Pulse: Optimising for What's Possible at PGT

I'm going to do something a little different in this blog post and ask you to, first, go and read a different blog post.

The piece in question was recently published by HEPI, under the title: A matter of time: why our universities can't crack the part-time postgrad code. It's by Ewan Fairweather, a Postgraduate Student Recruitment Manager at the University of Edinburgh and one of my favourite people when it comes to 'real talk' about UK PG (Masters especially).

It's 900 or so very worthwhile words. Please give it a read, or at least a skim. I'll wait here.

...

Hello again. So, as you'll now know, Ewan's thesis is pretty simple: UK universities often lack detailed, practical information on part-time postgraduate study, which makes it difficult for prospective students to balance education with personal commitments. Providing this information is a difficult problem (particularly when it comes to fixing timetables in advance) but that doesn't mean universities shouldn't try – and Ewan ends with some suggestions for trying.

Now, I can't take ownership of this problem in quite the same way as Ewan does because, unlike Ewan, I don't work for a university. But I do work for an organisation that likes helping universities... and sits on an awful lot of data about postgraduate audiences.

My aim with this post is to prove how important Ewan's topic is – and hopefully help you in the process.

I don't work for HESA either, but it's with their data that I'm going to start – as I often do in sessions on PG audiences.

The three lines here are UK-domiciled PGT (Masters-level) enrolments across the past seven intakes, broken down by age.

The first thing to note is that the pandemic in 2020/21 had a big impact on all of these audiences. Bigger, indeed, than introducing the postgraduate Masters loan did from 2016/17.

What happens next is that the youngest audience (21-24 – mostly fresh graduates) drops off rapidly and consistently and so (albeit less dramatically) does the 25-29 audience. But the 30+ segment doesn't. There's a slight drop (about 4%) in 2021/22 and then it's level. It's also well above where it was in 2019/20.

Older 'returners' are always the biggest audience for UK PGT and the pandemic made that even more true. This audience for your programmes is still bigger than it was a few years ago.

Now, it's possible that 2024/25 HESA data (due in Spring) could disrupt this trend, but our Pulse data indicates that searching audiences have also been getting (and staying) older.

42% of our UK audiences considering a Masters were aged 35+ in Q4 2022. By 2023 that rose to 56%. In 2024 it dropped slightly to 52%, but was still above 2022 and still the majority.

We can hypothesise as to why older audiences have become the most robust segment in both search and enrolments (ahem: cost) but the fact that they are means Ewan is all the more right about the importance of part-time. Let's quickly prove that too.

Pulse data shows that interest in part-time study correlates clearly with age:

Less than a fifth of 18-24 year-olds are interested in a part-time Masters, compared to more than half of those aged 35+.

They're also much keener on remote delivery. I won't plot this to save you from chart fatigue, but whereas only 10% of 18-24 year-olds are considering a fully online Masters, it's 58% at 35+.

One last chart. Pulse also asks audiences what their biggest concern about doing a Masters is. Guess how that compares between younger and older audiences?

Older audiences are slightly less concerned about every other obstacle to Masters study (including cost) and twice as concerned about having the time for it.

I could approach this from other directions via our data (older audiences are also more likely to be employed and to fund via in-study income). But I think we have enough evidence to support the importance of Ewan's position:

The 30+ segment is (increasingly) the largest audience for domestic PGT; they're significantly more likely to seek part-time and/or remote study; finding the time for a Masters is their biggest blocker to study after cost.

I'm not here to say that you should give up on younger PG students. Their biggest problem is a frankly inadequate funding system that leaves universities in an invidious position. Based on the data above, they could also do with some reassurance that Masters study is right for them (given a third or more worry about their ability and eligibility).

But, if you want to grow UK PG at all right now, the data suggests that it's older students you need to be thinking (more) about. They are the possible to optimise for.

Ewan's biggest piece of advice for doing that is to try and cut the gordion knot of offering useful timetable information in advance. It's not easy but, based on his research, it won't take much to be better than most. There are five tips at the end of his blog and I particularly like the suggestion of offering a sample timetable based on previous years' – I bet that would go a long way to make prospective students feel more confident about the feasibility of a course.

Here, though, are a few other suggestions from me. In no particular order:

• Make older students more visible in your marketing and recruitment materials – I recently asked an AI to draw me "a group of postgraduate students" and got a bunch of 20-somethings. AIs are trained on images they find on the internet (in places like university websites).
• Have a good local jobs board – Older PGs are more likely to work alongside existing jobs, but they might also seek work on / around campus. Besides, having this will be useful for your younger 'continuer' students anyway.
• Highlight all your other campus amenities – Student bars, gyms, coffee shops and venues are all great; but so are campus parking options and daycare facilities.
• Make sure 'returner' audiences understand that the PG loan is available to them too – There's a "curse of knowledge" aspect to the UK postgraduate student finance system as well all-too-easily forget how odd the whole thing can be if you aren't used to it. Because, say, you've not had a student loan for twenty years. Or ever.
• Provide a rough guide as to how much time a Masters takes out of the average week – This is easier to do than showing the timetable in advance and probably just as impactful. Indeed, only showing the timetable probably gives a misleading impression of workload for most Masters.

I'm sure there's loads more smart people can think of but, with one final nod to Ewan, I'd strongly recommend doing as much of this as possible in one place.

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