Skip to main content

Great Britain - Empowering the World's Youth

According to the OECD, the UK's share of all 'international mobile higher education students' decreased from 10.8% to 9.9% between 2000 and 2009. In other words we are gradually becoming less competitive, losing out especially to the likes of Australia (5.1% in 2000 to 7.0% in 2009), Canada (4.6% to 5.2%), and New Zealand (0.4% to 1.9%).

Isn't it about time UK plc started marketing itself professionally to wealthy Chinese and Indian parents rather than leaving it up to individual cash-strapped institutions whose messages will be both weak and inconsistent?

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find sectors where the UK still excels internationally. Admittedly we're pretty good at some things (engineering, financial services, medical research, even agriculture - we have some of the most fertile land on the planet), but we're no longer world leaders in very much - except what is becoming known as the Knowledge Sector (Higher Education and discrete areas of R&D), and Media (marketing communications, and cultural stuff like music, TV, art, theatre and movies).

My proposition is that we combine these two strengths by using one to help sell the other, instead of moaning that British kids are being squeezed out of British unis by foreign kids - WHO ARE HELPING TO PAY FOR OUR KIDS TO BE EDUCATED AT ALL. British Higher Education is scalable. It is not a case of either domestic or foreign students!

So the plan is rather than hope each academic institution will be able to make an impression on every wealthy (or simply ambitious) Chinese and Indian parent to send them their increasing numbers of precious children, why don't we combine our marketing expertise to make a big impression on every target parent that the UK collectively offers:

  • Safety (stable government, safest roads in the world, multi-cultural, strongly secular)
  • 800 years of education excellence and globally recognised reputation
  • The home of the English language
  • Accessibility (more flights to more cities than any other country on Earth)
  • Many of their own community already here
The world's largest marketing services corporation is British (WPP), and we boast an incredible array of marketing communications expertise and talent which we already export widely. Instead of letting Chinese (etc) parents arrive at their own conclusions about where to send their darlings, why don't we take a leaf out of Australia's book and use our extraordinary marcoms skills to market the benefits of a UK education - and not just UK Universities, but all UK commercial educational institutions, including our public schools, and specialist colleges and academies?

So Minister Willetts, how about: 
  • Big fat punchy campaigns aimed at wealthy Chinese and Indian Parents selling UK Education:
    "Great Britain - Empowering your Children".
  • Make the British Council answerable to the DTI and not the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
  • Remove all obstacles for foreign students to study here.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking an interest.

Popular posts from this blog

To kill or not to kill.

Had an interesting discussion with a Muslim friend today about the ethics of killing. Could it ever be morally justifiable? Abrahamic scriptures, especially the old testament, are awash with murders and killings, some sanctioned by the prophets and assorted mouthpieces for god. Some killing is even mandatory. For example all Jews are instructed in the old Testament to kill everyone belonging to the 7 Canaanite tribes for example - Deut 20:17 , or to slaughter Amaleks, especially their children - Deut 25:19 . So accepting for a moment that these draconian instructions were written in times when tribal leaders had fewer options available to them with respect to managing miscreants and maintaining some sort of law and order, I suspect that most people today would agree that killing people is a bad thing and should not be condoned except under extraordinary circumstances. My friend and I then proceeded to try to list those circumstances. We started with self-defence or perhaps protecti...
1 comment
Read more

Phillips screws - yes I'm angry about them too

Don't get me wrong. They're a brilliant invention to assist automation and prevent screwdrivers from slipping off screw heads - damaging furniture, paintwork and fingers in the process. Interestingly they weren't invented by Mr Phillips at all, but by a John P Thompson who sold Mr P the idea after failing to commercialise it. Mr P, on the otherhand, quickly succeeded where Mr T had failed. Incredible isn't it. You don't just need a good idea, you need a great salesman and, more importantly, perfect timing to make a success out of something new. Actually, it would seem, he did two clever things (apart from buying the rights). He gave the invention to GM to trial. No-brainer #1. After it was adopted by the great GM, instead of trying to become their sole supplier of Phillips screws, he sold licenses to every other screw manufacturer in the world. A little of a lot is worth a great deal more than a lot of a little + vulnerability (watch out Apple!). My gromble is abo...
7 comments
Read more

Review of the world's first AI product launched in 1988 - Tome Searcher

I am tired of reading and hearing statements by press and politicians alike that companies like OpenAI (the creators of ChatGPT) started the AI revolution. Just today, with the announcement of the Stargate data centre project, the BBC's Verify (?!) website stated "OpenAI kicked off the AI race in 2022". I'm not claiming that a little company in London called Tome Associates Ltd, of which I was a founding director, started AI in the 1980s. There were already plenty of people exploring it around the world at the time. Indeed a project called Logic Theorist, developed in 1955 by Newell and Simon at the Rand Corporation in California, is probably the world's first AI application. But to the best of my knowledge, Tome Associates were the first company in the world to launch a commercial product based on AI... which subsequently met a resounding blank look from everyone we showed it to. People were fascinated, but confused about what to do with it (don't forget Tim ...
Post a Comment
Read more