We saw a comment on our Al Jamiat site regarding the Iraq Education Initiative asking if the scholarship had been “canceled” due to the current economic climate…

Our initial instinct was to quickly respond with a resounding NO! That’s completely incorrect! However, in the interest of backing up our response, we sent an email to the Director of the program, to which he responded:

“This is absolutely not true. We are moving forward and the announcement to the students to submit their application is scheduled for July 15.”

So there you go folks, its time to start seriously thinking about how you’re going to recruit these Iraqi students. We suspect the in-country recruitment fairs are going to be few and far between at first.  Online recruiting will be the best way to reach these “unreachables” .

A Facebook Fan page may sound overly simple, but its a great place to start – along with a localized page in Arabic aimed specifically at the Iraqi students. A very minor marketing investment that can reward your campus with incredible new students that will truly diversify the school.

Hope you’re already a fan of our Facebook page, if not – what are you waiting for?!

An excellent article in Inside Higher Ed today highlights a topic we at USEG discuss with our clients often: the use of a consortia to attract international students to a State they may not already know about.  Read the full article here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/22/consortia

States spend money on attracting tourists by advertising in magazines, billboards, and TV – its time for colleges and universities to grab on to this style of marketing and pull students in to the state. At the Washington International Education Council (WIEC) conference in Washington DC this past January, a representative from the US Commerce Service discussed the importance of international education consortia.  They gave examples of states who have already put this idea into practice including Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Oregon.

In budget crunch-time pooling together resources is not just smart, its necessary. By collecting advertising dollars from private high schools to small niche colleges all the way to specific graduate programs, everyone can benefit from a high impact ad campaign aimed at international students.  Many countries, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK are competing aggressively by the use of consortia to attend more trade shows, advertise in more magazines and attempt to attract more of the foreign students.

We encourage you to call your US Commerce service representative to discuss the support they can give you, or contact us for assistance on your project!

The University of Pennsylvania is teaming up with Google to include the campus in the Google Street View feature.

A camera topped tricycle contraption was seen on the UPenn campus (see the photo here) snapping photos for the Google Street View service. The use of the tricycle instead of the usual Google car allows for street-level views of pedestrian only areas. Perfect for a college campus!

This is an interesting development for college campuses – allowing students to explore dorms, campus buildings, even bike trails virtually. Virtual campus tours have been used with varying success over the years, but few have reached out to international students specifically.

While it may be a while for some smaller or more rural campuses to find themselves on the Google map service, a virtual tour aimed at international students is an excellent item to add to your website. Just remember that many international students may not have access to very high or fast bandwidth, using shorter videos allow for students to still have a chance to view the video and see a virtual tour of your campus.