only by China and India.

Similarly, real GDP growth over much of the last 15 years has been clipping along at more than 5% per year. Of all world economies, only China and India grew faster during this period.

Ģż²¹»å»å²õ:

ā€œASEAN has dramatically outpaced the rest of the world on growth in GDP per capita since the late 1970s. Income growth has remained strong since 2000, with average annual real gains of more than 5%. Some member nations have grown at a torrid pace: Vietnam, for example, took just 11 years (from 1995 to 2006) to double its per capita GDP from US$1,300 to US$2,600. Extreme poverty is rapidly receding. In 2000, 14% of the regionā€™s population was below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day (calculated in purchasing-power-parity terms), but by 2013, that share had fallen to just 3%.

Already some 67 million households in ASEAN states are part of the ā€˜consuming class,ā€™ with incomes exceeding the level at which they can begin to make significant discretionary purchases. That number could almost double to 125 million households by 2025, making ASEAN a pivotal consumer market of the future.ā€

From a recruitment point of view, these are all powerful indicators of a regional bloc with considerable potential for outbound mobility. Indeed, skills development and access to advanced education will increasingly be a key determinant of continued economic growth and social development in the decades ahead.

There are, however, considerable variations in market conditions across the region. Indonesia, for example, accounts for about 40% of total economic output among member states and is a G20 member. And Singaporeā€™s highly developed economy is home to some of the top-ranked universities in the world. Myanmar, meanwhile, is really just emerging from a long period of political and economic isolation and so we can still observe significant gaps in educational attainment and income from country to country within the region.

Even so, the ASEAN states are an increasingly integrated global market that includes some of the key emerging markets in the world for outbound mobility, notably Vietnam and Indonesia. There will be considerable momentum in the next decade and more to mobility within the region, and also towards study in neighbouring countries that have also stepped up their own recruitment activity of late, such as China and Japan. But as income levels continue to rise, the regionā€™s very large college-aged populations also represent a significant opportunity for recruiters from further afield ā€“ one that also offers the added efficiency of recruiting in a series of diverse markets in close proximity to one another.

For additional background, please see:

• ā€œASEAN poised to usher in new era of regional student mobilityā€
• ā€œIndonesiaā€™s growing middle class expected to drive outbound mobilityā€
• ā€œMalaysian government cools on study abroad but outbound still growingā€
• ā€œGrowing demand for vocational training in Vietnamā€
• ā€œVietnam: Regulatory change expected to spur international school enrolmentā€
• ā€œSingapore adopting a more cautious outlook on education hub ambitionsā€

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China opens its first overseas campus

A special charter flight from Mainland China, with 440 eager first-year students on board, recently touched down in Kuala Lumpur to mark the opening of Xiamen University in Malaysia –Ā .

What went wrong with the global schoolhouse?

In 2002, Singapore set out a bold vision for the future of international education in the country. Under the so-called ā€œā€ initiative, Singapore announced plans to increase its enrolment of foreign students to 150,000 by 2015. But things didnā€™t go exactly to plan, and international enrolment has actually declined in recent years.

Five tips for multi-lingual websites

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The Trump effect

Ā in the wake of Donald Trumpā€™s election victory earlier this month. Do those cancellations just reflect an emotional pushback in the wake of an unexpected result, or do they foreshadow a longer-term trend?

Which UK universities rely the most on international students?

Along with Mr Trumpā€™s surprising win in the US, international educators are watching closely to see how the Brexit process unfolds in the UK. And new data from HESA shows which UK institutions recruit the most international students.

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Co-authored with the Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT), International Branch Campuses, Trends and Developments, 2016 reveals that there are now 249 IBCs located in more than 70 countries. These offshore campuses are ā€œowned, at least in part, by a foreign education provider; operated in the name of the foreign education provider; and [provide] an entire academic programme, substantially on site, leading to a degree awarded by the foreign education provider.ā€ OBHE Senior Researcher Rachael Merola describes IBCs as ā€œthe most ambitious kind of cross-border higher education,ā€ and as initiatives that redefine ā€œinstitutional identities and national systemsā€.

OBHE estimates that there are at least 180,000 student enrolled in IBCs today, but the report adds some important context as well in noting, ā€œThis is a significant number in absolute terms but is equivalent to less than 4% of the five million international students in the worldā€¦and a tiny fraction of the 150 million+ higher education students globally. In a few countries, such as UAE, IBCs constitute a significant proportion of total higher education enrolment; but in most they are niche players.ā€

ā€œThe relative ease of student and programme mobility, compared to the institutional mobility inherent in a branch campus, suggests IBCs will remain substantially niche operations. The open question is whether over time IBCs of a certain type or within certain countries will achieve a stronger reputation for capacity and quality at scale, influencing national policies and institutional brands. IBCs, in all their diversity, have much room for growth.ā€

On that note, OBHE reports that 66 new IBCs were established between 2011 and 2015. On the heels of a roughly equivalent number of new IBCs launched from 2006-2010, the absolute growth in IBC numbers has been quite stable over the decade. In addition to the new IBCs opened over the last five years, the final tally for 2015 also reflects the 15 campuses that closed or changed status during that same period.

