Universities struggle to adapt to changing student cohorts

University leaders are struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing make-up and expectations of both international and domestic student cohorts in the United Kingdom, claim two of the country’s leading experts in higher education change management.

One of the most striking changes to UK higher education has been the tripling of international postgraduate recruitment, rising from 100,000 in 2019 to over 300,000 in 2023, before falling back sharply and plunging many British universities into a cash crisis after vice-chancellors banked on continued growth in their financial forecasts.

Equally dramatic has been the shift in the profile of the domestic student intake over the last five years, with nearly half of UK students now classifying themselves as “commuter students” and a doubling of UK undergraduates living at home while studying.

According to Professor Chris Husbands, director of Higher Futures, a specialist consultancy helping university leaders manage change, and Janice Kay, an expert in academic operating models and restructuring, UK university leaders face a multitude of challenges in thinking about strategic positioning for the next decade.

On top of the volatility in international student recruitment, particularly for postgraduate courses, stagnating income from domestic undergraduate tuition fees, and structural underfunding of research, there has been rapid change in the composition and expectations of student cohorts – often in unpredicted ways.

Within the last five years, applications for masters degree visas tripled to over 300,000 before falling back sharply.

Even those universities that did not grow international student numbers saw major shifts in where their overseas students came from – with the number of students from the European Union enrolling for a postgraduate course falling from 29,330 in 2020 to 17,845.

Less predictable was the huge increase in applications from West Africa following the restoration of the post-study work visa in 2019, and then a 70% fall in masters degree visa applications from Nigeria in the first quarter of 2024, compared with the same period a year earlier, as University World News has reported.

New rules of engagement

In an article on what all this change means for UK higher education, titled “New rules of engagement” and published on the Higher Futures website, Husbands and Kay say that while Chinese applications appear to be in long-term decline, there’s been a rapid increase in South Asian recruitment to UK universities, with a recent 35% rise in applications from Pakistan.

“The rapid growth and equally rapid fall in postgraduate taught (PGT) populations has posed management challenges for the sector,” said Husbands, who was vice-chancellor at Sheffield Hallam University between 2016 and 2023 and chaired both the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

He told University World News: “There is a tendency to look at international PGT populations in global terms, but South Asian and West African students have different experiences, expectations, and needs from each other and from Chinese students.

“The basics of good provision are clearly always true, but institutions need to gear their student support to the needs of specific groups.”

Domestically, the change has been just as significant, with more students living at home while studying at their local university as a consequence of the cost-of-living crisis.

Using data for the 2024 Student Money and Wellbeing Report, Husbands and Kay point to nearly half of UK students now classifying themselves as commuter students, compared with just a quarter of UK undergraduates in the data for 2018/19.

This has coincided with a cultural shift in student expectations, partly as a legacy of the pandemic during which students were required, by and large, to study remotely, but also because of the cost-of-living crisis triggered by rapid inflation in 2022 and 2023 and the increase in student mental health issues.

Husbands and Kay say technology has had a big impact on students’ favoured mode of engagement, with the preference “to be able to study flexibly and remotely” linked to reducing travel costs and “only travelling to campus when there is sufficient academic activity to make a trip worthwhile”, especially for those working while studying.

To meet the challenges, universities have “accelerated the shift towards the professionalisation of student support and away from the more traditional ‘academic tutor’ role”, say the two experts.

Block-timetabling arrangements, which compress students’ academic programmes into a few days a week, make it easier for students to work alongside study.

Student experience: plural not singular

But there is the “risk of solving one problem whilst creating others”, including weakening the relationship between academic staff and students and making shaping an inclusive institution more difficult, particularly in terms of “sustaining a sense of community”, say Husband and Kay, who suggest there are lessons to learn from private providers of higher education.

“Many are laser-focused on delivering value in precisely defined ways, with short feedback loops and rapid response mechanisms,” say the two experts.

They also say university leaders need to respond, not just to greater diversity, but also to the “segmented expectations” of university experience, engagement, and outcomes.

Increasingly, student experience needs to be thought of in “plural, not singular, terms”, they say.

They also recommend that university leaders consider using external frameworks, such as the Student Futures Manifesto developed by Mary Curnock Cook with the UPP Foundation.

Curnock Cook, a trustee at the Higher Education Policy Institute, said the UPP Foundation Student Futures Commission’s manifesto helped to highlight the “privations suffered by university students” when government focus was only on the need for school pupils to “catch-up” post-pandemic.

However, she told University World News: “There is no magic bullet, not Student Futures nor any other framework.

“It is a sector norm to reach for a framework to tackle problems, but this can prevent universities [from] being more agile in their response.

“Universities might do well to take a more flexible position, ensure that they fully understand the challenges of different student groups, and deploy a range of responses to meet different needs.

“After all, we’d be astonished if a private sector organisation used one framework only to cover all their customers.

Tapping the data

Dr Vicky Lewis, an international strategy for higher education consultant, agreed that the “student experience needs to be thought of in plural, not singular terms”.

She told University World News: “It is unhelpful to treat all international students as a homogeneous constituency. Just as it’s unhelpful to treat all UK students in that way.”

Lewis has been publishing a series of blogs exploring the key performance indicators adopted by UK universities in their international strategies and said: “While for some students securing UK work experience was a high priority, for others it may be building intercultural friendship groups or being exposed to cutting-edge research.

“There’s a wealth of data available to understand the experiences of students, but not enough universities are using this to design and evaluate engagement.”

Michael Beverland, a professor of brand management, strategy, and marketing at the University of Sussex Business School, told University World News that universities need to understand how customers relate to a brand and how this can change drastically.

“Universities need to start looking at what students want from their education… It wasn’t so long ago that a campus-based out-of-home degree was a middle-class rite of passage, whereas now, commuter students are fast becoming the norm, and this means universities need to shift to adapt while also still providing the experience to the large number of on-campus students.

“The dynamism of the international market is also a reality to deal with. Six years ago, universities could rely on China because of its sheer size and the value of international degrees as status signifiers. No longer!

“A much more nuanced approach to China is essential, and we need to be aware that they know they’re propping up our system,” he said.

Beverland also urged UK universities to “consider the extended journey at PGT” and the need for pastoral care, not just for undergraduates, but also at postgraduate level.

Swing to STEM

The research by Husbands and Kay also highlighted the so-called ‘swing to science’, or more accurately a swing to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects and away from foreign languages and the humanities among applicants to UK universities.

This has caused problems at both ends of the academic spectrum, with cash-strapped universities closing language and humanities courses that fail to attract sufficient students and engineering applications outstripping the supply of expensive-to-deliver places, as Johnny Rich, chief executive of the Engineering Professors’ Council and outreach organisation Push, pointed out in a recent blog for WonkHe.

Rich told University World News: “Traditionally, the number of places to study engineering was roughly the same as the number who wanted to study it and had the potential to succeed.

“With the 'swing to STEM', student demand now outstrips supply. That should be good news, as 'engineer' is the number one job role that businesses say they struggle to fill. But universities can't afford to expand their engineering provision.

“Each additional student at domestic student fee levels increases the losses on high-quality courses that have long contact hours and use expensive amenities.

“If the government wants to plug the skills shortages in engineering – a sector that accounts for nearly £1 (US$1.29) in every £3 of GDP – they need to bridge this funding gap to invest in growth through more per capita funding for strategically important, high-cost courses, or through an overhaul of the domestic higher education funding mechanism that, unlike the current system, creates a link between higher education provision and labour market needs.”

Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. He blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com