Jamie Hastings, Regional Manager for West Africa at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, tells The PIE about the unique challenges of recruiting students in the region and why the UK can’t afford to rest on its laurels when it comes to promoting itself as a study destination.
The PIE: What does your job entail?
JH: My role is to recruit students from Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda. I travel there maybe four or five times a year and I meet with parents, agents, students; I go to universities; I do exhibitions; I meet with companies, alumni. So basically, it’s to get applications in the system.
The PIE: So 40-50% of your students are from West Africa at the moment?
JH: Our largest international population is from West Africa, you’re talking 40-50%. And it’s been like that for many years.
“A lot of people who come to us from Nigeria and Ghana want to work in the oil and gas industry”
The PIE: Is that mostly because of specialist courses?
JH: Yes, and also because around 15 years ago our lectures used to go out into the Delta, Port Harcourt, and teach employees and local staff for maybe three months at a time, specific courses from oil and gas related industries – engineering, asset integrity management, petroleum production, drilling – so ever since then, we’ve been seen as a specialist in the oil and gas industry. Because we’ve got lots of links with industry, that’s really helped us court our market. A lot of people who come to us from Nigeria and Ghana want to work in the oil and gas industry.
The PIE: How many distance learning courses do you offer?
JH: We offer something like 60-70 online programmes at Masters level. Typically a one-year Masters full time on campus is split up over three years for a distance learning course.
The PIE: Where is distance learning most popular?
JH: Our largest intake is from Nigeria. It’s been growing and growing and a lot of it is people who are working in the oil and gas industry who just cannot afford to leave the country and potentially lose their job.
The PIE: So would you say work opportunities are a big factor in motivating international students to study at RGU?
JH: Definitely, I would say so. We’ve been on of the top for graduate employment for the last three years, which has got a lot to do with our industry links, so I try whenever possible to promote the fact that 70% of our undergraduate courses have a one year work placement where students get paid.
The PIE: What do you think is the UK’s biggest competitor country for African students?
JH: I would say Canada, Australian, New Zealand.
“If students want to stay and work in the UK, I tell them to start looking within the first month”
The PIE: Is that to do with post work study?
JH: A lot of it is to do with the PSW visa that was taken away in the UK. The Canadians, the Australians and the New Zealanders have introduced very flexible visa arrangements for these students. That’s a huge selling point for them. A lot of the things I get told by students are, you know, ‘why do you not want me to work in your country?’ And that’s a huge problem, but what I always say to all students, wherever they’re from, is they can still get jobs in the UK. It’s just slightly more difficult now. If students want to stay and work in the UK, I tell them to start looking within the first month.
The PIE: Do you think the introduction of mandatory TB testing may have an impact on student numbers?
JH: I think any obstacle, any new testing or document that is required, will have some effect. However, one thing that I do know is that West African students are very adaptable and if you put anything in their way they will overcome it. So I think that the UK will still have huge demand from West Africa (and Nigeria specifically) and that TB testing will just be another part of the application process.
The PIE: It seems that one of the major problems facing the UK is that some students think it’s unwelcoming.
JH: It is. The UK can’t just rest on its laurels and expect applications to flood in, they won’t. The biggest difference between the UK and Canada, New Zealand and Australia is their governments pump loads of money into promoting their education overseas. We have none. We have the British Council, which we pay for. That’s what we’re up against – it’s like David and Goliath. We need the government to spend more on promoting UK education, not just through paid services. There’s not enough.
The PIE: Do you think that some universities decide it’s too much effort to concentrate on this market and focus on other markets instead?
“Nigeria, I would say, is one of the most challenging environments and a lot of people will not go there because it’s too difficult”
JH: Definitely, it’s challenging. You go to Lagos and you go to an agent’s office and there’s no internet and the air conditioning’s powered by a generator the size of a house, traffic’s a nightmare. Things don’t work, things don’t happen like you want them to, everything takes a lot longer. The environment and all the things that you hear and see and smell and experience would put people off, basically. I can’t compare it to other markets but Nigeria, I would say, is one of the most challenging environments and a lot of people will not go there because it’s too difficult.
The PIE: Is that what you meant when you said earlier West Africa is like a Marmite region – you love it or you hate it?
JH: Yeah, a colleague said that to me. You have to have a very open mind to go out there, because if you’re not you’ll have more grey hairs than what I’ve got right now, which is a few. But it’s one of those that if you work it really well, if you have something to offer the market, you can do really, really well, get lots of students, and that could be a pipeline for the future.
The PIE: How limiting are safety considerations to recruitment in this region?
JH: They’re limiting in terms of locations that I can visit and what I can do when I’m there. I always go by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office guidance, but one of the best places for us to recruit students is Port Harcourt in the south east of the country, the oil capital of Africa, but I can’t go there because it’s an ‘amber zone’ and it’s deemed very unsafe. A lot of wealthy locals get kidnapped there and in the news lots of things have been happening, bombs going off… if it continues it will get even more challenging. All you need is for something really bad to happen and then the UK visa people shut up shop and students can’t get visas. That’s it. Students from Nigeria are over.
“All you need is for something really bad to happen and then the UK visa people shut up shop and students can’t get visas”
The PIE: Is that something you worry about?
JH: Not at the moment. If Boko Haram escalate things and the government don’t step in and try to sort their issues then possibly, in future. But I think they’d need to do something really drastic for that to happen.
The PIE: That would be disastrous for you, I imagine.
JH: Absolute disaster. Not just for us but for all the big universities that recruit from the region. I find a lot of universities that recruit from West Africa rely too much on the market.
The PIE: Why do you think that’s the case particularly with this market?
JH: I think because once you’re in there with the volume of students that go overseas, you can really do very well – a lot of universities in England have 50, 60, 70% Chinese students, but for some institutions, it’s the same with students from Nigeria. It’s a big market – around 380,000 Africans went abroad to study in 2010, 10% of the African student population.
