Martijn van de Veen, Chief Business Development Officer at ICEF, shares with us how his interest in international education started with an internship in France where he was able to appreciate the value of learning other languages and cultures. Martijin tells us of his time as Director General of the International Student Identity Card, and the work that occupies him now at ICEF.
He shares with us the importance for the international student recruitment sector to embrace digital transformation and the critical importance of underpinning confidence in the quality of recruitment agents. We talk about different regional and national perceptions towards agents, the role of aggregators, the value that the sector still places on meeting with each other, and reflect on the journey of growth and diversification of the international student industry, and the implications for student advice, with more options for study, both in terms of modality and geographical locations, at a time when the traditional Big Four receiving countries are placing restriction to inbound mobility … and he shares the experience of being at the receiving end of cultural surprise and inter-cultural learning during a trip in Japan.