How startups can support universities with recruitment, applications and student enrolment

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Emerge Edtech Insights

14 min readJan 30, 2024

Student recruitment in HE market map, by Emerge Education.

We’re building our annual list of the top emerging edtech companies in higher education for 2024 in collaboration with our Higher Education Edtech advisory board, in partnership with Jisc and chaired by Mary Curnock Cook, CBE. As we do, we’re diving into the trends and opportunities for innovation along each step of the learner journey → from discovery and enrolment to teaching and learning, from assessment to graduate employability.

In this first article, we’ll look at how edtech startups can help universities solve their biggest challenges in student recruitment.

The student journey in higher education.

Read on for:

Challenges, trends and opportunities, including our predictions for the transformative impact of genAI
Views from sector experts, plus tips for founders
A mini-market map of key players and top emerging startups in this space

Keywords: student recruitment, study abroad, university admissions, enrollment

💡 Why it matters

Financial sustainability is the biggest existential threat facing higher education today. There has been a seismic shift in university funding in recent years in both the UK and US, from government sources to student tuition fees, which has significantly altered the market dynamics of HE. The sector’s financial health is fundamentally reliant on student recruitment.

🏈 State of play

Student recruitment has always been about both quantity and quality — quality in terms of diversity and entry qualifications. Now it’s more complex because many courses are loss making due to the freeze on domestic tuition fees. Universities are having to look at the mix across more or less expensive-to-deliver courses as well as international vs domestic fee paying students in order to balance their finances.
Mary Curnock Cook, former CEO, UCAS and Emerge VP

In the UK, tuition fees now represent more than half of university income and anxiety increasingly focuses on the loss of international students (which now includes EU students), whose fees provide a large and increasing share of providers’ total income — though there are also lower numbers of home students, too. In the US, reliance on tuition fee income has been particularly problematic as college enrolments have declined for eight consecutive years, with an ‘admissions cliff’ on the horizon: from 2025, high-school graduate numbers will decline for more than a decade. Dwindling enrolment numbers means less money, fewer student offerings and, ultimately, risk of closure.
Around 7 million students globally are enrolled in international educational programs. Between 2000 and 2021, the number of international students grew by a staggering 600%, making the global market for international education worth an estimated $139bn by 2025.
Much of this situation is outside any individual university’s control, but one area where they can smooth the process is enrolment and application, improving the student recruitment journey to make it as engaging and efficient as possible for both domestic and international students — and thus create a commercial advantage.
Generative AI is a gamechanger. Universities are learning that AI can do more than simply churn out routine prompts and generate helpful tips. Now, they’re starting to use it to address some of their biggest and most persistent challenges, including bottom-line issues such as anticipating enrolment trends, improving student retention and allocating financial aid. More on this ⬇️

🚨 Challenges

Growing questions around the continuing value of a degree — Universities are typically seen as the best route to start a meaningful career, but there is a large and widening gap between higher education and industry, leaving large numbers of non-traditional learners underserved by traditional education. This is a challenge for universities on many fronts, not least how to market the value proposition of three or four years of study and how to reposition themselves alongside employer brands and new players offering alternative credentials.

Universities grappling with enrollment challenges will increasingly need to ask themselves three critical questions:
1. Are we offering programs the market desires, including microcredentials (52% of Google higher ed searches are now for non-degree options) with a skills focus, in areas of learner interest and tied to demonstrable job demand?
2. Are we offering them in a format that works best for our learners, including online and blended options?
3. Are our prices within reach of those we wish to serve?
While other factors impact enrollment, demographics especially, portfolio management is a foundational issue and universities struggle with it. They are not built to produce short-term programs, think about learning outcomes instead of verifiable skills and struggle to align with rapidly evolving workforce needs.
Paul LeBlanc, president, Southern New Hampshire University and Emerge VP

Policy constraints — Alongside the decline in government funding, the regulatory environment for public education has consistently toughened over time. In the UK, for example, policy changes have often made it more difficult for universities to adapt and grow, including a proposal to re-introduce student number controls.
Fragmented legacy technology — Despite its ability to support the full student lifecycle, only 3% of HE institutions say they use their CRM to do this. The reality is that many institutions are using separate systems for marketing, admissions and recruitment — let alone teaching and learning, assessment and alumni management.
Learners struggle to understand the landscape — Many prospective students are uncertain about their choice of university (or alternative provider) and struggle to gather all the necessary information to make an informed decision based on their individual needs and circumstances.

