Hello and welcome to Higher Thinking on Higher Ed. I am Charlyn Carrington of Content Strong Communications. We guide universities, colleges, nonprofits through content crisis lead gen and digital strategy solutions. Today, I am excited to continue diving to the trends and challenges encountered by communications and marketing leaders in higher ed. And I am honored today to welcome Michael to the hot seat. Michael is the Vice President for North America at the World Grad, where he leads efforts to expand access to higher education through transnational pathways. With 25 years plus of experience across higher ed and the private sector, he's held senior roles at IDP Education, Cambridge Education Group, and Apply Board, shaping how International students connect with institutions in the US and in Canada as well. Thank you. 03:34 Sharlyn, Content Strong Thank you so much again for bringing your expertise and your, all of your knowledge to this conversation today. How you doing? 03:40 Michael Maine Great. Thanks for inviting me. 03:42 Sharlyn, Content Strong Of course. Happy to have you. So, I mean, I gave a little bit of a background on kind of, you know, where you've been and kind of what you've done. But you know, you're working across institutions, across geographies and often, you know, across competing priorities, quite frankly. What does your day to day look like right now and what's kind of the hardest part of some of the work that you're doing. 04:03 Michael Maine Day to day? As far as what my workday looks like is pretty. It's probably different than somebody with a traditional job. So I work on teams, global teams. So I get up super early, as I mentioned to you, around 5, 5:30, so that I can align on calls with our teams. South Asia and India also overlap with our east coast and our UK teams. And I think, you know, if you're part of global education, you've got to be adaptable to a lot of different time zones and travel and circumstances and things like that. But I would say my day to day currently is, you know, I'm in a client facing role where I work directly with universities throughout North America to help open up these pathways for international students to come to their campuses. 04:56 Michael Maine And in my current role, what we're doing is creating online pathways where students in their overseas markets can take courses online in their home country before transferring onto one of the campus pathways and finish their degree on campus. So I'm just really discussing the logistics of doing that, negotiating contracts, Mouse, and once those are settled, begin promoting the programs through our network of counselors. 05:31 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay. Okay. So. So I mean, I'm going to take a step back now away from the day to day and think just specifically about your role and thinking about your organization and you know, kind of its mission and how your role contributes to that bigger mission, if you want to speak on that a little bit. 05:49 Michael Maine Yeah, absolutely. I, I view I'm in a client facing role. I would say so. 05:53 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 05:54 Michael Maine I think my value is my relationships with universities throughout the US And Canada. I began in higher ed at a small private liberal arts College called St. Michael's College in Vermont where I spent five years recruiting students, you know, going into markets, traveling through Southeast Asia, through Latin America, Europe, visiting high schools, going to, you know, student fairs and conferences and things like that. So I have a lot of the same experiences as My university partners do. 06:26 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 06:28 Michael Maine So we have a lot in common. We have shared travel experiences, maybe shared colleagues, you know, and a shared mission and purpose to really serve international students and open up opportunities for them. So my value to our company is, are those relationships, my ability to create a value for our programs and get them interested in trying something new, you know, a new strategy for recruiting students through this online endeavor. 06:59 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay, understood. So, I mean, I want to pick up on that a little bit. So you tell, you know, I've been having a lot of these conversations as you know, and everyone's been talking about some of the bigger and deeper challenges they've been having. And I think about just in general, how the sector has changed. I mean, you've been through waves of disruption in this. In this sector. Right. From 911 to Covid to, you know, kind of today's policy volatility. You know, which of. Of those shifts or any more shifts that kind of come to mind are still kind of shaping your work the most and your organization the most. And how do they kind of show up in the challenges that you're facing now? 07:36 Michael Maine Well, I have been in the industry for 25 years, so I've seen a lot of disruption. It seems like just as we get momentum, something comes in and changes everything. 07:45 Sharlyn, Content Strong Yeah. 07:46 Michael Maine Which makes it really interesting to work international. You know, you've got to consider health pandemics, financial crises, political disruptions, and that sort of thing. But I would say, you know, really, after 911 in 2002, there were some major regulatory changes, Right. That came into the industry. It was called sevis, the Student Exchange Verification Information System. 