WASHINGTON — Almost 900,000 international students studied at American colleges during the last academic year – a record high and an 8 percent increase over the previous year.
Now we want more. At the State Department’s Sixth Annual EducationUSA Forum, more than 575 university officials talked about ways that social media platforms and apps can be used attract more international students.
“The challenges that people face as a whole, as a world, are becoming more and more transnational,” said Andrew Masloski, a program officer for EducationUSA at the U.S. State Department.
Having international students in college classrooms helps American students engage with people from different backgrounds and perspectives, a skill that will aid them in an economy that is becoming increasingly global, Masolski said.
Bringing international students simply creates more diversity, said Katherine Mangum, the director of student recruitment at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.
Of more than 31,000 students at VCU, 6 percent are international with Saudi Arabia, India, China and Kuwait the highest represented countries.
“We’re just really getting started tracking and doing more social media with the international students,” Mangum said. “Having a recruiter who understands all of the platforms in China, it’s been much easier to stay in touch.”
China sends the most students to the United States, with almost 236,000 at American colleges and universities, according to the 2014 Open Door report by the Institute for International Education.
One of the most popular social apps in China is the free mobile messaging and calling service, WeChat. The app allows users to group chat and send multimedia messages across countries. Even parents turn to the device when their kids are studying internationally.
Even SnapChat has seen recent success. A representative from Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania said that in just six weeks more than 200 students have signed up for the mobile app.
Carly Mankus, assistant dean of international admission at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, spoke on social media recruitment at smaller universities. Franklin & Marshall has 2,350 students, but more than 13 percent are international.
“Facebook is still the best venue where I get the most interaction from domestic or international students,” Mankus said.
Franklin & Marshall has utilized cross promotion from one social media outlet to another, Mankus said, especially from Tumblr and Twitter to Facebook.
Ken Huus, the vice president for enrollment management at Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina, said the women’s college with about 1,400 students is just getting started with both international student recruitment and social media recruitment techniques.
“Because so many of our students are from our state, it’s bringing a global perspective to our campus community,” Huus said. “A lot of our students have not and will not ever travel outside of certainly the country, if not even the state.”
“So, we’re learning,” he added.
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