Perhaps it is not surprising then that the country has also become an increasingly important regional study destination over the past several years. The number of foreign students enrolled in Jordanian institutions nearly doubled this decade, from 25,000 in 2011 to just over 47,000 in 2016. This amounts to roughly 15% of the 315,000 students enrolled in higher education in the country that year, and the government has laid plans to raise that percentage to 25% of total enrolment by 2020.

In September 2017, the Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research established a new directorate focused on promoting Jordan as a study destination and strengthening services for visiting students. Speaking to  earlier this year, Fidaa Tameemi, the ministry’s director of International Student Affairs, said, “Our purpose is to take care of all international students from their arrival to the airport to the moment they go back home,” and indicated that the ministry will also provide support to the students “beyond academic issues”.

Along with studies in Arabic, Jordanian universities have introduced an expanding range of English-taught programmes this decade. Also of note, the ministry’s international education directorate has stepped up its marketing activity within the past year, with new marketing collateral, including expanded web content and video, and the first-ever Study in Jordan education fair in Kuwait. Other student fairs are planned for the coming year and beyond, initially in other Gulf States but with plans to expand to Southeast Asia in 2019.

A promotional video from the Jordan Tourism Board

These initiatives flow from a previously announced government target to build the country’s international enrolment to 70,000 students by 2020. Most recently, Minister of Higher Education Adel Al-Taweesi said that the target would be 75,000, but either way it will represent a near tripling of foreign student numbers within the decade.

In recent media interviews, Minister Al-Taweesi has cited the importance of both economic and cultural impacts of expanded foreign enrolment for Jordanian higher education, noting that, “Foreign students and their families attract more visitors into our country, resulting in higher touristic revenues. When they return to their homelands, they also become ambassadors of Jordan to their people.”

Important sending markets

The ministry is emphasising the quality of Jordanian education in its marketing efforts, along with the safety and security for visiting students and the diverse mix of cultures in the country.

Befitting its position at a major global crossroads, the government reports that students from 107 different countries are currently enrolled in Jordan. Ministry figures diverge somewhat from those reported by UNESCO in terms of country of origin for foreign students in Jordan, but in both cases we see a wide field of European, American, African, and Asian markets represented.

Not surprisingly, a large proportion is accounted for by students from neighbouring territories. Palestine is the single largest sender, and accounts for nearly a quarter of all international enrolment. Iraq and Syria combine for another 30%, and a further 20% of visiting students come from other important regional senders, including Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

As the plans to expand education fairs to Southeast Asia suggest, Jordan is looking further afield to build on this recent enrolment growth, and we are also seeing an expansion of institutional partnerships between Jordanian and foreign universities, particularly those in Europe, in recent years.

Jordan Rowson-Jones, for example, came from the UK to study Arabic through a partner programme with the University of Oxford, and recently explained to  that he made the choice because, “Jordan is such a melting pot of different cultural and religious experiences and backgrounds due to the sheer number of refugees that have made Jordan their home…Considering that one of my academic interests is the Arab-Israeli conflict, [this] is a good place to immerse oneself in the Palestinian viewpoint regarding the conflict.”

For additional background, please see:

• “English skills a key for mobility and employment in the Middle East and North Africa”
• “Using social media to reach students in the Middle East and North Africa”
• “A regional perspective on student recruitment in MENA”
• “Saudi Arabia’s expanding higher education capacity”

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These are some of the findings from an annual survey of international students conducted by . IDP’s Manager, External Affairs, Kim Dienhoff, presented high-level findings from four years of survey data at the recent NAFSA conference in Boston, Massachusetts.

The session focused in large part on reaching students in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). With nearly a third of the region’s 355 million people aged 15 to 25, it is perhaps not surprising that Internet usage, and the penetration of social networks in particular, is high.

Ms Dienhoff paired the IDP survey data with additional research to provide an important summary of social media habits and trends in the region.

Social media usage in MENA was particularly visible during the pro-democracy protests of the Arab Spring beginning in 2011, leaving many observers with the impression that major global networks, such as Facebook and YouTube, are widely used across the region.

Internet penetration is high with nearly 90% indicating they access the web from home. A much smaller proportion (34%) say they have Internet access at work. “For marketers this probably means that you need to schedule online activities like chat rooms, Skype sessions, virtual fairs, or webinars in the evening once people are home from work,” notes Ms Dienhoff.

There are of course variations from country to country. Internet penetration varies from 85-90% in Bahrain, the UAE, and Qatar to, at the lower end of the range, 44-50% in Jordan and Egypt. Nearly nine in ten Internet users in MENA use social media every day. Smartphones account for 40% of web impressions in the region (about 45% above the global average), and smartphone penetration ranges from a low of 16% in Morocco to 73-75% in the UAE and Qatar. It is fair to say that, at these levels of adoption, a mobile responsive site is a must for reaching students and parents in the region.

Facebook is your #1 friend

As the following chart illustrates, Facebook is the leading network with a 89% penetration among MENA Internet users. Twitter and Google+ are a distant second and third respectively, but each nevertheless has been widely adopted as well. As with the Internet and mobile usage patterns we noted earlier, the chart reflects national variations as well, including the notably high levels of Twitter usage in Saudi Arabia.