08:11 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 08:12 Michael Maine And every college had to have basically, you know, implemented this government program to really track international students, their progress, their location in the country and so on. They also required that all students coming to the US had to sit for a visa interview as well. So that was sort of, to me, that's almost the beginning of the current international education space, because that was the first barrier we had to start working around. The next one was the financial crisis of 2008, which to me was transformative to our industry, because at the time, colleges and universities throughout the US Weren't really working in the commercial space at the time. They were just, you know, the United States, our universities, are a beacon of higher education. They're the number one choice of international students versus Canada or options in the UK or Australia. 09:14 Michael Maine So they really relied on their prestige to attract international students. And they certainly wouldn't pay per student, which is A model that's become widely adapted where a university will partner with a vendor that recruits the students and they pay a placement fee per student, usually about 15, 20% of the first year's tuition. So the big disruption was actually the financial crisis of 2008, when for the first time, US universities were facing unprecedented budget cuts and they were cutting whole departments and faculty and so on. It provoked a lot of new thinking among the administrations of these universities that they wanted more out of state tuition and out of state international because out of state tuition is sometimes even double what the instinct tuition is. 10:11 Michael Maine And they couldn't afford to build out their own teams of recruiters like me, or spend millions in marketing and advertising or have in country reps or set up their own outposts in these distant markets. So that's when they started thinking about contracting with these international recruitment agencies. And once we sort of stepped over that and you know, we developed best practices for this, for engaging in this type of recruitment. And then a lot of universities began to participate in the sort of work and the industry just really grew from 2008 till now. Lots of organizations and companies popped up. And in an effort to serve this demand for international students. 11:00 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right, right. I mean, that's very interesting. I want to step back for a second and talk about. You mentioned the regulatory change that happened even before the financial crisis. And this is this idea that international students, I think, had to actually kind of sit for interviews, talk a little bit about that, because I'm trying to figure out how. What that barrier looks like for you, obviously, and your work and then for students as well. 11:24 Michael Maine I think before and I. I worked prior to 2002, when SEVIS was implemented. You know, I used to be able to. A student could be here or a person could be here visiting on a B2 student visa. And I could actually just send a letter to the INS and ask them to change them to an F1. And they would just do it. It would take about 90 days. 11:45 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 11:46 Michael Maine I think post 9 11, they were worried about, to be honest with you. There were foreign students, Right. I believe that attended aviation school and they weren't tracked. And they felt like, you know, this was a vulnerability to national security and they wanted to make sure that they had some tight regulations on student visas. And, you know, in this category, the F1 student visa, they call it, you know, this, the students are highly scrutinized. They have to apply to the university, get accepted. They have to show that they have the financial ability to pay in cash for at least the first year they've got to provide, you know, certified academic transcripts and number of other supporting documents just to get accepted to the university. 12:37 Michael Maine And under Sevis, then, you know, we issue an i20, it's called, it's sort of a preliminary acceptance, a government document that says, okay, you've met all the requirements, take this to your local embassy or consulate and sit down and meet with a visa officer to determine if they'll allow you into the country. And those visa officers are really, you know, they're trying to scrutinize whether or not the student will come, will enroll at the school, will graduate, and especially if they'll return back to their home country. That's right. Probably the critical part, they don't want them just this to be an open door where they just come in, take a few classes and disappear into the country. So most of the questions in the visa interview center around that, you know, do you know anybody in the United States? 13:29 Michael Maine Or what's your motivation for getting this degree? Or you know, why would you come back to China or to India? You know, and typically the students answers will help determine whether or not they get those student visas. But then once they arrive on campus, they have to register with a primary designated school officer, they call it the person who really runs Sevis. And they monitor their progress. And I say, you know, they, these students have to make, take courses full time. They have to make reasonable progress toward a degree. They may be eligible to work after they graduate, but opt or something like that. Cpt, but they're pretty closely monitored. 14:15 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's, that's really interesting. And what it makes me think of is, you know, coming up, coming at it from a communications perspective is the challenges around storytelling, right? Like how do you tell international students come here? Because there's this much more opportunity and you know, you'll change your careers, your trajectory in this way and you'll get these, you know, these much of benefits this way. But there are these and this and this hurdles. So I really think about, you know, with increasing scrutiny around international recruitment, I wonder how you personally navigate the tension between kind of growing numbers and needing to kind of check those, you know, check those check marks and reach those numbers and you know, doing what's right for students. You know, what makes that balance kind of difficult for you in your current context. 