Last month at the APAIE conference in Singapore, over 2000 delegates from 53 different countries came together to tackle one question: what impact will the fourth industrial revolution have on higher education in the Asia Pacific? While we took the opportunity to present our research on the emerging tech’s potential to grow global agent connections, we also learned some interesting things. Here are a few takeaways.

Technology is still a major barrier between agents and institutions

Although StudyLink Connect is now the industry standard, many institutions are still working with their own portals – making it difficult to recruit through agents. In fact, we heard that some of these colleges and universities aren’t working with recruitment agents at all because they fear their application processes are too complicated. Agents are facing similar frustrations. Overwhelmingly, they told us that they would like more universities and colleges to implement StudyLink Connect – to help reduce the time and money spent working within multiple, complicated systems. What does this tell us? Some institutions are still reluctant to seize the automations advantage – missing the clear benefits of maximising their global agent connections.

More agencies are consolidating to keep up

As technology continues to transform international admissions, smaller agencies are consolidating with larger, better-resourced agencies in order to invest in their own digital developments. This was a key trend in our discussions with agents at APAIE – and something that also came up in our recent Agent Advisory Meeting.

 

Agents want StudyLink to service more sectors

Agents would like to see StudyLink opened to more sectors, such as vocational education and English language colleges. This is something we’re very interested in, and we’ll be undertaking user testing on new Agent Portal features over the coming months.

Find out how AECC Global have used StudyLink Connect to submit more than 4,600 applications to institutions across the world