Top five social networks in MENA and selected markets by percentage of Internet users. Source: IDP

Adoption rates are helpful in looking at relative usage from market to market but the absolute numbers of users on each service is arguably the key metric. The following chart reflects the population of Facebook users by country, and illustrates that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, and the UAE have some of the largest populations in the region that are active on this leading social network.

Population of Facebook users by country, 2013. Sources: IDP, Arab Social Media Report-2013

This variance in user counts by market is notable in part because each country carries with it its own language preferences. English and Arabic are by far the most-preferred languages among the region’s Internet users, with the exception of markets such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia where French is the clear language of choice.

Beyond Facebook

Twitter has also been widely adopted by MENA Internet users and the following chart provides a summary of Twitter user counts for selected markets across the region.

Twitter user populations by country, 2013. Sources: IDP, Arab Social Media Report-2013

As the chart illustrates, Twitter is especially well used in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom accounts, on average, for roughly 47% of all Twitter traffic in the region. And, influenced by the fact that half of the Saudi population of Internet users prefers to use Arabic online, 74% of all Tweets by MENA users are in Arabic (as compared to only 18% in English).

YouTube, while not a social network as such, is one of the largest and most heavily used sites on the Internet, and its content is easily and widely shared on social media. It happens that this leading global video service is also extremely popular in many MENA states.

YouTube reach in MENA. Source: IDP

YouTube is the second or third-ranked site by usage in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, and Morocco. Across the region, there are 300 million YouTube playbacks each and every day, and Saudi Arabia leads the pack as the #1 market in the world in terms of views per capita.

“YouTube of course is highly valuable to marketers,” says Ms Dienhoff. “So if you don’t have a YouTube channel you should probably get one. You can use it to house videos that are then used on many other platforms and of course it will help greatly with your SEO.”

Implications for marketers

As the preceding charts and figures clearly reflect, social media usage in the region is highly concentrated around the most-popular social networks and social content sites in the world, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. “The good news is that they are using the same platforms you are already familiar with,” adds Ms Dienhoff. (Not to mention that you can reach the vast majority of prospects in the region in English and Arabic.)

For additional trends and best practices in social media, please see our post “Facebook is still the top social network but other platforms are growing faster.” It includes links to some of our most-popular posts on social media strategy, including tips for Facebook, Twitter, and social video.

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This January, the League of Arab States and the British Council held a that centred on education as a key to economic development in the region and to alleviating the problem of youth unemployment. One of the symposium’s main themes was improving English education and English language skills, backed by British Council research showing that MENA workers with English earn up to three times as much as non-English speakers.

Why English?

A January 2015 World Bank report stresses that while great improvements in education have been made across the region in access, funding, literacy rates, and gender equality, . These include an overall lack of educational quality and a mismatch between what students are learning and the skills that employers want.

A survey of employers in the region found that employers consider only one-third of new graduates ready for the workplace; the same study found that only one-third of students considered themselves ready to enter the labour market. In addition, school-age populations are on the rise, putting an increased strain on already-taxed public education systems.

A 2012 study undertaken in eight MENA countries by Euromonitor International (and commissioned by the British Council) pointed out that many employment-related problems could be ameliorated by better language education. The study found that salaries were generally higher in the region for English-language speakers.

Employees with better English skills enjoyed salaries from 5% (Tunisia) to as high as 200% (Iraq) more than their counterparts with no English. In addition, it found a correlation between poor fluency (and political instability) and unemployment.

The Euromonitor study noted that private-sector development in many key industries such as IT and software development, telecommunications, and banking/finance would be greatly accelerated by a boost in the number of qualified English speakers.

A long way to go

The Education First (EF) English Proficiency Index (EPI) is a global survey that measures English levels in markets around the world. Its research findings note that, “The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is by far ” In both TOEFL and IELTS test results for several past years, Arabic speakers have placed in the bottom tier of world rankings.

Egyptian students hoping to study in Turkey – a country that promotes itself strongly as a less-expensive and close-to-home destination for Arabs, with classes held mainly in English – are often stymied by their lack of academic English skills. Saudi Arabian students hoping to study in the US or UK using government scholarships are usually granted up to 18 months for language study prior to academic work, but they often need even more time still to bring their English skills to the level required for advanced study abroad.

And, similar to conditions in many parts of the world, well-qualified instructors are scarce across the region. According to a British Council survey of over 1,000 teachers in the region, the best-qualified instructors often end up being moved into higher levels of public education, where students and schools are both more interested in high marks over actual fluency.

MENA youth are fully aware of the importance of English in terms of employment mobility, but educational opportunities are still often limited to those able to receive private education, given the over-stretched resources of most public educational systems in the region.

Will travel for English

As many challenges as there currently are to greater levels of English fluency in the region, a 5-7% increase in the number of English speakers is predicted over the next few years, and special programmes to nurture this increased language skill are becoming more prevalent in the region.

Probably the most visible example of this – at least in English-speaking countries hosting large numbers of language learners – is the King Abdullah Scholarship Programme (KASP) offered by the Saudi Arabian government. In 2013, Saudi Arabia was the top country of origin for students in intensive English programmes in the US according to IIE Open Door statistics – more than twice the number of China, the next-largest source market. Most of these students intend to continue on to university programmes. Saudi Arabia was the fourth-leading source of students in full-time tertiary academic programmes in the US, according to the 2014 IIE Open Doors report, with more than a 20% increase in numbers from the previous report cycle.

