Key Highlights:

• Education team outlook

• Students outlook during the current situation

• Education Stakeholder outlook

• Agent Outlook

• Overall Sentiment of the Education Market

• Current Focus

• Experience/ Learnings from Online Agent Fairs

• Topmost Student queries

Published biweekly, the COVID-19 education team sentiment snapshot highlights information drawn from a survey conducted every two weeks in an effort to gather on-the-ground intelligence from our education team to assist all our stakeholders (students, Universities, Agents, etc.) in preparing for the uncertainty surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 situation. This snapshot presents the insights from a survey conducted with our education team in India from July 27 – August 9, 2020, and captures how the sentiments have evolved in the past two weeks.

We surveyed 40 of our in-country representatives for various Universities across Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

Key Findings

 Education Team Outlook

• Uncertain (37.5%), 2.5%
• Neutral (37.5%)
• Positive (20%),  2%
• Negative (5%),  2%

Student Outlook

• Uncertain (50%),  6%
• Neutral (30%)
• Positive (12.5%),  0.5%
• Negative (5%),  5%

Education Stakeholder outlook

• Uncertain (39.5%),  4.5%
• Neutral (36.8%)
• Positive (23.8%),  11.8%
• Negative (0%),  8%

Agent Outlook

• Uncertain (41.38%),  1.6%
• Neutral (41.38%)
• Positive (13.80%),  0.2%
• Negative (3.44%),  12.5%

Overall Sentiment of the Education Market

• Uncertain (58.97%),  0.97%
• Neutral (25.65%)
• Positive (12.82%),  1.82%
• Negative (2.56%),  4.44%

Top Student Queries

• The major focus of the education team these past two weeks have been Student Counselling (65%), Engaging with Stakeholders (65%) and Planning & Research (60%)
• The Education Team indicated spending 83% of their time these past two weeks on Conversions alone
• 62% of our education team has attended more than 5 online agent fairs since the lockdown. 
• 25% of the team has also organised more than 5 online interactions in the past two weeks alone to engage all the stakeholders. 45% of our staff participated in panels reaching out to students, 35% to parents, 25% to counsellors and 30% to schools, colleges & universities. 
• For reaching out to students for undergraduate programs, 33% of the education team is focusing on special agent events, 25% on career platforms for schools and 15% on career seminars by counsellors
• We continue to notice a high number of Deferral/refund related queries/request 88%). In the past two weeks, we also noticed a downward in Visa related queries (68%), 10% since the last survey. Students are also increasingly raising queries regarding the impact of online classes on degree/ post-study work visa (63%).
• In order to address these challenges, institutions are providing quick/regular updates to the students and our education team suggests  80% of the institutions have also started offering online start for the upcoming intake.
• 43%of the education team suggests 20-40% of their pipeline will start online in 2020 and transition to campus next year. 
• 15%of our team suggests 40-60% of their pipeline is open for an online start in 2020 and transition to campus next year.
• The education team suggests New Zealand (32.5%), Canada (25%) and the United Kingdom (25%) have done a good job of managing and communicating around the impact of COVID-19.