The launch of u-Compass: An interactive tool for exploring global HE opportunities. Free version now available for download.

In the Insights & Consultancy team, we receive a wide range of queries about markets, regulatory environments, potential partners and strategies. But if I had to name a single most popular type of enquiry, I would summarise it as ‘where next?’. Over the years we’ve answered that question for dozens of universities by compiling and curating a collection of the most relevant, comparable metrics available. Last year an idea occurred to us: Why not build this into an interactive tool that allows practitioners and policymakers to explore the opportunities on their own? And thus the concept for u-Compass was born. A tortuous number of iterations later, we are now ready to present the beta version to our subscribers for free download.

To make distribution easier and to save on development costs, we’ve built this first version as an interactive Excel workbook. So long as you’re running a recent Windows version of Microsoft Office 360 – we’re not sure about compatibility with older versions or Office for Mac – you should be able to fire it up without jumping through any IT department hoops. Just make sure to ‘enable macros’ beneath the toolstrip when you open the file.

What does it do?

The free version we are launching today gives comparative rankings for market attractiveness from the perspective of the UK as whole. On the menu tabs, you have a choice of exploring student recruitment or transnational education opportunities. There are also options to drill down into the data for individual markets, or visually compare the attractiveness of selected markets across key metrics.

What it doesn’t do.

u-Compass is designed to help answer the ‘where next’ question, but it’s not meant to be a black & white answer. Instead, we built the tool to give the sector easy access to the context of the opportunities they are considering. For example, if you’re looking at partnership opportunities in Indonesia and Cambodia, u-Compass can help you quickly visualize the differences between the two markets. As the screenshot below shows, Indonesia is a much more attractive market in terms of scale and demonstrated demand for international education, and somewhat more attractive in terms of its business and economic environment and the UK’s competitive position (more details of the comparison are available if you scroll further down in the tool). This doesn’t mean that an opportunity in Indonesia is more attractive, but hopefully these comparisons, and the further detail available in the tool, will help your pose the right questions in prioritizing markets.

*Note: ‘Engagement with your university’ is populated with average data across the sector in the free version of the tool.

Also, while we think overall output of the tool matches very well with our real-world experience, u-Compass sometimes ranks markets higher or lower than we would in a qualitative evaluation. For example, I would not include the US on my list of top markets for TNE opportunities. But then again, that’s also the point of the tool: to make us question our assumptions. And come to think of it, maybe it is worth considering how attractive the metrics are for TNE in the world’s most expensive HE system.

Can u-Compass do even more?

Yes. We originally designed the tool as a custom solution for individual universities, with a list of metrics designed to capture the institution’s current engagement with each market (e.g., mobility, TNE enrolments and research collaboration). If you are interested in full version of the tool and other customizations, please contact us for a quote.

Where can I download it?

The tool is available for UK institutions who have subscribed to our IES Insights subscription package. If you are a subscriber, you can find the download link in your institution profile by clicking the briefcase icon at the top of the page (see image below).

Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the u-Compass link.