15:05 Michael Maine That's a good point. So there are recruitment markets like China, India, elsewhere, you know, throughout Southeast Asia, Latin America, and then there's destination Markets, right. This is where the students would like to go. So the U.S. Canada, UK and Australia are destination markets for students who want to go to universities. And Canada and Australia especially had sort of a competitive advantage on the US in the sense that they're actually smaller countries and they're trying to attract international students as a means of foreign investment, as means that getting them there, getting them to the top universities and helping them stay there at work and start whole careers or maybe whole new industries. 15:51 Michael Maine And so their immigration regulations are a lot different and they can be a lot more enticing for international suits who in the past could go to Canada or Australia and segue right into a professional career and, you know, make a living in those destination markets where they might have more limited opportunities. In the US however, and this is just speaking anecdotally from the seats that I've met. You know, the US is home to some of the best universities in the world and some of the most iconic and well known companies in the world. You know, you could just look at the tech sector right now, just how, you know, we dominate that sector. And so students want to come, in my opinion, they're often drawn to coming to learn English, American English, right. 16:43 Michael Maine Earn a degree and be socialized on an American campus, a Western campus, where they can gain the soft skills, so to speak, that they'll need to succeed in a corporate environment similar to the ones that exist here in the U.S. Let's say Silicon Valley. And so that's really some of the appeal to them is that this is, you know, the US higher education experience is unique. You know, they'll have networking opportunities, they'll be able to have a classmate or a roommate or work on projects with teams of, you know, American students. They'll learn terminology and social bars and things that they can bring into the boardroom and work on projects with big companies. 17:31 Michael Maine You know, I think you understand it's not that those opportunities don't exist in Canada or Australia or the uk it's just that the perception is that the US sort of the best place for them to go. 17:44 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay, that's interesting. So now, so now. So getting back to what I was saying, so the perception really is that the US is the best place to go. And that helps, what I'm gathering, from what you're saying, kind of helps you do the job that you do every day because honestly they have such a, the US has this reputation of it's going to drive you forward because you're here and you're in this environment and gaining these skills and building this network. 18:10 Michael Maine Right. And so I guess my individual challenge, representing organizations that help schools recruit international students is that, you know, some of the schools, you know, the top tier schools really don't need any assistance attracting international students. 18:27 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 18:28 Michael Maine I remember being really excited about the possibility of working with a school like Pepperdine. And I talked to them and, you know, they're in Malibu and that what a great destination for international students. It's here in California. And, you know, I talked to the director and he was just very candid with me. He says, mike, if we needed more international students, we would just accept more international students. You know, we get 60,000 applications to our school every year from overseas. So, you know, for some of the most prestigious schools, Ivy League schools, UC schools, some of the top private schools, they're not really looking, you know, to expand international enrollments through a private vendor. 19:11 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 19:12 Michael Maine I think where I have the most success are with schools that are really great. They're highly ranked, they're highly regarded. They may, you know, be a satellite campus, a state school, a private school that's tuition revenue dependent, that's looking to expand, you know, that really isn't globally known and can be introduced to our students one one through our counselors. So. 19:40 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay, okay, I get it. I get it now. Yeah. And I can definitely see the opportunity there. So if I think about, you know, institutional partnerships and gaps, I mean, when you're working with universities and institutions, you know, what do you see is the biggest disconnect between what international students actually need and what institutions are currently delivering? And what's the impact of that misalignment? If there is a misalignment, but assuming that there is, what is the impact of that misalignment on your work? 20:11 Michael Maine Just to generalize, I think that there's a lot of students in Asia, particularly in China, are obsessed with rankings. 20:20 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right, right. 