New board members and investors Jeremias Andersson, co-founder of Academic Work, and Pär Lager, former CEO of Berghs School of Communication, met Sqore co-founder Niklas Jungegard at EdTech Sweden last year.

“We understood that we had a really good match, both on education and recruitment, and for our vision,” Jungegard told The PIE News. “We were happy to have Pär and Jeremias joining us in January this year.”

Founded in 2010 and launched in 2015, the platform currently has one million students registered and about 200 member institutions and aims to improve student awareness on global education offer and also to help institutions engage with and retain students.

“We all know that competition is increasing and almost all universities and programmes have an awareness challenge”

One of Sqore’s goals, Jungegard explained, is to help universities moves towards digitalisation of student recruitment, and help them attract students who are a good match for their programs.

But getting the word out in an increasingly competitive market is a challenge, Lager said.

“We all know that competition is increasing and almost all universities and programs have an awareness challenge. We need to find a solution to scale awareness and this needs to be digital. That is why we started to work with Sqore,” he relayed.

Lager said that at the Berghs School of Communication he witnessed challenges in student awareness, engagement and retention – even though the school had been voted ‘the best communication school in the world’ by the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

“[Finding the right match] is a huge investment in time and money for both students and universities,” he explained.

“And we can’t afford to lose students who drop out of courses after six months or one year. It’s too costly both for the student and the institution. This is so important if you are going to build quality in the long term for students and institutions.”

Jungegard told The PIE that thanks to the new investment, the platform will add more services with the aim to “improve chances that the right students apply to the right course”.

“In March we are introducing a candidate management tool for universities that ultimately will increase conversion to application,” he said.