Total number of IBCs worldwide, 2000-2015. Source: OBHE

Importers and exporters

The number of countries hosting IBCs has increased somewhat since 2011: 76 countries host IBCs today, which represents a 10% increase over the 69 host countries that were active as of early 2011. The top five hosts are now home to nearly four in ten IBCs (39%): China (32 IBCs), the United Arab Emirates (31), Singapore (12), Malaysia (12), and Qatar (11).

Number of IBCs by host country, 2015. Source: OBHE

As this tally suggests, China has now edged out the UAE as the top host country, reflecting both a slight decline in IBCs in the Emirates (from 32 campuses at the end of 2010 to 31 by end of 2015) as well as a dramatic increase in IBC operations within China (from 13 in 2010 to 32 today). OBHE attributes the softening global share of the UAE to ā€œmarket saturation, changing strategies of local governments, and concern over instability in other parts of the region.ā€ China, in contrast, is home to more than one in four new IBCs (26%) started since 2011, and continues to attract new IBC ventures today.

OBHE puts the continued growth of international campuses in China down to local demand for higher education and also to host government support. The report notes generally that governments are motivated to attract IBCs by a drive to greater economic competitiveness, by an interest in boosting the political or cultural influence, and/or in the hopes of boosting the profile of national higher education systems.

On the export side of the equation, the top ā€œhomeā€ countries for IBCs are the US, the UK, Russia, France, and Australia. US institutions operate 78 IBCs currently, accounting for nearly a third of all offshore campuses worldwide and including 17 of the 66 new IBCs opened since 2011. The UK is the next-leading exporter after the US with British institutions operating 39 IBCs (16% of the global total) as of 2015.

As these values illustrate, IBC activity is fairly concentrated both in terms of import markets where we see IBCs clustered in China and other selected Asian markets as well as in the MENA region. But this activity is also focused within a relatively small of exporting countries, with the US and UK as the clear leaders.

ā€œFuture growth is being driven by institutions from the United States and Europe, particularly the UK. Nearly half of the known IBCs under development will be overseas campuses of institutions based in the US and UK. There are at least seven campuses under development in Asia and four in the Middle East, highlighting the geographic shift in activity [from the Middle East to Asia],ā€ concludes the report.

For additional background on IBCs, please see:

• Ģżā€œA more cautious outlook for international branch campusesā€
• ā€œManaging growth and maintaining standards in international branch campusesā€

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The plan was accompanied by millions of dollars in government grants and subsidies, all designed to attract top education brands to establish branch campuses in Singapore. And indeed there have been some notable successes. Over the past decade, Singapore has been in every conversation about the rising importance of regional education hubs, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. And a number of internationally ranked institutions have established branch operations in Singapore, most recently Yale University.

But international student numbers have peaked and begun to fall off and remain well below the target enrolment for 2015. From a recent-year high of 90,000 foreign students in 2010, enrolment had slipped to about 75,000 byĀ 2014. In part, this is a function of increasing competition from other significant education hubs in the region, notably Malaysia, Hong Kong, and China. But it also reflects some important realities on the ground as well.

Both Singaporeans and visiting students continue to have an impressive range of higher education options. Two of the countryā€™s four public universities ā€“Ā the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technology University (NTU) ā€“Ā are well-regarded and highly ranked research institutions. But NUS and NTU, together with the remaining public institutions (Singapore Management University and Singapore University of Technology and Design) can accommodate about 57,000 undergraduate students combined. There are another 70 or so registered higher education institutions in Singapore that together offer another 54,000 undergraduate seats.

At the end of the day, however, there are not enough university spaces to meet local demand and an estimated 9% of Singaporeā€™s secondary school-leavers go abroad to study. The number of Singaporean students in the US ā€“Ā where students are highly concentrated in elite institutions – reached (4,727 students). A larger percentage (roughly 42% of Singaporeans abroad, or about 9,400 students) opts to study in Australia.

This basic demand-supply equation led to a government inquiry – the Wong Committee – in 2012. The committeeā€™s final report recommended an expansion of local higher education capacity, but also triggered a broader public sentiment within Singapore that foreign student enrolment should be capped. A 2014 report from Professor Dean Forbes at Flinders University noted that, “Public responses to the Wong Committee requested in order to open more places for local students. The numbers had been capped in 2011, and the government decided to further reduce the proportion of international students from 18% to 15%. The proportion remains high by world standards. A Universitas 21 Report ranked Singapore second after Australia in international students as a proportion of local students.”