🔥 Trends

China and India continue to dominate as top sources for international students, with India growing at a faster pace and surpassing China for the first time in 2023. However, the landscape is changing. Emerging markets such as Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and Indonesia are showing high growth anticipation, promising a diverse and vibrant international student community.
Perceptions of institutional quality, along with the attractiveness of destination cities, remain vital student decision factors. When it comes to preferred locations for studying abroad, the US is still top, hosting just fewer than one million students from around the world in 2022. Following closely behind is the UK, which attracted approximately 600,000 international students; Canada ranks third (550,000), while France and Australia (~365,000) round out the top five.
Prospective learners are becoming more diverse. Ongoing changes to how we all work and learn, driven by industry 4.0 and the rise of genAI, are having an impact on the ways people access learning. As a result, the student recruitment journey is also changing to support a culture of lifelong learning. Declining traditional learner constituencies therefore also present potential opportunities for universities to engage with non-traditional audiences, such as by retraining the millions of people in at-risk jobs or who have become unemployed due to labour market shifts. From degree apprenticeships and workforce development to new partnerships and bespoke collaborations, universities are uniquely positioned to use their expertise to help businesses and learners understand and solve their evolving skills needs (and gaps).
How will AI change things? 50% of admissions offices are using AI in their review process, according to a new survey, and four out of five said they plan to incorporate it sometime in 2024. So far, AI is largely contributing by automating the evaluation of applications in functional ways such as making transfer recommendations, reviewing transcripts, etc. It seems unlikely at this point that institutions would entrust high-stakes decisions to AI or that such a move would be considered best practice in the future.

🌍 Key players

Platforms like Enroly, Purlos and Adventus.io (which raised a $22M Series B round last year) are automating the onboarding and arrival processes for universities, reducing staff admin time, ensuring visa compliance and highlighting key risk drivers behind students dropping out during the admissions process.

At the same time, companies like ApplyBoard, Educatly and Global Study are connecting students with recruitment partners and academic institutions, simplifying the study abroad process and providing universities with access to a global student market.

🔭 Who is getting ahead?

A big challenge for students considering which university fits best — and for recruiters trying to engage with them — is how to convey the more intangible elements of a university: the culture, the ‘feel’. An in-person visit on an open day offers students a shortcut, but how to replicate that online? Unibuddy began in 2017 as a peer-to-peer platform that connects prospective students one-to-one with current students at the institution they’re considering, to find out first-hand about life there and ask questions not answered by a prospectus. It went live at the University of Leicester in March 2019, aimed first at offer holders and was then more widely introduced at the start of the main inquiry cycle for 2020 entrants. Peer-to-peer remains the core, though Unibuddy has added a virtual event platform to its range of products.

In December 2020, Durham University launched Holly, the first of its kind student recruitment AI assistant. Holly is available 24/7, providing around-the-clock presence for students in more than 100 languages. So far, Holly has handled more than 55,000 student queries, with 97% of queries efficiently answered and continuous positive feedback. Holly has also streamlined recruitment efforts for the enrolment and admissions team: 40% of student conversations are logged directly into the CRM for follow-ups. Almost half of all contacts happen outside of core office hours, emphasising the importance of an ‘always-on’ capability.