Kuwait is another country exporting its language learners, with Open Doors listing the oil-rich nation as one of the fastest-growing student populations in the US. Kuwait has moved up to be the 7th most-represented country in intensive English programmes in the US.

In-country initiatives

In other MENA countries less able to send their students abroad for further opportunity, in-country programming is key, and reports the British Council is a key sponsor or provider of services in many of these countries. For example:

• In Algeria, the first phase of a nationwide teacher training and curricular reform programme for English education, under an agreement with the Algerian Ministry of Education, began in November 2014. In addition to face-to-face and online education intended to reach every English teacher in Algeria, this Strategic English Education Development for Schools (SEEDS) programme includes a complete overhaul of the English curriculum and testing system.
• Oman’s English teachers have been able to take Continuing Professional Development courses online using the British Council’s . The first instalment of highly interactive programme included discussion forums set up for smaller groups of teachers; it was deemed such a success that it spurred a second training programme in 2013/14.
• Two Moroccan universities have adopted the British Council’s , which enables them to both place students appropriately and to measure progress after students complete certain modules of the LearnEnglish Pathways programme. The early success of this pilot has led to similar e-learning methods being implemented at six other universities across the country.
• For the 1.2 million Syrian refugees and about half that number in Jordan, the need for educational opportunity is particularly acute. In Lebanon, the British Council and the European Union are co-funding a project to help Syrian refugees both with their English and their ability to integrate better into the more pluralistic Lebanese society, entitled Accessing education: language integration for Syrian refugee children. In Jordan, the British Council is working to enhance capacity in all areas of English-language education, including in refugee camps.

Changing lives

Given the current turmoil across the MENA region, and given a large and growing youth population facing more competition for employment, the value of English language skills is clearly highlighted and the success of these and other similar programmes is vital. Nic Humphries, the British Council’s director of English in the MENA region, says, “Research shows there’s no doubt that ”

There is no time to waste, both in terms of English language training and improved education in general for young people in the region. The World Bank reports that:

“The region’s youth population (up to 24 years old) will surge by about 10 million between 2015 and 2030. This sudden growth in the youth population will create increased demand for educational services at all levels and will place immense pressure on existing educational institutions. Clearly, the persistent, dual challenges of quality and relevance must be addressed before the anticipated surge. If they can, this rising tide of young people could become an engine of growth for the region.”

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We see this at a macro level, most recently in Africa where government leaders and academics have called for a dramatic expansion of higher education and have strongly linked access to quality education to the long-term development of the continent. And we see it as well at the level of individual students and families, where there is a greater emphasis on indicators of the return on investment in tertiary education.

There is a demand at all levels for stronger evidence of positive employment outcomes for graduates. We have reported on some of the current research in the field previously, and the findings of two new studies released this quarter provide further compelling indicators for educators and marketers alike.

Is education the solution?

A new study from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), , underscores why the question of education-employment links is so compelling today:

“The global jobs crisis has exacerbated the vulnerability of young people in terms of:

• higher unemployment;
• lower quality jobs for those who find work;
• greater labour market inequalities among different groups of young people;
• longer and more insecure school-to-work transitions;
• increased detachment from the labour market.”

More to the point, the authors note the dramatic rise in youth unemployment in many markets around the world is a threat to the social, economic, and political stability of those countries. The study therefore aims to provide “up-to-date evidence on labour market outcomes and education for the population of youth aged 15 to 29 in developing economies, which still make up 90% of the global youth population.”

The study examines 28 countries in every region of the world, ranging from Bangladesh and Cambodia to Brazil and Colombia to Egypt and Uganda. Within that sample, 27 countries were classed as “low- to upper-middle income.” It excludes the Russian Federation as the only high-income country in the countries covered.

The ILO found a fairly compelling linkage between education and employment across those 27 markets, in that completion of tertiary education serves as a “fairly dependable guarantee” towards secure employment. On average, 83% of youth with tertiary education were in “non-vulnerable employment.” The surety of that guarantee drops somewhat in the lowest-income countries in the study but even there, 75% of tertiary graduates were in non-vulnerable employment.

In contrast to this, the study found that youth who had completed only secondary school were reliably less well off in terms of employment prospects. Only seven in ten (72%) of secondary school graduates – across the entire sample of countries in the study – were working in non-vulnerable employment. The difference, however, was even sharper in the case of low-income countries where only four in ten secondary school leavers were securely employed.

“Unfortunately,” the study adds, “completion of education at the secondary level alone is not enough to push youth through towards better labour market outcomes in low-income countries.”

The ILO report makes an interesting distinction between employment/unemployment rates and engagement in vulnerable or non-vulnerable employment. This is, in a sense, a more nuanced understanding of employment outcomes – and the relative stability of graduate employment prospects – where “vulnerable employment” can be understood as a more precarious variety of self-employment or “contributing family work.” As the study puts it, “In other words, employment of these young workers often falls short of decent work, and is driven to a significant extent by the need to make a living in the absence of an adequate social safety net.”

Azita Berar Awad, director of employment policy at the ILO told University World News, “The results of the study to improve their higher education systems in order to reduce unemployment and informal work arrangements among the youth.”

