Online students recruitment fairs are not a new development in university marketing. In fact, providers have been proposing such solutions since the beginning of the 2010s.
Even for those who are not particularly enthusiast of on-line student recruitment fairs, COVID-19 increasingly looks like a black swan-kind of thing. Fairs should follow suit in adapting to circumstances, at least until prospective students will be able to gather again in closed places.
Today, virus-scared prospective students are not keen on gathering with hundreds of peers.
Further, personnel is not willing to travel abroad, or even allowed to. Restrictions on flights add complication on the organisation of traditional fairs. This is one of the reasons why agencies are growing nowadays.
Clearly, a one-to-one, physical meeting is to be preferred to a virtual conversation.
But if physical meetings are not possible, online students recruitment fairs represent the only option available.
FPP Edumedia virtual fairs have an extended calendar, starting from October 2020
The Student World produced a virtual event last January
QS Grad tour recently added the feature to organise personal meetings even in a virtual fair
Exafairs offers customised solutions
A2 are region-specialised
Otherwise, it’s worth having a look at:
Unibuddy, a student/perspective matching platform
HigherEdMe, an excellent matching platform
Web2Present, which is owned by Studyportals
[…] now is the minus. Consequently, most fair providers, public and private, today offer also on-line solutions. And schools have gradually become accustomed to virtual booths, as well as to uploading posters […]
[…] International marketers then need to keep updated with these changes. The mere presence of an online calendar is per se an opportunity for HEIs, as allows to double the penetration in some markets where traditionally the activities were only in person. To this respect, check out Monsuni’s report on online fairs. […]