The 2011 cap effectively meant the end of Singaporeā€™s longstanding international enrolment target. Looking back, however, it is easy to think that Global Schoolhouse foreshadowed the Wong Committee report in its attempts to attract foreign providers and, in so doing, to expand the options available both to local and visiting students.

For some years, EDB has recorded a string of high-profile successes in attracting major higher education institutions to open up shop in Singapore. These include , John Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, New York University, and the University of New South Wales. As of 2013, Singapore was home to as many as 11 foreign branch campuses and many other partner programmes offered jointly by local and foreign providers.

INSEADā€™s Singapore campus continues to operate today but several others have closed, citing the high costs of operating in the city-state. Singapore has been ranked among the worldā€™s most expensive destinations for foreign undergraduate students and as in an annual survey from The Economist.

Citing financial pressures, the University of New South Wales closed its branch campus in 2007 after a very brief operating period, whereas the year before John Hopkins also withdrew from Singapore. New York Universityā€™s Tisch School of the Arts closed its Singapore campus in 2015 after having accumulated millions of dollars in debt. And The University of Chicago also opted to relocated its Asia campus from Singapore to Hong Kong in 2015, in part to be closer to the all-important Chinese market.

Every branch campus opening and closure draws a fair measure of attention. What is less commonly known in the case of Singapore, however, is the extent to which many of the branch campus openings of the past decade have been subsidised by public grants. from Singaporean Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang confirmed, for example, that prior to its campus closure the University of New South Wales had received S$15 million in loans and S$17.5 million in government grants (roughly US$24 million in total at current exchange rates). As to the Tisch campus in Singapore, the Minister added that ā€œEDB provided Tisch Asia with a level of support that was commensurate with the anticipated benefits of having the school in Singapore. To date, EDB has disbursed S$11.68 million in loans and S$5.3 million in grants to Tisch Asia [roughly US$12.5 million at current exchange rates]. EDB stopped disbursements when it realised that Tisch Asia was facing financial difficulties. EDB is in close discussions with NYU on the details of the loan repayment.”

Indeed, 2011ā€™s high-profile opening of – a new liberal arts college established in collaboration between the Ivy League university and the National University of Singapore – also apparently relied heavily on public funding supports. “Yaleā€™s potential to expand overseas had been constrained by the 2009 financial crash in which the university lost US$6.5 billion on the stock market, ,” reports Times Higher Education. “Public funding cuts had also reduced Yaleā€™s budget by $3.5 billion over several years, he said. That left ā€˜no resources available to be innovativeā€™ until Singapore agreed to cover the cost of the new college.”

The opening of Yale-NUS College reflects Singaporeā€™s ongoing commitment to building higher education capacity through international partnerships, and we can reasonably expect that the country will continue to expand options for local and visiting students.

More broadly, most observers expect that Singapore will remain an important educational player in the region going forward. It seems clear as well, however, that the government has adopted a more cautious outlook with respect to financing any such ventures. , EDB Assistant Managing Director of Corporate Development Alvin Tan allowed that owing to increased “diversity and quality” in Singaporeā€™s higher education landscape, any future foreign branch campuses would have to be a ā€œcomplement to strong local options.”

As current branch campus activity in Singapore (and at least some aspects of Singaporean enrolment abroad) also suggests, the city-state may also increasingly be a market for well-ranked ā€“Ā even elite ā€“Ā educational brands.

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• Digital tools, including online search and more specialised school selection sites, play a key role in the discovery phase of studentsā€™ research – that is, the point at which they are researching different institutions and trying to identify schools that could be a good fit.

• Given the growing prominence of online platforms – including search sites and online directories in student decision-making processes – senior staff should be devoting substantial attention to these platforms, perhaps more than they have in the past.

• Recent surveys from the UK point to a shift in marketing spending toward digital channels – and to paid and organic search in particular. However, they also indicate that recruiters are struggling with measuring the performance of their online campaigns.

• Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the agents responding to the 2015 ŗŚĮĻ¹ŁĶų i-graduate Agent Barometer indicated that 20% or more of their leads came from online sources in 2015. And for nearly a third, online sources accounted for 40% or more of total leads.

Google research on education-related search volumes highlights the growing role of online search in the “student decision journey” and an increasing trend of students searching exclusively online for information about study programmes.

One of the most important findings offered by the search giant is that non-branded search – that is, queries for more specific programmes or locations as opposed to those for an individual institution or school – is key. Googleā€™s analysis finds that as many as 9 in 10 prospective students donā€™t know which school they want to attend at the onset of the search process and they reflect this non-brand orientation in their search behaviour.