The ILO report notes as well the persistent challenge of labour market gaps across the study sample, and again offers a more nuanced view by income category, such as:

• The issue in low-income countries, such as Liberia for example, is profound undereducation, particularly related to access to education and the ability to finance studies at the secondary and postsecondary levels.
• Middle-income countries, such as Egypt or Jordan, however, were found to have well-educated youth populations but also high levels of youth unemployment.

The ILO puts this down to a mismatch between graduate skills and employer requirements, and argues that there is a “compelling need to make education systems more demand-driven.”

The ILO’s findings are echoed by additional research released in 2014 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) via its landmark . The OECD finds that employment rates for those with tertiary education are reliably higher than those without.

At the same time, the report points out, there is a direct relationship between more limited educational attainment and the risk of being unemployed – that is, the less education you have the harder it will be to secure and retain suitable employment (“non-vulnerable employment,” in the parlance of the ILO).

This may be a reasonably obvious relationship on its face. However, the broad, evidence-based findings of global organisations such as the ILO and OECD are compelling in the education-employment linkages they illustrate and will no doubt reinforce the efforts of educators and policymakers to address persistent issues of youth unemployment.

The mobility effect

Another recent study from the UK Higher Education International Unit adds a further dimension to the employment-education discussion with its findings that study abroad can have a direct impact on employment prospects and income.

Their report, , finds that tertiary graduates who had studied (or worked or volunteered) abroad were more likely to be employed within six months of graduation. Those with international study experience were found to be earning slightly more than other graduates as well.

The study examined the profiles of 233,185 UK-domiciled graduates of undergraduate programmes (for the graduating year 2012/13), and identified 10,520 who had been internationally mobile at some point during their studies. Looking across this generous sample, the study finds that:

• Internationally mobile graduates were less likely to be unemployed six months after graduation (5.4% as compared to 6.7% for non-mobile students). The authors characterise this as, “A significant difference based on the sample sizes.”
• Mobile graduates were more likely to be working abroad (11% as opposed to only 2% of non-mobile graduates working abroad).
• Mobile graduates, on average, earned more across 11 of 17 subject areas considered in the study.

Vivienne Stern, director of the UK Higher Education International Unit, highlighted the significance of the report for students, educators, and policymakers:

“If we want to encourage students to think about spending some time abroad, we need to be able to show them what they will get out of it. While qualitative evidence of the benefits of international experience is widely available, there is little quantitative evidence to support this.”

In this respect, the Gone International report is an important addition to the research in the field, and a complement to earlier work such as 2014’s Erasmus Impact Study.

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Last month, 22 Arab states, accounting for more than 500 universities among them, .

The STI aims to boost education and research in STEM fields by reforming and upgrading universities, improving science education, facilitating international and regional cooperation, boosting scientific research capacity, and increasing financial support for research and development.

In so doing, the STI aims to tackle a number of persistent challenges in Arabian higher education, including reversing a so-called “brain drain” from the region. Dr Sultan Abu-Orabi, secretary general of the Association of Arab Universities (AARU), frames the problem this way:

“The Arab world… faces a host of hurdles when it comes to higher education and scientific research including a lack of clear focus in research priorities and strategies, insufficient time and funding to meet research goals, low awareness of the importance and impact of good scientific research, inadequate networking opportunities and databases, limited international collaborative efforts and brain drain.”

The strategy is a long-planned regional response to such issues and, more broadly, the need to better realise the potential of STEM fields for economic development. It was approved at the 14th Congress of Ministers of Higher Education and Scientific Research in the Arab World, held in Saudi Arabia in March 2014.

It encourages Arab States to boost financial assistance for research and development from the current 0.3% of GDP to 3%, with 30-40% of the funding increment coming from the private sector.

The strategy places the focus on “national and pan-Arab higher education and research initiatives in about 14 priority areas,” including agriculture, biotechnology, energy, environment, nanotechnology, space, and information technology. It will be supported by a new online platform for Arab science and technology featuring:

• a database of technological centres and universities;
• a portal for research;
• a directory of scientists, educationists; technologists, and policy-makers;
• science and technology indicators;
• development and innovation activities and projects;
• information on conferences, symposiums and workshops in the Arab region.

Tackling some long-standing issues

As we noted earlier, the STI is squarely aimed at a number of persistent challenges in higher education and research in the region. Chief among those is a concern that research in Arab institutions and research centres is not sufficiently serving the needs of either industry or society.

In a recent post on the science and development website SciDev.net, Moza Al-Rabban, general-director at the Arab Scientific Community Organization (), notes that while a staggering 30,000 research papers by Arab research centres are published annually, and 270,000 papers since 1993, most of these don’t “have any impact on the development of Arab countries or the well-being of their people.”

This disconnect between research and society (and the economy) is cited as a factor in high levels of unemployment in Morocco and Egypt. Students, according to Mahmoud Nasruddin, head of the Centre for Middle-Eastern Strategic Studies (), are chiefly concerned with obtaining a degree to increase their employability. He adds, “If scientific research is not linked with development through applicable strategies and identified research priorities, there can be no expected impact, whatever the budget increase.”

Dr Abdalla Alnajjar, chair of the Arab Science and Technology Foundation (ASTF), believes governments are crucial in the pursuit of private-public collaboration. Researchers are motivated to apply their full innovation and creativity skills if public research centres pay their staff a good rate for private sector work. However, Arab governments frequently impose additional taxes on publicly funded research centres that contribute services to the private sector, which can impede collaboration. Mr Alnajjar calls for the delivery of “incentives for researchers who provide services to the private sector and a change in the admission process for graduate students so that it becomes more controlled and takes into account society’s needs by setting clear priorities for the research they conduct.”

