I am so excited to share an incredible resource for international educators today! IDP Education is a leader, world-wide, in student placement in international education. There's nothing more important than exploring the world, and working together to create intercultural understanding. IDP Education facilitates international student mobility around the world. We were lucky enough to sit down and talk with Mark Shay, Regional Director, North America, of IDP Education. We talked about IDP USA, international education, how universities can utilize IDP's services, and goals of internationalization. Here's what he had to say...

WE: Please tell us about IDP Education...

MS: IDP Education is the world's largest student placement service.  For decades the company has been working with families in Asia and the Middle East to match their students to the college or university of their dreams.  Until last year, the service has been focused on placements into Australia; we now are phasing in the USA as our second destination.  The USA group, based in Philadelphia, works with universities to help them understand overseas recruiting and, if qualified, partner with IDP Education.

WE:  How does IDP help the international education community?

MS: IDP services overseas are focused on serving the student.  Our professional counselors meet with the students and their families, assess their academic abilities, English proficiency, discuss the very important issue of quality versus price, then address issues like personality needs and geographic preferences.  Through a series of meetings, we guide students to the "best fit" institution.

WE: How can universities utilize IDP's services?

MS: Universities are the other side of the equation as they contract with IDP to pay for the majority of the service.  Professional counseling is expensive and through placement fees paid by the universities to IDP, we can offer our services to students at a very reasonable rate.

WE:  How can international educators promote intercultural and diversity issues through the flow of students across borders?

MS: Nothing beats time spent overseas.  In the States, we often read about the success of Australian universities at recruiting overseas.  This doesn't come without significant investment, investment in travel to places where they want students come from and investment in developing local representatives to carry their message when they leave.  It is not unusual for an Australian university to have an international recruiting staff of 25 and to work with dozens of local agents.  In the USA, it is very unusual to have an international recruiting staff of more than four people and agent representation is very new.

WE:  Who are your University Partners?

MS: IDP currently has 53 University Partners, ranging from very small private liberal arts colleges (College of Wooster, Thomas College, Mary Baldwin) to some of the best known state universities (Colorado State, University of Mississippi).  Our goal is to build a broad-based "portfolio" of universities, with representatives from urban to rural, private and public, research to Liberal Arts, broad-based to special focused and all degrees of size and selectivity.

WE:  How do you feel that universities can best promote international education?

MS: International education succeeds when the universities are equipped to handle the various special needs of international students.  Most international students are hesitant to be "one of a kind" on campus and do not naturally assimilate with their domestic classmates.  They will have natural tendencies to be with students from their homeland, feeling comfortable with those who share their religion/faith speak their native language and savor the same food.  Overcoming this takes lots of patience, lots of nurturing and lots of time.  Empowering a university community to be aggressively welcoming takes manpower, leadership - and of course money.

WE:  Please tell us about being one of eight agencies that have passed the certification process from the American International Recruitment Council, that sets the standards for the recruitment of college students from overseas.

MS: Being certified by AIRC was a great step forward for both the certification agency and IDP.  We were able to demonstrate how our Australia model was transferrable to the US market and were able to demonstrate to the reviewers that IDP has the capacity to fully serve the US market.  AIRC was able see first hand what a large scale counseling enterprise consisted of, and hopefully can use this as a benchmark for best practice and future reviews.

WE:  Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?

MS: We hear from a lot of our clients that a major goal of internationalization is financial, that foreign student tuition will help universities’ bottom line.  This is a good thing if these institutions are willing to commit a percentage of this new revenue to international student services.  I mentioned earlier how the Australian universities have large staff to recruit students, they also have large staff to service them while on campus.  To fund such an enterprise, these schools take a percentage of the foreign student revenue (10-14%) and earmark it for the international division for use in student recruiting, student services, staff development, student activities and wherever it may be needed to move the international agenda.  Operating overseas is potentially very lucrative, but does require a nimble operation, not-typical of normal university operations.  Returning a portion of the new revenue to the control of a university's international staff is key to growing a successful international enterprise.

WE: Thanks so very much, Mark! IDP is an incredible organization - we are very impressed!

For more information, please see:

http://www.usa.idp.com