The 300% increase- More of my time as founding Center Director: My philosophy was and is to not have all the students, just the good ones.

International Student Enrollment is complex because there are so many moving parts that are contingent upon so many varying factors.  Branding is key and if your institution is known for not being cognizant to an international person's view towards smoking or have subpar spaces and simply do not have enough space or staffing to support, you will burnout staff and sully your brand along the way.  I recently was asked by the biggest educational institution in town as to why enrollment in one particular nationality saw a 300% increase.

In carrying out a PEST analysis, I was able to provide the following feedback to the top school official at The Ohio State University:

Question:
I hope to understand the 300% increase in the Autumn 2011 of Saudi students at our school.  Was it when your school went smoke-free and nearly every Saudi student transfer from your school to my school?

Answer: 
In employing a PEST analysis, this will give you a balanced perspective to what was going on in the world of Intensive English Programming (IEP) in Columbus in 2011.

Political 
The political environment in the Middle East in 2011 was very turbulent due to the Arab Spring movement.  Not only was ELS being inundated with the influx of Saudi Arabian Culture Mission (SACM) students which by and far really had no business being issued a F-1 visa due to not really exhibiting anything that would constitute admission to a university in the US, but we were also being approached from abroad by potential students from Syria, Egypt, Libya, etc.  If you were in the Middle East, were under the age of 30 and knew enough English to converse on the phone or had a friend or distant relative in the US, odds were that you were trying to get in the US as a F-1 student, so it seemed.

Economic 
The economic environment was favorable for an increase in Middle Eastern students due to the King Abdullah Scholarship Program (KASP), managed by SACM, which basically gave just about anyone from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) a chance to study abroad more or less for the cultural experience, not necessarily for admission into a US university.  I would be interested in the figures that you provided of 111 KASP scholars in 2011 and and 117 KASP scholars in 2012 as to how many graduated the American Language Program at Ohio State and matriculated to an undergraduate or graduate program at any school and of course graduated.  At any rate, ELS had to temporarily pause the issuance of F-1 visas in the Fall of 2011 since the service and accountability provided by ELS was uneven as the CEO of ELS announced in 2012.  The student intake from the Middle East with KSA leading the way had simply overwhelmed the company's infrastructure.

Social 
The social environment was favorable for an increase in Middle Eastern students to transfer from ELS/Columbus to other area schools that could issue the student an I-20.  This was not due to the smoking policy at Ohio Dominican University (ODU) since this policy had been in effect since 2007.  ODU just wasn't enforcing the smoking policy.  In fact, ODU's Safety and Security team was actually smoking on campus themselves.  Once ELS took occupancy in June 2010, the issue became prevalent but other than the ODU security team tattling to me about a student smoking with no specifics, the smoking issue wasn't a driving factor for students to transfer from ELS/Columbus.  It wasn't till March 2012 when ELS devised a "Three Strikes Policy" which I implemented and caused a ruckus with one particular Chinese woman who had befriended some of the Chinese students at ELS.  The first violator of the "Three Strikes Policy" was a Chinese student.  The same holds true to Chinese students, our 2nd largest demographic behind Saudis.  The first violator had issues adjusting to life as a potential college student in the US and a hapless security team who was hesitant to do their jobs reported him because he would brazenly smoked for the whole world to see.  I did my job and he complained to his Chinese friend.  She was relentless with letters to the ODU President and then to ELS.  Some groups can spoil the good name of the others around them.  While they are not despicable themselves, they are a disgusting reminder to those around them.  This is the problem when people aren't held accountable and when they finally are, it is such a painful and foreign experience that they react in such a shameful way. This is how I compartmentalize the social scene at Ohio Dominican in the flight stage of the venture that I started.

Anyway, the reason that there were so many students transferring from ELS/Columbus was that there was no space for them at ODU.  We expanded to the adult education building on Airport Road which is a stone's throw from the ODU main campus but didn't do so till the Fall 2011 semester.  Ramadan was another reason that there were so many students that transferred from ELS/Columbus to OSU's ALP Program and Capital University's ESL Program.  Their scholarship would not permit them to return home and they were too new to take the ELS session off so they got around it by transferring to OSU and Capital which allowed them to partake in Ramadan and remain in good standing with their F-1 visa.

Technological 
Lastly, the technological environment was favorable for an increase in Middle Eastern students to transfer from ELS/Columbus since the spaces in the basement of the dorm building that ELS operated out of was cramped, drab, and downright disgusting due to a cracked foundation which caused water damage to books, paper, etc.  The copier would get jammed since the paper curled up due to the moisture, etc.  Students were receiving instruction in classrooms that had substantial amounts of water along the wall in the rug, and the white boards were curling off the wall due to the moisture.  In the Summer of 2011, we relieved this space to a degree by occupying unused classroom space on the ODU main campus.  Then in the Fall 2011 semester, we expanded to the adult ed building which alleviated the space issues.

To better assess the 300% uptick in Saudis, check with the Office of International Affairs (OIA) on transfers into OSU from ELS/Columbus or any other school.  That will likely be part of your number as well as students with initial I-20s arriving from KSA with SACM scholarship letters.  I was transferring students out left and right around the summer of 2011 due to Ramadan and the fact that every four weeks, more students from KSA were arriving or attempting to transfer in and I had no where to put them or enough instructors to teach them, so I gladly sent the students to a different school. My philosophy was and is to not have all the students, just the good ones.

Daniel J. Stone, MBA

Founder and Principal Consultant

Two Birds One Stone Learning, LLC

3700 Riverside Drive, #21861

Columbus, OH  43221

Office:  614-219-9757

Cell/Text:  864-609-7295

Web:  www.onestonelearning.com