UMass to use recruiting company to increase international enrollment

The University of Massachusetts will begin using the services of Shorelight Education over the summer in an effort to increase enrollment of international students.

"UMass Amherst has world-class programs, and they want to expand capacity," Shorelight CEO Tom Dretler said. “In the work that we've done with public institutions, they're so mission-oriented that it always starts with ‘What can we do to support the mission?’ but they also need to be creative. I think everyone is asking them to be innovative."

UMass Amherst’s enrollment of international students has already increased threefold between 2005 and 2015, but the university is looking to host more international students, who pay full non-resident tuition rates and, according to UMass Amherst Provost Katherine Newman, allow the university to provide more financial aid for Massachusetts students.

“The world that we need to prepare our students for is one that contains people from all over,” said Newman. "If we assumed that only students born and raised in Massachusetts were going to be the entire labor force of this state then maybe we wouldn’t need anyone else, but that’s not true. These are growth industries, especially in fields like computer science, cyber-security, data science. We would prefer to be a magnet that brings people into the state.”