The broader context of institutional collaboration in the region

The approval of the STI was accompanied, also in March, by among institutions of higher learning across the same 22 Arab states. Brought forward at the recent General Conference of the Association of Arab Universities (AARU) in Amman, Jordan, the unified governance proposals emphasise a clearer understanding of the responsibilities and roles of stakeholders in university governance reform in the context of global, national, and regional challenges.

The discussions in Amman suggest a broader interest in collaboration among Arab institutions, both for the sake of improved quality and efficiency and to improve the standing of Arab institutions in world university rankings. Hilmi Salem, a higher education consultant, believes the strategy will “help Arab universities to operate efficiently and be more responsive to the needs of young people, and become sources of knowledge and innovation.”

Speaking to University World News, Martin Rose, country director for the British Council in Morocco, says, “The agenda on university governance reform should include looking at greater autonomy and its benefits, developing university brands and competitive marketing to employers and students, and much greater calibration to the external environment in all its manifestations.” Mr Rose highlights as well the need to establish alternate sources of funding for Arab higher education institutions, “without which there is no hope of providing quality higher education to a fast-growing universe of young people leaving school and looking for higher education and jobs.”

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Two new studies in particular are on our radar this week. The first, based on face-to-face interviews conducted in 24 countries by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, finds that Internet, mobile, and social media use is booming worldwide. Even more interesting, the study shows that users who adopt mobile and social media technologies are often avid, rather than occasional, users of them.

A second report – sponsored by the college search service Zinch and Uversity, a social media app for colleges – looks at social media usage and engagement in the college admissions process in the US. It finds that 97% of high school-age prospects in the US view college or university websites on their mobile devices, and that more than two-thirds of prospects report that social media plays an important role in their college search process.

These numbers skew higher than the statistics we have seen in other recent research, but even so, the implications for education marketers are clear:

• First and foremost, providers and recruiters of all types have to be prepared to engage with prospects via mobile.
• Second, mobile sites or apps have to not only drive that initial user engagement but also convert prospects through progressive steps along an enquiry and admissions path.

Related research shows us that online search, often unrelated to a specific educational brand or institution, plays a huge role in students’ efforts to explore and choose options for further study. However, much of that search activity does not convert to a higher level of engagement via an enquiry, application, or other key “opt-in” behaviours.

Consumer behaviour in the travel industry can be analogous to prospect behaviour in international education, and attendees at the recent Travolution Summit 2013 learned that users might visit as many as 22 websites before purchasing a travel product. Further, 50% of users will continue to search even after they find a travel product that fits their preferences, budgets, or other interests. As reflected in the Zinch/Uversity study above, peer influence is another important factor in travel consumer behaviour, both with respect to validating the customer’s purchase, or helping to turn a “maybe” into a “yes.”

This is well reflected in the prevalence of review-based websites in the travel industry but also in the increasing importance of alumni and student testimonials in education marketing.

Mobile and social media use taking shape around the world

The Pew Research study we noted above shows that Internet use is still building in many markets around the world. It also observes, however, that “once people do gain access to the Internet, they quickly begin to integrate it into their lives. A significant number of people in these nations say they use the Internet on a daily basis, including roughly half of those polled in Lebanon, Russia and Argentina. At least 20% use the Internet daily in 15 of the 24 nations surveyed.”

In 21 of the 24 nations included in the Pew study, a majority of Internet users are also social media users, including major platforms like Facebook and Twitter as well as other regional networks.

Of particular interest to education marketers, the Pew study finds that Internet use – and the use of web-based communications – is much more common and persistent among those under 30 years of age: “In 14 of 24 nations, at least half of 18-29 year-olds say they are online… People who do go online tend to become avid users. Half or more of Internet users in most of the countries surveyed say they use it daily.”

The study reports as well that Internet use is closely correlated with national income:

“Generally, the higher a country’s GDP per capita, the higher its percentage of Internet users. The three nations with the highest per capita incomes in this survey – Chile, Argentina and Russia – also have the highest Internet usage rates. Meanwhile, these rates are especially low in two of the poorest countries surveyed, Pakistan and Uganda, where roughly nine-in-ten never go online. Some nations, such as Kenya, Jordan, Egypt and Bolivia have more people online than might be anticipated, given their per capita income.”

Social signals and the admissions process

Nearly two-thirds of the US prospects in the Zinch study reported using social media to research colleges, and almost 70% felt that social media was either “extremely” or “moderately” influential in their choice of institution.

Social media and college research. Source: Zinch

However, the study does raise questions about the “signal-to-noise” ratio on educators’ social media channels with only four in ten prospects reporting that they had found relevant information on the institution’s social media site.

One important observation here is that students may look more to other channels, particularly an institution or school’s website or mobile app, for key programme or service information. But that they look to social media channels for review commentary – for insights from students, alumni, or other prospects – and especially for opportunities to engage directly with staff and students.

Two-thirds of prospects reported that social media conversations are an important influence in their decision-making process. The opportunity to connect via social media with currently enrolled students, other admitted students, and admissions counsellors were all rated as “very important” by roughly a third of US prospects in the Zinch survey.

