What is happening in postgraduate recruitment?

Last year, we predicted that the pandemic would cause a spike in postgraduate numbers for the 2020/21 cycle, before returning to trend when the economic situation improves. Indeed, domestic postgraduate taught numbers increased by 16%, significantly above the usual growth trend. So will this continue?

This latest blog will look at the current landscape for postgraduate recruitment, covering global and domestic influences, when to promote postgraduate campaigns or events, why students are considering postgraduate study, key trends and why funding is still a key barrier for prospective students.

Year 12 students

7 things you need to know about Year 12 students

It won’t be long until the current Year 12s are making decisions about their post-18 education pathways – whether that is university, a job, an apprenticeship or something else. This September, they will be Year 13s in their final year of school.

The Student Room has around 600,000 users a month who are currently in Year 12.1 In this blog, we’ll reveal what’s on their minds so that you can adapt your communication strategy to engage and support Year 12 students.

mental health awareness

Getting the Green Light – What’s Up With Everyone?

It’s mental health awareness week and The Student Room has been promoting What’s Up With Everyone? – a campaign with young people for young people to help build up stronger ways of dealing with life’s challenges. The campaign offers a number of practical tools for their journey through school, college, university and the workplace. It focuses on key challenges of loneliness and isolation, perfectionism, competitiveness, independence and harm from social media.  Each challenge is taken up by five brilliant new Aardman characters—Merve, Charlie, Tai, Ashley and Alex.

Clearing 2021 tips

What have we learnt for Clearing this year? Brand awareness is key

With continued uncertainty around grading this summer, Clearing 2021 could be the biggest we’ve seen. In this blog, we’ll look at a mixture of quantitative student data (polls, market research and onsite behaviour) and qualitative data (student comments) to give you a holistic view of what to expect this year.

We’ll also include key brand building strategies based on these learnings to help your university prepare for a successful Clearing cycle.

Covid-19 and demand for postgraduate courses

History tells us that when the economy goes down, postgraduate applications go up. After the 2008 financial crisis, postgraduate student numbers grew by an average of 4.4% per cycle between 2007/8 and 2010/11 (HESA).  Between the 2011/12 to 2019/20 cycles numbers adjusted back down, then returned to a trend growth rate of around 2% a year. So can we expect a surge in postgraduate applications in our current economic climate? This blog will look at some of the key factors affecting postgraduate demand, postgraduate funding and the competitor landscape, reasons that applicants are drawn to postgraduate study, and the trends we are seeing in students’ postgraduate course and career choices.