20:21 Michael Maine The school ranking and that. And they think, you know, the ranking means everything. And we might know that, you know, rankings are pretty arbitrary, are based on acceptance rates and so on. I would say the biggest gap is, you know, when we really get into counseling students, you know, they might be Harvard or bust, or I want to go to Berkeley or Stanford or so on. 20:42 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 20:43 Michael Maine And they might not be academically even eligible to do that or possibly can't afford it or, you know, or they're just. The acceptance rates are so low. So what I think we do a good job of is presenting several options to students, you know, you say something like, well, you might not have heard of Washington State University, but they have the program that you are interested in, let's say engineering at a tuition rate that's very affordable, it's in a very safe location. You know, we've had students go through there and graduate, go on to XYZ or this graduate school or so on. Or even, to be honest with you, community colleges over the last few years. 21:26 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 21:27 Michael Maine You know, they used to have a really big stigma with international students. They consider, they don't even understand what is the concept of a community college. What is a college? College sounds like high school to them. 21:40 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right, right. 21:41 Michael Maine And you know, they're open admissions and they're, you know, basically commuter schools. So over the years, community colleges have done a really good job of building a value for their two year programs because they articulate right into the SUNY system or the Cal State system or the University of California system or really any top tier school will accept a community college transfer student. So presenting those options, it's kind of exciting for me because students can now get real value. They can go to a community college and get their general education out of the way at a close quarter on the dollar of the price it would take for a four year degree. 22:22 Michael Maine They're better academically prepared, I think if they go through, you know, a system like that where they can, you know, land and learn the rigors of US higher education, writing papers, working in groups before they transfer and complete their degrees. 22:39 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay, that's an interesting way of, that's an interesting pipeline. Actually. Like the way you've set that up now is you're using, honestly, community colleges what the way I'm seeing it as almost a pipeline into other institutions, which I think is actually pretty smart way to go. I think a little bit about really measurement. Right. Like, look, let's look ahead to the next six to 12 months on your radar. What are the top one to two outcomes you're working towards, you're looking towards, and whether that's partnerships or whether that's student experience or whether that's organizational growth. And then I think about the measurement piece of that. You know, how are you measuring or tracking whether you're actually reaching those goals and what does it mean for you if you actually hit those targets? 23:21 Michael Maine For me, personally, professionally, you know, I would like to serve a small number of university partners that are, you know, thinking strategically, that have, you know, institutional support for internationalization, that are willing to underwrite, not just the marketing and recruitment aspects of bringing International students to campus, but also all the underwriting, all the student support mechanisms that need to be in place in order for them to thrive and be successful. And you know, as you mentioned, I've had 25 years of experience doing this. There's no real point in recruiting all these students if you can't serve them once they're on campus. 24:02 Michael Maine And I like to work with universities that have a long tradition of doing that and that have teams on campus that are focused on, you know, student advising, student life, you know, having residence halls and, you know, food services and that sort of thing that, you know, can remain open during the holidays, you know, that have a thoughtful strategy about their, the outcomes for those students that we recruit for them. I'd like to see those students, you know, they persist a graduation at a really high rate already. They're very diligent students, but, you know, giving them extra support, ESL support or through seva support, immigration support, scholarships, you know, to help ease the financial burden, they're already paying so much. Things like that. That, that to me, when I see those boxes checked at a university, it makes me excited about working with them. 25:03 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay, so that's. Therefore your goal is finding more opportunities to support, work with universities to find better support systems for some of the students that you bring their way? Is that what you're saying? 25:15 Michael Maine That's right. I don't, I don't want to just plug in, let's say a community college or a small school that, into this big network that we have of recruiters and start, you know, sending large numbers of international students to their campus if they just don't have the me. The things in place to serve them. So I'm very, I'm much more conscientious about that nowadays, now that I've seen the impact that it has on students and a campus. 