Social media interaction. Source: Zinch

Research like this begins to sharpen our understanding of how different online channels work together, and how search relates to institutional or school sites and to social media networks as well. If search is the top end of the enquiry and admissions funnel, then the institutional site (or app) is a key channel for presenting relevant information and engaging prospects, and social media is another critical channel for driving engagement and conversion. And this broad spectrum of search, information discovery, and engagement behaviours are ever more taking place on mobile devices in the hands of student prospects around the world.

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The 2013 study, the third edition of EF’s English Proficiency Index, ranks 60 countries and territories around the world by adult English proficiency.

While EF has been gathering proficiency data for several years, there are some important methodological changes reflected in the 2013 rankings. Seven countries – Estonia, Iraq, Jordan, Latvia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, and the Ukraine – have been included in the index for the first time. Three others (the Dominican Republic, Pakistan, and Syria) have been dropped from the index due to insufficient data. And whereas previous editions of the EPI have relied on multi-year data sets gathered between 2007 and 2011, the 2013 ranking is based on a single-year’s worth of test data from 750,000 adults who took English tests administered by EF over 2012. EF notes the move to single-year data reporting is meant to allow the EPI to track changes in English proficiency more closely year-over-year.

EF has noted in the past that its test data reflects the patterns seen in smaller, more scientifically controlled studies. However, one necessary caveat in interpreting the EPI rankings is that the EPI is not a statistically controlled study. The test subjects completed a free test online on a voluntary basis and as such, may not entirely reflect the overall English proficiency of a given country.

As has noted of previous EPI reports:

“[The test subjects] were by definition connected to the Internet and interested in testing their English…The test will obviously not reach poor and rural folk who lack Internet access. So if a country has an urban elite who are good with English, and a lot of rural poor people who cannot take the test, its score might be relatively inflated. In another country where nearly everyone is online but English skills are mediocre, the scores might be relatively depressed.”

Even so, the EPI is an ambitious global benchmarking study for English proficiency and the study report contains not only the 60-country ranking but also more in-depth country profiles, including regional breakdowns, for 11 major world markets.

Among its key findings for 2013, the EPI report notes:

• Some Asian countries, notably Indonesia and Vietnam, have realised significant gains in English proficiency since the tracking study began in 2007, and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) have seen real proficiency improvements as well.
• In contrast to most European states, English proficiency has declined in France over the survey period. As the report notes, “The seven countries with the strongest English are all small European nations, whose size compels them to adopt an international outlook.”
• The Middle East and North Africa are the world’s weakest regions in English, and poor levels of English-language proficiency is a persistent competitive disadvantage for Latin American economies. “More than half of the countries in [Latin America] are in the lowest EF EPI proficiency band,” notes the report.

The 28 top-ranked countries on the 60-country EPI ranking for 2013.

The 2013 EPI provides as well several headline-grabbing correlations between English proficiency and economic and social development. As the report notes:

“Historically, speaking a second language, or more specifically, speaking a highly valued second language, was a marker of the social and economic elite… However, globalisation, urbanisation, and the Internet have dramatically changed the role of English in the past 20 years. Today, English proficiency can hardly be thought of as an economic advantage at all. It is certainly no longer a marker of the elite. Instead it is increasingly becoming a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, in the same way that literacy has been transformed in the last two centuries from an elite privilege into a basic requirement for informed citizenship.”

EF reports positive correlations between national EPI scores and such indicators as exports per capita, gross national income per capita, service exports, and quality of life. Writing in the Harvard Business Review EF Senior Vice President Christopher McCormick adds:

“Research shows a direct correlation between the English skills of a population and the economic performance of the country. Indicators like gross national income (GNI) and GDP go up… [The 2013 EPI] found that in almost every one of the 60 countries and territories surveyed, a rise in English proficiency was connected with a rise in per capita income. And on an individual level, recruiters and HR managers around the world report that job seekers with exceptional English compared to their country’s level earned 30-50% higher salaries.”

The 2013 report observes a weaker correlation to quality of life indicators such as life expectancy, literacy, and standards of living, and acknowledges that the link between English proficiency and human development is “more tenuous.” Countries that rank in the low and very low proficiency bands on the EPI reflect variable quality of life indicators. However, EF notes that no country ranked in the moderate or higher proficiency bands falls below the “Very High Human Development” benchmark on the Human Development Index.

The relationship between national EPI scores and corresponding rankings on the Human Development Index.

EF attributes the correlation between English proficiency and economic development (and so on to social development) to the important role that English skills play in driving export economies, attracting foreign investment, boosting service exports, and enabling international business and cultural links.

The report concludes by outlining some international best practices for building English proficiency. These can be understood as observed characteristics of countries with high EPI scores and include the following:

• Making English skills development part of the core curriculum in schools;
• Investing in English-language teacher training;
• Including testing for English proficiency in national exams, including completion and entrance exams at the secondary and post-secondary levels;
• Setting national standards for English training programmes.

Much attention will be given to the national rankings in the EPI, and how the fortunes of individual countries rise or fall from year to year. However, these broader linkages between English proficiency and development – not to mention between English skills, investment in language training, and related government and education policy – are at least as interesting. These indicators can all reflect a country’s progress in strengthening its English proficiency but also its potential and characteristics as an international education market for the long term.

Check out şÚÁĎąŮÍř Monitor’s Language Learning category.