🔮 Predictions

Domestic and international student recruiting practices become more data-driven and predictive. University recruiting teams will better focus their efforts by creating algorithms that can predict the applicants most likely to be accepted and enrol, and the countries from which they will originate. AI can help universities to identify applicants who — based on factors such as demographic characteristics, income levels and family history of attending college — are most likely to respond to a well-timed faculty call, or to identify the amount of financial aid that it would take to influence their enrolment decision. These algorithms could also determine which enrolled students are most likely to progress, graduate and become engaged alumni.
The admissions process will become faster, more flexible and more personalised. By automating many administrative activities during the admissions process — including logistics, visa processes, compliance, student housing selection and course registration — universities will be appropriately automated to serve students and prospective students with what they personally need, on their terms, to suit their circumstances.
University study will become more modular and flexible, and so will the ways in which prospective students access it — and so, therefore, will be the way in which they are recruited. With blended learning and increased online provision for international students, many more will access university education virtually. There will be high demand for more flexible and stackable courses with microcredentials as people choose to access learning at a whole variety of different points in their life. Recruitment and admissions processes will need to become more flexible and more collaborative across a wide range of partner universities and organisations to enable modular learning with accreditation that leads to academic awards.
Student retention efforts will become more proactive. Intelligent recommendation engines are all around us: we get recommendations for products based on our purchase histories and for video recommendations based on our watch histories. In a similar fashion, machine learning models in the registration process can make individualised course recommendations to students, helping them choose courses that best meet their needs, play to their strengths and keep them on track to graduation. At the same time, by identifying early warning signs, red flags and students who are most likely to struggle academically, student success personnel will be able to create retention plans that anticipate, rather than react to, students’ difficulties.
End-to-end view of the student. The use of AI and machine learning, coupled with universities’ own analytics, will map individual students’ journeys, identifying needs and interacting personally with them at their own milestones and decision points, providing engagement throughout that is meaningful and personal to them, and giving them a clear sense of where they are and what their options are — effectively, a map and compass in an environment that may often seem alien, especially to younger prospective students. This will also enrich the data and visibility available to universities about behaviours and decisions, and alert recruitment teams to possible interventions to support students, solve problems, retain waverers or early leavers, or to prospect and recruit (or re-recruit) to different courses and modules. As well as providing a less stressful, richer student experience, this will mean increased conversions and reduced attrition, and a significantly lower cost per conversion, compared to the present day, in the context of many more student places to fill.

📈 Risks

The competitive landscape in international recruitment is volatile, and this will only intensify. A recent report highlighted that a large swathe of the UK HE sector saw a decline in enrolments from India and Nigeria in their September 2023 intakes. The news prompted a raft of internal reviews among universities keen to understand such unexpected shifts and establish whether this marks the beginning of a long-term trend — as some speculate that it may — or whether it is a minor blip, especially when set in the context of the huge growth from Nigeria in recent years.
The stakes are high. PwC analysis found that if the growth in international students stagnated in the 2024–25 academic year, the proportion of UK universities in financial deficit would rise from 19% to 27% — but if numbers started to fall between 13% and 18%, then four-fifths would be in deficit. The combination of falling international student numbers, frozen tuition fees, rising staff wage bills and a softening in UK student numbers could leave the sector facing a perfect storm.
Mapping the past into the future. As genAI expands into core university practices, new concerns are being raised about threats to personal privacy and its vulnerability to systematic bias. A machine learning model has the capacity to look at individual applicants and predict their probability of accepting admission and/or of succeeding at a particular institution, by examining metrics about the applicant (such as their high school grades and test scores) as well as trends among similar applicants in previous years — but this risks baking in wider biases in current education systems. For competitive institutions, there may be concerns about the application of AI to a selective recruitment process that some people already find opaque and challenging.
Student buy-in can’t be taken for granted. The number of tools offering AI-assisted application support has exploded and most admissions offices are terrified that some students will find ways to use the new technology to submit essays that are not their own, especially as it’s become clear that perfect AI-detection is impossible. Will students be comfortable with universities using AI to assess their applications if they’re not allowed to use it themselves?

🎯 Opportunities for startups

GenAI engines of opportunity for universities.