25:45 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. I, and I imagine. And you can tell me if I'm wrong how, what does it look like? What does measurement look like in that kind of situation? Like, how do you measure those outcomes knowing that you've, let's say you've connected one international student with this great institution that's able to provide all these support services. What does, what does success look like for you? How are you able to actually draw that line between, you know, what you're hoping to see? 26:08 Michael Maine I think the first one, it really is retention rate. You know, when students are recruited through agents, they call them recruitment agents overseas or sub agents or, you know, These big recruitment platforms, you know, what are they telling the students? You know, what do the students know going in? You know, I worked, as I said, at St. Michael's College in Vermont, and you know, some of these students had never seen snow in their lives or they had never been in a rural environment. So on the very beginning, in the very beginning of these conversations, you know, you have to be able to convey to them what the on campus experience is going to be like. It's much easier now with, you know, YouTube videos and right. 26:54 Michael Maine Social media and really these student ambassadors who can really relay in a peer to peer conversation what their experiences are like at these campuses and how to prepare for it. But yeah, early on you could take a look at the retention rates and if you were sending, you know, a dozen students to St. Michael's College and they were, you know, five of them were leaving in the first semester, then yeah, you know, a messaging problem in that regard. And I would say also graduation rates, you know, there's, we want to make sure that the students graduate. A lot of these are first generation students who are the very first ones, the pioneers to leave their families and go abroad and go to college. 27:35 Michael Maine And they're being funded by their parents, their aunts and uncles, their whole family is behind them financially in order to, you know, embark on this endeavor. So we want to make sure that they get the degree and the outcome they want so that they can go back to their home countries, start a business, work at their family business, or work at one of these major multinational companies that are in their region or in their city. 28:00 Sharlyn, Content Strong That's interesting if you put it, you know, when I, when you think about it that way, you can see how helping make these connections between international students and these institutions actually really uplift communities globally. Right. Because of the, some of the knowledge and the experience that they've had elsewhere, they can bring back home and really support their international or their own communities. I think that's really interesting. Before I ask you my last question, I wanted to ask you quickly just about, you know, what some of your wins were, if you had any wins in the last, let's say, six months or year that you're really proud of and kind of what you think drove that success. 28:35 Michael Maine You know, Covid was a major disruptor to our industry. You know, because students couldn't travel, universities weren't open, the campuses were closed. And again, just like the financial crisis of 2008, it provoked a lot of new thinking about online learning. 28:52 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 28:52 Michael Maine About take courses online. Suddenly you know, the universities had to start delivering courses online in order to maintain their enrollment. And also international students needed to take courses online. There used to be a big stigma to that, just as there was to community colleges. So when these online platforms began to open up, I felt like we all did a good job, the students, the recruiters, and the universities of adapting to this new technology, pulling really the universities sort of out of this old world mentality of having students in a classroom lecture to and bringing their content online and oversimplifying this. But you know, it allowed for some groups to step in that had expertise in this field, in this space of teaching online courses to really capitalize and assist students. And that's what we're doing. 29:50 Michael Maine So post Covid, we're teaching the first year online or the first semester of graduate online, and then the students transfer to our campuses and complete their degree. And one of the byproducts of this is that it reduces the cost of overall tuition for the students. So now they're really only taking paying three full years on campus. And then it also, it better prepares them to succeed on campus because they get a whole year or semester under their belt. Taking courses online through an accredited American university before transferring and starting to hold rigors of living in a dormitory and setting up their bank account, going to classes and making friends. You know, they're, you know, they're about a sophomore by the time they do that. 30:38 Michael Maine And finally, the last real benefit is that it's easier for these students to get student visas, to go through all the rigors of, you know, applying to university, getting the visa appointment, and succeeding at getting approved for their visa. And that's because they've had a year to demonstrate that they could be academically successful through these online programs, that they're making progress toward your degree, they've paid for the courses, they're accepted to the university, and they have a pathway in. And so our visa acceptance rate is much higher than a traditional student recruited through an agency. 31:15 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay, that's a big win. Yeah. Okay, so, you know, that's a very big win. Easy to understand and to see. And I think about now on the flip side, you know your big barriers or your big challenges, if you could instantly remove one big barrier in your way, whether it's operational, whether it's policy related, whether it's structural, that's kind of slowing down your progress, or making your day harder, making your job, your role harder, what would you remove and why? 31:45 Michael Maine I think, and not to be political, you know, we've had different administrations come and go over the last 25 years. But there's a lot of uncertainty under this new presidential administration. 