Almost every individual we meet with has already bracketed Feezy. I guess we each fit new information into existing frames constantly to save time and speed decision-making.
Where most people place us is either as a master agency or as an aggregator. (We’re not even close to being either.)
As such most people we meet are apologetically sceptical and dubious, and are in the meeting almost against their better judgement. Why'd I think this? Because it soon transpires almost all are hostile to these agency types, and especially towards aggregators. If there’s a dirty word in the ed sector, it’s “aggregator”, and agents, university staff, government officials, and third sector orgs each commonly express this view.
So yeh, we aren't one of those.
What We Are
Perhaps the simplest comparison is with Airbnb. That’s software that enables and manages transactions between 2 parties. As a homeowner looking to make more money, Airbnb doesn’t hide potential short term renters from you (as some aggregators mask the provenance of applications). Platforms like Airbnb are fully transparent and let prospective users contact you directly if you choose to make your home visible & available. Then you each decide if you transact or not.
The principle is the same with Feezy, though we aren’t a unicorn and the platform’s not yet as pretty. Our software lets agents with the student supply contact a university if that university wants to be visible to that agency. We don’t intermediate, we don’t take any commission, and we don’t own the contract. It's supporting the 'phygital' blend of work some providers are shifting towards.
Why This Matters
Stories are printed weekly of universities in multiple markets shedding jobs, cutting costs, and missing intake targets. Whether QS-ranked or not, large or small, university or college, all of them have this one thing in common: their primary international student supply chain is a passive agent model that works ‘ok’ in a time of abundance but prevents them from actively securing committed supply when student demand levels reduce or shift markets.
Aggregators and master agencies are steroidal variations on this traditional model that will also fail to deliver for most providers, since they’re predicated on passively serving hundreds or even thousands of university partners. (They also create compliance risks that most providers know are best avoided, but I guess FOMO keeps them in).
It continues to be surprising that in a time of existential challenge and mass layoffs so many universities are remaining steadfastly loyal to the same agencies that also supply their competitors. But then it’s hard to turn the ship when you still use 50-pg paper contracts stored in a tambour unit and which are negotiated in sometimes months-long email exchanges. I know this because I did it for years myself.
What Universities Should Do Instead
First and for total clarity: you don’t necessarily need to use our software - the cat can be skinned in other ways.
But do think about how well a passive 90s supply chain model run via offline contracts is working for you in today’s leaner times. And if the answer is ‘not particularly great’, start shifting your approach to securing supply from the agencies that have it. [Recruiters who are not doing this now are like Airbnb hosts that only let a tiny fraction of the global market book their homes yet wonder why occupancy is so low.]
Be more like the Feezy users that - even on their free trials - have secured millions in tuition from new agencies they’d never heard about prior. Just be less like everyone else, because the status quo is emphatically failing hundreds or perhaps thousands of providers.
Admin challenges & costs have kept most universities at c.100-200 partner agents for the past 20 years, and aggregators and master agencies filled the opportunity niche this analogue limitation created, bringing volume/scale to an otherwise unscalable sector. But they’ve also brought new problems and have amplified existing ones.
Harness a digital approach to engaging agents with the student supply you need, and suddenly the world feels smaller & you aren’t being passively served by a fraction of the world’s agencies, whilst fighting to convert the same applicants as your direct competitors.
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