In 2018, ACA delivered a Global Comparative Market Research for Study in Estonia (the cooperation platform of international introduction of the Estonian higher education). During the seven-month project period, the research team collected data from all available national and international data sources relating to international education and national competitiveness to feed into a methodology for comparative market research developed in 2017 by the Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS) of the University of Tartu. Eleven countries were covered in the project: the United States, the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Germany, India, and Vietnam.

The research project resulted in a comparative overview and a ranking of the above-mentioned countries to make it possible to distinguish which countries, among the ones which were studied, could be suitable as destination countries for the marketing and recruitment of Estonian higher education. Recommendations have also been made to fine-tune the comparative research methodology in light of data availability and comparability. The project was concluded with a final meeting in Tallinn with stakeholders from Estonian higher education in November 2018.

This project was jointly delivered by ACA in cooperation with its Estonian member – the Archimedes Foundation, and supported by a team of national experts from the 11 chosen countries, as well as Rita Morais, an independent data analysis expert. The ACA experts involved in the project were Project Manager Queenie K.H. Lam, and ACA Director Bernd Wächter.