In this category, we see particular opportunities for AI-driven solutions that offer:

AI-powered chat with your uni → Problem: Student support is always overwhelmed/lagging. Solution: A more human-like interface for students to interact with their institution and student support services through chatbot.
High quality digital universities for developing market students → Problem: 150M additional students in developing markets are interested in strong brands and there are not enough universities to serve them. OPMs cannot serve this segment because they are too expensive. Solution: Either a local challenger university [such as Nexford and Kibo] or a Western global brand building a solution for local markets [Centana].

💎 Tips for founders

Think about your place in the value chain — Soon, students will experience a streamlined, unified journey from initially researching a course to enrolment and then on to studying on or off campus or in VR. This unified journey will extend beyond the undergraduate or postgraduate years to the alumni experience and into lifelong learning, reskilling and upskilling opportunities. AI will enable personal engagement to be continuous throughout the journey, rather than only at common milestones of the institution’s choosing, and accessible on the user’s terms, when and where they need it, whether they prefer it to be physically, human-to-human on campus, or virtually, at any time, on a device of their choice. Be clear about where you sit in a single student journey with continuous engagement.
Contextualise any offer within a broad understanding of the wider HE landscape. Depending on their strategic ambitions and the resources they have available, some universities may look to partner with a provider only to deliver a single, discrete project — but a broad understanding of the sector and its emerging trends is nevertheless vital to establish credibility. Other universities, especially those who are targeting rapid growth, may find it beneficial to consolidate various activities with one trusted partner who can offer a broad menu of capabilities and take the necessary steps to meet demand.
Student experience is the critical factor, and needs to be equally important for partners. At the core of any offering must be a genuine student-centred gap or need. A proposition focused on business challenges will feel more transactional. Providers should instead emphasise the mission-oriented and learner-centred impact of enrolment or admissions offers, as well as the financial implications. This will demonstrate alignment of incentives to potential partner universities.
Help universities to understand their brand and how to effectively attract students with a unique offer. Rather than simply facilitating a scaled-up ‘spray-and-pray’ approach with low conversion rates, startups can guide universities toward much more precise targeting of students. In an increasingly marketised and digitised environment, the importance of brand has continued to increase as the most ‘prestigious’ universities can dominate market share without being limited by physical constraints; this is particularly applicable for online degrees and alternative digital credentials where students prioritise university and faculty reputation when picking a university. A top-tier university with a strong brand may therefore have limited agility or appetite for innovation because exclusivity is core to the value proposition, whereas a mid-tier university might try to reach large numbers of learners by establishing a clearly differentiated brand. One key consideration might be that student acquisition costs will be inversely related to the strength of the university partner’s brand and/or whether the university has a track record in marketing online programmes.

🔗 Read more

Read more news, views and research from the only fund backed by the world’s leading education entrepreneurs, in Emerge Edtech Insights.

📣 Call to action

We are now building our list of the top emerging edtech companies in HE in 2024.

👇 If you have seen an exciting company in this space, please tell us in the comments 👇

Our list analyses 100s of companies operating worldwide, using public and private data — it is crowdsourced, and voted on by our Higher Education edtech advisory board, led by Mary Curnock Cook.

Please share companies you think we should consider in comments 👇and join us on 27 June to discover who has made the final list!

🙏 Thanks

At Emerge, we are on the look-out for companies (existing and new) that will shape the future of learning in higher education over the coming decade.

If you are a founder building a business addressing any of these challenges in HE, we want to hear from you. Our mission is to invest in and support these entrepreneurs right from the early stage.

So if you are looking for your first cheque funding do apply to us here: https://lnkd.in/eWi_9J5U . We look at everything as we believe in democratising access to funding (just as much as we believe in democratising access to education and skills).

Emerge is a community-powered seed fund home to practical guidance for founders building the future of learning and work. Since 2014, we have invested in more than 80 companies in the space, including Unibuddy, Cadmus, Engageli and Mentor Collective.

Emerge Education welcomes inquiries from new investors and founders. For more information, visit emerge.education or email hello@emerge.education, and sign up for our newsletter here.

Thank you for reading… I would hugely appreciate some claps 👏 and shares 🙌 so that others can find it!

Nic