31:56 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 31:57 Michael Maine You know, and he has been president in the past and you know, he's introduced travel bands, you know, and right now he's very focused on immigration, deportations. He recently made the news by revoking Harvard University's ability to even host international students. And there's about, I think they said that Harvard has about 40% of their student populations from their international. They're foreign based. So I feel like, you know, I want to understand his strategy or what the strategy is there. I think it's creating a lot of uncertainty among the student markets that I work in, like whether or not they're welcome here, whether or not they get here though, for some arbitrary reason be deported right in the middle of their degree, you know, for something as small as a traffic violation or writing an op ed at the student newspaper. 32:55 Michael Maine So actually, I think we're coming into a really uncertain time, maybe even more so than a financial crisis or post 911 or even Covid so because it's just hard to really forecast what the future holds for students in our country. 33:11 Sharlyn, Content Strong Are you seeing that already? Are you seeing, you know, are you seeing some of the international students you're working with and talking with day to Day already start to talk about their, I don't want to say fears, but their concerns about some of that yet? 33:26 Michael Maine Yeah, I mean, I haven't yet. I'm not really engaging a lot with student conversations. But, and I do know from during the, not to over generalize, but they're incredibly resilient folks. If you think about. Yeah, a profile of international students. They've already overcome so much in their lives, you know, and they come from countries where, you know, there's, they face a lot of, you know, difficulties with their own country's administration. So, you know, I, I don't think it's a real deterrent. I think you might see people just push, pause here for a minute and see and wait till what happens next year to see if there's any certainty there. 34:08 Sharlyn, Content Strong Do you think that this, and this is kind of an out of pocket question, but do you think that it will impact the way universities and institutions in US in particular approach wanting to attract international students? 34:23 Michael Maine For, for me as a professional who works with universities, I, I wonder about that myself. You know, will they want to invest international education? Will they want to work with external vendors like ours? Well, they want to partner with foreign universities, you know, considering Basically the hostility of this current administration toward that, those endeavors, I think about that. But I also think looking back, that whenever we've had a crisis like 9, 11 or the financial crisis or Covid, universities have really relied on specialists like us, you know, to help navigate, you know, these, this difficult terrain, so to speak. And so I think there'll always be work, whether or not it looks like this or something else that we can do with universities to help them keep those recruitment channels open. 35:19 Sharlyn, Content Strong Okay. And you know, I've asked you all of my questions, but my one final thing is there anything else we've missed or anything else you think is really important to talk about specifically related to international students and what kind of the current climate looks like today? 35:34 Michael Maine Well, I think one misconception I face a lot here in the US Is that international students are taking the place of American students. 35:42 Sharlyn, Content Strong Right. 35:43 Michael Maine And I hear that quite a bit. And I understand, you know, there's usually about 5 to 10% of US schools, population is international. But what I think people need to understand is that those students are paying out of state tuition or sometimes double or triple the tuition. So they're helping to underwrite a lot of the operations of the university. They're helping to underwrite the discounts and scholarships that Americans receive, you know, by being, by paying full fare. And there's another benefit that I often hear faculty and professors talk about with international students is that you're really bringing the globe and into the classroom. 36:22 Michael Maine So American students like me, I grew up in Michigan and, you know, may not ever go to Vietnam or China or, you know, Brazil, but they'll have classmates that they can collaborate with on projects and learn about their countries, their cultures, their economies and attitudes and, you know, things like that. So it really enhances the overall learning environment in the classroom and it really helps improve actually the American education for American students as well. So they're not really taking the place. They're really helping to support the universities and they're really enhancing the learning environment as well. 37:02 Sharlyn, Content Strong Guess bringing that diversity of thought directly into the classroom. Absolutely. And how enriching that can be. Well, this has been a good chat, Michael. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your time, your experience, your perspective with us today, with me today. It's been such a thoughtful and generous conversation to our listeners, watchers, anybody who sees this. I hope this episode sparked ideas, affirmed your own experience, helped you see a challenge in the new light. If you're a communications or marketing leader in higher ed and you Want to contribute to this evolving conversation. I'd love to hear from you. Because the truth is these conversations aren't just talk. They really are the start of a shared roadmap for the future of our field. So let's get to work. Thank you so much again, Michael. 37:44 Michael Maine Wonderful. Thank you.