The fast approaching end of the 2024 recruitment cycle has seen many rumours about the varying strategies of providers – in terms of maximising (or right-sizing) recruitment in ways that make financial or strategic sense in a given context.
Providers seldom pivot in a single year, and it is possible to see the roots of what is currently happening in recruitment for the 2022-23 academic year with the latest (and final) release of HESA student data for that year.
We are, of course, two very challenging years off the pace here – what were weak signals in the 2022 cycle are the dominant themes of 2024. With a dismal financial outlook, providers can find significant income within certain kinds of recruitment – but in regulatory terms this needs to be adequately resourced. The strategy comes in ensuring that internal investment and recruitment flow in the same direction at the same time – the size and shape of your provider is a deliberate choice far more than it is subject to the vagaries of the market (at least, in year on year terms).
International domicile
This is probably the first open data driven chance we’ve had to think about postgraduate recruitment internationally for 2022-23. It’s a huge financial deal for many providers, and it is helpful to view patterns in recruitment by provider and provider group. China, for instance, remains a Russell Group thing, while Nigeria and India are bigger deals among University Alliance and other post-92 providers. I hear big things about Turkey for the future – from the most recent available picture you would suspect the market will be status/league table driven. The traditional anglophone sources of international postgraduate students are dominated by the largest Russell Group providers – Oxford in particular.
Looking across an individual provider is also fascinating. We see that the US is a far bigger postgraduate deal to Oxford than China, whereas at Liverpool China and India are the primary sources of international PG recruitment. India too is a big deal at the University of the West of England, but Nigeria is a central focus.
For the small but vocal minority of Wonkhe readers who love maps, I’ve done this as a map too. Mouse over a country of interest (you can use the usual zoom controls on the map) to see the changes over time on the line chart below.
It would be fascinating (if nearly impossible given confidentiality requirements) to see this by provider and subject, or by provider with a taught/registered split.
UK domicile
It’s only recently that we’ve been able to see comparable data for students domiciled within the UK – these views allow us to see where students from a given (lower tier local authority) area choose to study, and where each provider tends to recruit from. While international recruitment strategies tend to be dealt with at senior level within institutions, local and regional plans are generally the purview of access and participation teams.
It would be wonderful to see this by teaching as well as registering provider – many institutions use partnerships to recruit in underserved or promising areas, and in some cases you can see this in an unexpectedly strong showing in a geographically removed area.
Distance learning
New for the 2022-23 collection is more useful data about distance learning. This is the first of a new time series, but allows us to see where providers are recruiting students with remote study patterns, split between home and international domiciles and showing level and mode of study. There are a number of segments within this market, and it is notable to see that leaders in undergraduate distance provision are not always the same as those focusing at a postgraduate level.
The nature of PGT study offers more opportunities, arguably, for appropriately resourced distance learning, especially among professional learners studying as a part of a professional requirement (law, medicine, nursing, engineering and so on). It also folds in the huge, and growing, international online MBA market.
Again, a by subject split would be fascinating within this release. The online MBA market may well be something that will feature in a future OfS investigation (it is large, has grown quickly, and is courses are variable in coverage, accreditation and – possibly – quality). Note that I’ve not shown the Open University within this view – it dominates this space to the extent that it makes the charts hard to read,
Wake me up when HESA spring ends
There’s been vanishingly few pop-punk anthems that deal specifically with higher education data publication timetables, but the long delayed end of the 2022-23 HESA Student open publication originally due in January really needs to be marked in some way.
The team at HESA have been dealing with a range of issues within the collected data, publication this year has rightly amplified the caveats and conditionality that rightly accompany any data release. If ever you sneakily suspected the map was indeed the territory, and that what you read in the open tables reflected exactly what you would have found on the ground on deadline day – 2022-23 should put you right. Data is, at best, indicative – always, not just the year of Data Futures.