We speak with Jason Cushen, Director, Te Whirika (International), Division of External Engagement at University of Otago, to understand how participation in the International Student Barometer is informing plans and decision making as the university seeks to grow their international student population.
The University of Otago is New Zealand's oldest university, running a comprehensive academic offering and renowned particularly for Health Sciences with one of just two medical schools in the country and the only dental school. Of the university’s 20,000 on-campus students around the country, 12-13% are international, a figure significantly lower than typical Australasian standards, and one that was particularly impacted by New Zealand’s later re-opening timeline post-Covid. Now, part of Otago’s strategic plan is to grow those numbers beyond pre-Covid volumes and beyond.
“The International Student Barometer is one of our key international data set sets in terms of performance and comparative performance. There are a number of other companies out there offering student experience information, but the ISB takes a broader approach, so I find it a very, very valuable data set. Taking part in the survey is an institutional investment.”
The value of comparative, longitudinal benchmark data
The University of Otago has been running the International Student Barometer (ISB) since 2007 and has subsequently built up a valuable set of historical data, enabling Jason and the University to analyse trends and use the information from the ISB to inform decision making with confidence.
“I'm pretty confident in the data we get in terms of its integrity, so we use it to work closely with our Quality Advancement Team, the Strategic Planning Team, academic divisions, and our student services and support when considering improvement and innovation. So, it’s an important tool embedded across the institution.”
The comparative aspect of the ISB is a critical benefit for Jason. Being able to compare the University’s performance against national and global benchmarks is vital in the highly competitive nature of the higher education landscape.
“It's great that I can compare our performance with other New Zealand universities, and also universities in the southern hemisphere as well as globally, helping to see how we're performing with institutions we consider as peers."
Building an objective and actionable view of the student experience
In such a competitive space, it’s important for the University to be as competitive as possible on multiple fronts, so, for Jason, it’s always important to understand where they may be underperforming. Otago’s last set of results highlighted some really useful data on student perceptions of turnaround time from application to offer, where the University wasn’t performing as well, particularly in the post-graduate taught Masters area. In some instances this confirms what the University may already have suspected based on information they have anecdotally, but Jason makes an important point:
“We are, of course, getting feedback all the time from the market, whether it be agents or students or parents or partners, but the ISB results provide us with clear quantitative feedback, to go alongside the qualitative, anecdotal information we gather. And if the two match, we know we’ve got an issue; if there’s a disconnect, we can then analyse the ISB data in more detail to fully understand what’s actually going on.” 
Gaining a meaningful picture of recruitment experience and performance
In terms of informing recruitment conversations and decisions at Otago, Jason explains how the ISB survey provides him with good intel to show how well the University is performing, or not, on multiple aspects of the recruitment, admissions, and welcome stages of the student experience.
Understanding what different populations of students value, and what influences their choice of destination is a key part of the ISB’s evaluation and comparison data, which is often used by ISB participating universities to inform messages going out to new and existing markets. Analyses of ‘derived importance’ – the aspects of the student experience with the highest correlation with the propensity to recommend – also adds to the picture for any specific student population, be that nationality, course, campus, year of study, for example. Understanding the nuances of how those different student populations receive and perceive the admissions and subsequent arrival processes is then key to ensuring the hard work to bring people into the top of the funnel pays off and results in satisfied and happy students once they get to the University of Otago.
In Touch is the ISB’s reporting dashboard and enables stakeholders to slice and dice the data to investigate areas of interest or variances against benchmarks, following an in-depth report and presentation from the ISB Consultant to the university’s stakeholder group.
“We dig into it quite a lot and that's useful to have that ability. There are often different drivers for different markets, so it's good to get that feedback and insight; it also helps us reflect on some of our agent and partner relationships in certain markets.”
Otago’s traditional international student populations are quite different to other New Zealand universities’, with their largest cohorts coming from the US and China, followed by Malaysia and India. So, to deliver on the University’s growth goals, it is clear that India will be a key part of the equation that the University of Otago can help solve using their impressive longitudinal data set and analysis.
Informing positive change for a world-class student experience
Post-Covid, the University has been putting in place a number of significant measures and initiatives to improve the student experience, thereby laying the foundations upon which to grow. One such focus area has been the way in which they conduct the arrival, welcome and orientation of new international students.
Overall satisfaction with arrival and getting started at Otago is 93% compared with 89% in the New Zealand benchmark, and represents a good increase on the University’s already strong 2021 result of 89%. In fact, 16 out of 22 aspects surveyed within the arrival satisfaction category have improved at Otago since 2021, including social orientation; students understanding how their course of study would work; meeting academic staff; virtual onboarding, and the formal welcome at the institution. Students at Otago also feel more academically prepared than their counterparts at other New Zealand universities – 84% compared to the NZ benchmark of 80%.
“Looking at the data, we had always performed pretty well in that space, but we felt that we needed a changed approach. What the ISB results did this year is really reaffirm how successful those changes have been - our numbers improved across the categories of arrival, orientation and induction showing us the at the changes and investments were well received. The survey was very useful in that sense.”
Other areas of success for the University of Otago particularly worthy of note include the headline measures of overall learning and overall living, where the University performs just above the New Zealand benchmarks; student wellbeing, where Otago students are less likely than the NZ and global benchmarks to feel somewhat or very concerned about completing their studies; and perhaps increasingly importantly, how prepared University of Otago students feel for their career goals – 85% of Otago students feeling prepared or very prepared, compared with the NZ benchmark of 82%. With employability such a high priority for international students in all regions, it is promising for University of Otago’s future growth to see them making such progress in this particular area.