University of Galway is planning to invest millions of euro in recruiting more international students from Africa, Asia and the Americas.

The university has embarked on a public tender process to secure the services of major recruitment agents to attract more international students to enrol in its programmes.

An ambitious target to increase its intake of international students to more than 4,000 comes as Galway experiences an ongoing and acute accommodation shortage – but the university declined to comment on where the additional students would live.

The university said it wanted recruitment services in nine locations, including Sub-Saharan Africa, North America, South America, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and “all other regions not covered above”.

The university said the contract duration would be for ten years, and it has allocated some €60m, excluding VAT, as its estimated budget for these services.

It gave five broad areas within the university that may avail of the recruitment services. They included the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies; the College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences; the College of Business, Public Policy and Law; the College of Science/Engineering and Informatics; and the Adult Learning and Professional Development Unit.

The successful service providers will be required to recruit appropriately qualified students to programmes of study at the University of Galway, and to “ultimately grow the numbers of students registered” at the third level institute.

They will have to “market, promote and profile” the university to high schools and universities in the nine regions, and represent the university at higher education expos and exhibitions.

They must also provide “immigration advice” and help with preparing and processing study visa applications.

According to University of Galway, it is the “most international university in Ireland”.

It said it has more than 19,000 students enrolled each year, with 4,000 of these – around 20% – international students from 110 different countries.

It has almost 3,000 full-time equivalent staff, with 35% of them from 45 countries worldwide.

The university also has student exchange programmes with more than 200 universities globally.

“We are proud of the diversity of our campus community, as well as our partnerships with universities, businesses and organisations across the world. We are committed to even greater internationalisation to ensure that our teaching and research has a global impact,” its tender documents said.

Asked to comment on where all the additional international students would live, given the acute accommodation shortage in Galway and surrounding areas, a spokesperson for the university said “we shouldn’t and wouldn’t” comment while the tender was live.

Earlier this year, the university once again encouraged homeowners to rent rooms in their houses to students, as the acute shortage of accommodation remained the single biggest factor impacting third level students.

Pictured: University of Galway…seeking tenders to bring in more international students.