Why recruiters are shrinking their school lists, and how to stay on them

What do the American and British figures actually say?

Two surveys, run in two different countries, with two different methods, tell the same tension around the idea of target schools, the ones on which an employer concentrates its campus recruiting.

Source	Country	Figure
Veris Insights	United States	25 target schools on average in 2024, down from 39 in 2020
High Fliers Research	United Kingdom	27 universities targeted on average in 2024, after a low of 22

What exactly does a target school mean?

A target school is an institution on which an employer deliberately concentrates its campus recruiting: regular attendance at fairs, dedicated budget, a relationship carried from one year to the next, rather than a one off visit decided at the last minute.

The distinction matters because it changes the nature of the relationship. A target school keeps receiving visits even in years when the job market slows; a school visited opportunistically is the first whose budget disappears when the employer tightens spending.

Becoming a target school does not depend only on a school's size or reputation. A smaller school that consistently answers a partner's requests with precise figures can hold that place over better known but less responsive institutions.

That place is also lost gradually rather than all at once: a partner first cuts the frequency of its visits, then the budget it commits, before dropping the school from its list entirely the following year. Each of these stages leaves a window to react, provided it is seen coming.

What are the limits of these figures?

The two surveys cover different scopes (large American employers on one side, large British employers on the other) and do not add up to a single global trend.

The American movement, on its own, also does not say that lists are shrinking everywhere or for good: the British rebound, over the same period, shows that a list that narrowed can also widen again. Neither source lets anyone claim a French school, or another discipline, follows exactly the same curve: they give an order of magnitude and a direction, not a forecast.

What stays solid across both surveys is the reason recruiters themselves give for adjusting their list: the return on investment of each school, whether measured or not.

A school citing these figures should always state the country, the year and the source, exactly as this guide does here: that is what separates a figure usable in front of a partner from a figure that gets challenged immediately.

What moves a school on or off a list?

Three reasons come up most often in both surveys, and in the conversations an employer relations team has directly with its partners.

The first, a recruiting budget that no longer stretches as far as it once did: with a median annual budget of $114,000 in the United States in 2024 according to NACE, every school visited has to justify its share of that budget.

The second, whether a figure is available at all. A school that can tell a partner its cost per hire with them defends its place with an argument the employer can compare against its other channels. A school that can only offer visitor numbers from its last fair defends its place with an argument the employer cannot compare against anything.

The third, the employer's own hiring calendar: nearly 87% of American employers recruit for both internships and full time roles in the autumn, according to NACE, which concentrates the decision into a few months and leaves little room for a school that arrives late with an incomplete case.

What can a school show right now?

Without waiting for a new survey or a new tool, a school can gather for its three or four most important partners what they invested, who they met and what they obtained, and send that figure before those partners review their list.

That is exactly the approach set out in the guide on employer relations performance and in the guide on the results report: the same four indicators, attendees, applications, hires, cost per hire, applied to the precise question this guide asks, staying on the list.

A school can also show a figure no competitor has: its placement or apprenticeship students' conversion rate into hires at that same partner. It is often the single most convincing figure for an employer, because it directly measures what a partnership produces beyond one single event.

Does this figure also serve accreditation?

Yes, and it is a second use of the same work. Accreditation bodies such as AACSB ask business schools to provide evidence of engagement with the professional world: events with employers, partnerships sustained over time, hires that follow from them.

The same figures that convince a partner to stay on your list (attendees, hires, cost per hire) become, presented differently, dated evidence for an accreditation case. Gathering this material once therefore serves both purposes at once.

The difference mostly lies in presentation: an accreditation case needs dated, exportable evidence, event by event and partner by partner, whereas an argument aimed at a partner fits on a single page summarising their own case.