How universities can attract students from other countries

Universities should embrace a diversity of culture.

The ability to attract international students depicts the efforts the university puts in branding themselves outside the country. Students are attracted to a university of a diversity of culture, activities, languages and more importantly one that will cater for their academic needs. Here is how universities in Uganda are able to attract international students.

Professional courses

As long as a university can protect the interests of the students, they will be attracted to it automatically. This includes having courses that are designed to benefit other countries curriculum needs.

“All students want is to attain studies in professional courses like architecture, Engineering, law among others as well as having the right equipment while studying,” he adds.

Embrace social media

John Mutima a lecturer notes that you can’t advertise on the local market when looking for international attention, you have to be visible on social media especially Facebook, twitter, Google+ among other plat forms to get attention of your target audience. He adds that the internet is a great option especially now that everybody is embracing it.

Make use of social media to advertise yourself.

Low fees

Offering streamlined tuition fees for both local and international students is another great strategy. This will attract the students since some of them look at the tuition costs before joining and in most cases, they will go for one with favorable costs.

Have offices in target countries

Mutima adds that having office outlets in countries of your interest could also be a great strategy to get students to your university. You can use the offices to advertise your university. He adds that advertising in those particular countries locally could increase the universities visibility in the country.

Diversity of languages

The universities ability to offer a number of languages will attract foreign students as they will feel comfortable joining a university offering their language. They will not feel left out and those that want to learn a new language will find it easy to join you.

For example we have students from the UK, London allover East Africa all and all need a university that can meet their needs.

Advanced software

To him the ability to provide the students with the latest equipment will bring them to your school since what students want is to have a course from a potentially cable university.

Instead of black boards, use projectors, have the latest books in the library where so that your students don’t consume books produced years ago. Make sure our library is filled with the latest information to give our students the latest knowledge, providing the students with free Wi-Fi that they can use to make research among other incentives keep our university on a standard level hence inviting students from other countries.

E learning library will also be of great use as students can go on line to do research and carryout other activities that could help in their studies.

Employ international staff

Having lecturers from various countries will emphasize the universities nature of diversity, this will in turn invite a number of international students since the staff structure shows that a lot of experience is being gathered from various parts of world.

Credit transfer

Mutima also notes that the ability of a university to transfer course units as a student transfers from one university to another especially when switching countries gives it credit towards international attention.

Conducive environment

Everyone loves to study in a peaceful place, so having a conducive environment free from noise and one with great security could give one more attention. This includes both structure and the surrounding environment. A university with great structures like the library, labs among other essential building will get more attention than one that doesn’t have.

A conducive environment will attract students to your university.

Partnerships

Lastly making yourself visible through partnering with universities in other countries will give you attention as well. This can be through research or partnering in certain courses.