With this in mind, Google has recommended that recruiters target their search marketing efforts to promoting particular programmes in specific locations.

Platform insights

As these findings suggest, online search and discovery channels should now be a priority for senior marketing and recruitment staff.

Interestingly, school selection sites that operate at scale and that can therefore aggregate large volumes of student search data are now also providing valuable insights into shifting patterns of demand and behaviour online.

For example, Hotcourses, a global search platform targeted to international students, released a new analytics services late last year called “Insights” that allows for greater analysis of usage and search patterns across its websites. The company recently released commenting on some of its initial data observations, with a particular emphasis on a few key destinations and a set of emerging markets: Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

The paper draws on 14 months of Insights data reaching back to November 2014, and relies on data from 23,000,000 Hotcourses users in 2015 alone.

Among its high-level findings, Hotcourses finds that the US remains the most searched-for destination, with a 33.5% share of platform searches in 2015. The UK follows with 27.2%, and then Australia with 17.2%.

Share of search volumes by destination on Hotcourses, 2015. Source: Hotcourses

We have, in recent years, reported on a pattern of declining market share for the UK, and Hotcourses research corroborates this trend. Its whitepaper notes “Across all top 10 major destination countries the UK either flatlines or loses its share of searches from prospective students. This is in keeping with recent HESA data which shows the UK with a diminishing number of enrolments in six of its top 10 source countries. In the first half (January – June) of 2015, the UK received 27.5% of searches across all websites, this reduces to 26.9% by the second half of the year (July – December), an in-year fall of -0.6%.”

Curiously absent from the data are other major international study destinations, including Canada, France, China, and Germany. This perhaps illustrates that data from a proprietary search platform such as Hotcourses may not fully reflect broader patterns of student search or mobility, such as we might see on Google or other general-use search engines.

Trends in the US, UK, and Australia

An important segment of the Hotcourses whitepaper looks at “diversification markets” for the US, the UK, and Australia. It defines a diversification market as “a country which current constitutes less than 10% of students in a country.” In other words, these are source countries that are particularly significant to the diversification efforts of American, British, and Australian institutions.

In terms of these emerging markets, the US received the greatest volume of searches from Brazil (15.6% overall in 2015), Vietnam (9.9%), Thailand (6.7%), Indonesia (5.2%), and Saudi Arabia (4.4%). While Brazilian students remain those the most likely to be searching for the US of students in the diversification markers, Hotcourses notes a drop occurring through 2015 from this market (from 16% to 15.2%), which it imagines is a result of the ending of the hugely influential Brazilian scholarship programme, Science Without Borders.

The UK received the greatest volume of diversification market searches from Thailand (13.3% overall in 2015), Indonesia (11.1%), Vietnam (7.0%), Brazil (6.8%), and Saudi Arabia (4.2%).

As we noted earlier, Hotcourses notes that the general trend is negative for the UK, with the UK either flatlining or losing share of searches from prospective students. However, there is one bright spot: “The UK sees an increase from 37.3% to 41.1% in searches from Indonesia from the first to the second half of 2015 ā€¦. this would indicate Indonesian students are looking beyond the traditional countries of USA, Australia and NZ.”

Australia, meanwhile, is generating the most searches from these diversification markets: Vietnam (16.6%), Indonesia (13.4%), Thailand (11.1%), Brazil (6.5%), and Saudi Arabia (2.4%).

Hotcourses notices a significant drop in searches for Australia from Indonesian students (from 15.4% to 11.5% over the course of 2015). It relates this to a wider context of Indonesian students feeling unwelcome in Australia: “In the early part of 2015, there had been a number of high profile news stories where asylum seekers from Indonesia were refused entry to Australia, and this appears to have filtered through into the extent to which prospective students wish to study in that country.”

Top subjects searched for by different markets

Overall, Engineering, Health and Medicine, and Business and Management are the top subject searches, but there is some variation. These are the top subject searches (in order) the report notes for five countries:

• India: Engineering, Health and Medicine, Business and Management, Applied and Pure Sciences, Computer Science and IT;
• Saudi Arabia: Engineering, Health and Medicine, Business and Management, Applied and Pure Sciences, Social Studies and Media;
• Thailand: Engineering, Health and Medicine, Business and Management, Creative Arts and Design, Social Studies and Media;
• Russia: Business and Management, Creative Arts and Design, Social Studies and Media, Health and Medicine, Applied and Pure Sciences.

Overall, the Hotcourses report sheds fascinating light on the study interests of prospective students from key markets as reflected in these studentsā€™ search behaviour. The insights from this report alone could help to finetune recruitment tactics for specific markets – including those “diversification markets” that educators are increasingly aware they have to consider in their enrolment strategies.

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