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Youth unemployment a serious concern

Youth unemployment is the iron ball that drags down Middle Eastern economies, and the situation in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is no exception to this rule. The World Bank’s 2013 World Development Report found that almost 25% of young males and nearly half of young females in the Kingdom were out of work in 2010.

This state of affairs may shift from bad to worse as a colossal youth bulge enters – or tries to enter – the labour market. In 2012, the CIA estimated that the proportion of the population aged 25 years and younger accounted for over half of the country’s population. Jordan’s : at an estimated 26.52 births per 1000 inhabitants, Jordanians place 51st in the world.

Missed connections between education and industry

According to some experts, the Jordanian education system needs to innovate to better match its educational curricula to the needs of its economy.

Jordan’s former labour minister Atef Obeidat told the members of a job creation forum in September that only half of Jordan’s 50,000 annual graduates find work. And Shereen Mazen, programme manager at the local NGO Labour Watch, said a few months ago to The Jordan Times:

“There is a lack of coordination between the needs of the market and majors taught at universities.”

At a conference hosted by the UNDP in December 2012, participants appeared to echo Mazen’s opinions, agreeing that a gap exists between the education that students receive and the skills that the industry requires.

An article on Babelmed, an Arab website, asserts that students themselves are choosing to study in areas that are not in demand in the Jordanian market, areas that are already well supplied:

“A majority of 200,000 students admitted to Jordanian universities annually choose academic specialisations, which have highly saturated markets, such as medicine and engineering. This of course, is tied to the general culture that associates respect these positions while it ‘looks down’ on vocational jobs.”

Transforming the education system

Jordan’s King Abdullah II has, since 2003, been reaching out to global partners in an effort to reform the system from the ground up.

Noteworthy in this respect has been the World Bank-supervised ERfKE programme, a multimillion dollar sector-wide strategy for changing the methods used to teach Jordan’s children. In existence since 2003, ERfKE has introduced new curricula and examinations, created more early childhood education facilities, trained teachers in new methods, and introduced computer literacy and education strategies. Its accomplishments to date also include:

• Since 1999, the Ministry of Education has built almost 400 new kindergartens around the country, and 100 existing ones have been revitalised.
• A new kindergarten curriculum has been introduced, along with an effort to expand early childhood education in low-income areas.
• 160 new schools have been built and 800 classrooms added to existing schools.
• Existing schools have been provided with 650 new computer labs and 350 science labs.
• New curricula emphasising research, critical thinking and group work were introduced in all Jordan’s schools, along with two new assessment exams that will monitor progress and provide a framework for future improvements.
• More than 60,000 teachers have been trained in using the new curricula, and many have received supplementary training: more than 44,000 have achieved a basic computer skills certification; 24,000 have studied ICT-in-education methods, and hundreds have been trained in early childhood education.
• The Economic Opportunities for Jordanian Youth (INJAZ) programme has been expanded, and engages corporate volunteers to deliver a wide range of economic and interpersonal communication skill courses to students in public schools.

Another programme, EduWave, has introduced e-learning into the classroom, allowing teachers to “employ lively examples, models, and scientific experiments to enrich conventional textbook material.” Under EduWave, “the computerisation of all public schools began in 1999 and concluded in 2005; all schools were computerised and linked electronically.”

In addition, there have been several initiatives of late at addressing the urgent need to move more Jordanian students from traditional fields such as medical and dentistry to vocational ones:

• The Ministry of Labour, the Jordan Armed Forces, and private-sector enterprises launched a programme to provide young Jordanians with on-the-job training in the construction industry – a booming industry that traditionally hires mostly foreign workers due in part to Jordanians’ reluctance to work in this sector.
• Various bilateral contracts are being been signed to help train young Jordanians in job-rich trades such as construction and tourism. For example Jordan’s Vocational Training Corp (VTC) signed a 2.89 million-dollar agreement in 2012 with the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) to implement training programmes in the two Jordanian governorates of Zarqa and Maan to enhance vocational trainers’ skills.
• The INJAZ programme builds skills in areas such as communication, entrepreneurship, and problem-solving, and includes programmes in career guidance and work readiness. It also supports vocational skills-building through partnerships with other business and government entities. For example, this July it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Ayla Oasis Development Company to sponsor the “Travel and Tourism Business” programme in five public schools in Aqaba.

University of the future?

Another noteworthy effort to create closer ties between Jordan’s education and economy has been the creation of the German-Jordanian University (). The university is a collaboration between the Jordanian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It is modelled on the German universities of applied sciences, characterised by their focus on putting knowledge into practice and on promoting knowledge transfer.

The president of the university, Labib Khadra, believes strongly in the university’s curriculum alignment with the needs of the Jordanian labour market, , “We choose our subjects on basis of surveys about the job market … You could notice that our current academic programmes do not have counterparts in other universities; for example, the specialisation of Chemical-Pharmaceutical Engineering, which responds to the pharmaceutical industry in Jordan.”

Mr Khadra has criticised redundancies in the Jordanian higher education system in other interviews, saying to the Oxford Business Group last year:

“Jordan has 28 universities, 18 of which are private and 10 of which are public. These schools need to complement one another, and not act as competitors. Currently, institutions are duplicating each other in academic offerings, which makes it more difficult for the university system to make a holistic contribution to the national economy. This also produces an excess of students in certain industries, which increases the difficulty for graduates to find gainful employment.”

Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Wajih Owais described the university as a “quality leap” in Jordan’s higher education system.

The GJU is not a branch campus of a German institution, but a member of Jordan’s public university system. According to The Jordan Times, the university currently has “more than 2,645 students, of whom 15% are non-Jordanian.”

Clashes on campus

As much as there are positive developments in the higher education sector, there are also depressing indications that the violence of the overall region has not left Jordan entirely untouched.

Armed clashes between university students have occurred this year on various campuses (mostly public ones) and have killed five so far. They are blamed mostly on inter-tribal hostilities; some see them as isolated incidents involving relatively few students while others see them as a major trend that could make students want to leave the country for higher education abroad.

Online education looks promising

Within Jordan, the potential role of online education is attracting notice and investment.

Internet penetration has been rising rapidly in Jordan in recent years, and there have been notable tech start-up success stories, including that of Maktoob, which The Oxford Business Group describes like this:

Jordan is the birthplace of the biggest Arabic language media portal, Yahoo! Maktoob, which was born out of Yahoo’s purchase of the Amman-based Maktoob portal in 2009. Yahoo! said that in June 2011, Maktoob had 50 million unique users and a 40% share of the online display advertising market in the Middle East and North Africa, making it the market leader. The company claims that the site is the second-most-visited online Arabic news portal after Al Jazeera and that its OMG! Arabic celebrity news site, launched in 2010, is the most popular Arabic entertainment website.

In late 2011, the Jordan Times covered tech company Umniah’s launch of a domestic online learning platform named “ULearn,” which offers courses through web and mobile-based platforms. Umniah CEO Ihab Hinnawi explained why his company decided to create ULearn by saying:

“In light of fast growth figures in the number of Internet and mobile users in Jordan, I expect demand [for] e-learning and e-training courses to rise sharply in the next few years.”

The rise of online education appears to have the support of the Jordanian government, which has taken measures to accelerate its spread by attracting international providers.

In 2010, the Jordanian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research adopted guidelines for recognising “non-traditional” higher education institutions outside of the country, including electronic learning.

This confluence of high demand for online education and welcoming legislation for foreign providers has attracted the attention of international observers. In a recent interview with şÚÁĎąŮÍř Monitor, Dr Derar Bal’awi, regional director with the Saudi International Group for Educational Consultancy, urged educational institutions to grasp the opportunity to enter Jordan’s e-learning market.

English language and the knowledge economy

While the knowledge and skills required by the Jordanian economy naturally include the technical and commercial sciences, a recent British Council report argues that the most important discipline for economic growth and professional success in the country is in fact the English language.

The report refers to research by Euromonitor International, which found that investors from the West (as well as major eastern economies in China and India) tended to base their investment decisions on the pervasiveness of English speakers within a country’s population; in other words, foreign direct investment (FDI) depends on English language skills.

The British Council noted that the Jordanian government appears to be acting in a manner consistent with its economic aims, by heavily promoting English education in the public school system.

On the level of Jordanian business, the report found that English took an equally important role, for reasons similar to those that apply to the entire economy. The sectors of the Jordanian economy that are growing fastest tend to be those that operate on the global market, such as ICT and tourism. These sectors are creating and will continue to create the largest number of jobs; therefore their needs determine the requirements of the labour market.

As a result, the report found that professional success in Jordan has become fixed to an individual’s English-language abilities.

For example, salary differences ranged from 20% to 50% more for English speakers, and English speakers were likely to advance more quickly than other staff. English was also found to be a required first language with almost a third of hiring companies, while 69% required English as a second language. In fact, many hiring companies claimed that finding employment for non-English speakers in contemporary Jordan was close to impossible.

This demand for English-language speakers has created a related demand for English-language instruction.

Both the public and private sector are turning to language schools to provide instruction for employees; 13 of the 23 companies interviewed by the British Council arranged English-language instruction for staff.

Among Jordanian families, secondary schools that teach English-language curricula such as the IGCSE, the SAT, and the International Baccalaureate have gained increasing popularity.

What about study abroad?

There are currently only 10,992 Jordanian students studying abroad at the tertiary level, according to the UNESCO interactive map showing where university-level students are studying abroad. The Ukraine is the top destination for Jordanian students studying abroad, with 2,236; the US is next, with 1,977; and the UK is in third, with 1,355.

With uncomfortable unemployment rates and an ongoing gap between skills needed and possessed – reforms to address this gap will need time to take full effect – the prospect of study abroad may become increasingly inviting to young Jordanians. The Jordan Times, for example, reports intense interest in the private American Community School in Amman among Jordanian parents who anticipate their children studying abroad for university. They quote Larry McIlvain, the superintendent of the school, as saying:

“Many of our students go to university in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom, or to British, Canadian or American universities that have been set up in the Gulf. What we constantly get back from our community is that the kids leave here with great 21st-century skills of problem solving, collaboration and working together in teams; skills they need to survive in the workforce.”

Opportunities seem abundant

Jordan’s mobility numbers are modest but – with its economy so in need of vocational skills training, a similarly huge requirement for English-language training, intense interest from King Abdullah II in reforming the education system, and a burgeoning student demographic – this is a market (like so many others in the region) that is likely to see more international education linkages and greater interest in study abroad in the future.

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