We know the pandemic has had a big impact on postgraduate study but with attention turning to the next recruitment cycle, what does the future hold? We’ve looked at search trends on FindAMasters during the second half of 2021 and compared to 2020 to see how our audience interests have changed over time and what this could mean going forward.
Given the continued pandemic, it’s no surprise that the health industry remains at the forefront of everyone’s minds. What’s encouraging to see is that interest in Nursing has increased by 97%, with over 79,000 users looking at Nursing courses during the last six months (August 2021 to January 2022), compared to this time last year.
It’s positive to see that students are still willing and interested in a sector that’s come under such enormous pressure during the last two years, and continues to do so. While we see increases in interest from India and Nigeria, the largest growth has been in the UK, with 75% more students considering Masters level programmes in Nursing subjects. This might reflect the framing of health workers as ‘heroes’ and the extra funding opportunities from the NHS such as the NHS Learning Support Fund
Interestingly, two areas that have seen some of the highest interest are Marketing and Politics. Both are quite broad, but they’ve collectively seen over 40,000 users actively engaging with the various programmes they include.
Marketing includes a range of digital skills, which could be seen as a necessity for people to upskill and protect their jobs in a volatile market, or increase their employability by keeping up to date with the latest thinking. It also equips students with multiple transferable skills, so marketing might seem a more stable career choice or growth opportunity given that its fundamentals can arguably work across sectors.
Alternatively, it could be the turn of the tide to self-employment. Applications to start new businesses hit a new record in 2021, with 5.4 million requests (beating the previous 4.4 million in 2020). There’s no doubt that the pandemic acted as a catalyst for new start-ups, and marketing acumen is key to any new business for those who want to be free of the 9-5pm office work, or even to boost a side hustle to help fund their lives.
Now to Politics. Over the last two years, politics has got a lot closer to home, with the pandemic affecting the whole world, and global leaders forced to make hard decisions. In the UK, the Prime Minister was on TV addressing the nation regularly, and with the recent increases in fuel and energy costs, suddenly the real consequences of political decisions are seen more immediately in everyday life. It could be that the increased interest reflects students’ and graduates’ desire to make sense of the world around them, or it could be that people are wanting to make a change and they know that politics is a key route to achieving this.
It’s actually Design that has seen the largest overall increase in popularity recently, growing by more than 122%.
This is closely followed by an increase of 119% for users interested in Education and 113% for Agriculture. Although the total number of users isn’t quite as substantial as for Design (42,000), at over 21,000 for Education and 15,000 for Agriculture, they’re not inconsequential.
Education may be seen as a good conversion option for people looking to re-skill and use their work experience to teach a subject. The sector comes with generally positive employment prospects and job security which are huge bonuses during unpredictable times. In the UK, we’ve seen an interest increase of almost 100% for Academic Studies in Education and a 40% increase for Teacher Training specifically. Bespoke funding in this area could be driving interest, as well as people seeing that there is a clear need for more teachers.
Agriculture may have come to the forefront of people’s mind with the increased focus on climate change and the UN Summit towards the end of 2021. We know that students are becoming more socially responsible, and are questioning organisations on their sustainability agenda, so it makes sense that they’d be looking for areas to make a real difference.
A significant number of our users over the last six months have been from Africa and India. Sri Lanka has seen the largest increase of 80% and Nigeria is up by 40%.
This overall interest is likely to be driven by the launch of the new Graduate Route visa, which has already had a substantial impact on Masters-level enrolments (for example, recently published HESA data reveals that the number of Nigerian students on UK postgraduate taught programmes more than doubled in 2020/21).
But what are these students actually searching for?
While the subject interests for Indian and Nigerian students are fairly similar to that of the UK, we’ve seen a 31% increase in interest for Business from students in Nigeria specifically. This could be due to the increased exposure given to specific business-related scholarships both from business schools and universities as a whole. Or, it could be due to the fact that, according to The Africa Business Agenda 2021 by pwc, African CEOs are changing their long-term investments to focus on digital transformation, cost efficiency initiatives and talent development. Upskilling in these areas will be crucial for longevity in the business sector.
It’s fairly safe to say that the healthcare sector will continue to be a big focus for Masters-level students, whether it’s to upskill in a current job or to retrain to help those in need, and that will be the case across the world.
One to keep an eye on will be Artificial Intelligence. With the news of the £23 million the government has earmarked for 2,000 AI scholarships in England and the fact it’s open to both domestic and international students, AI and Data Science can’t help but become buzzwords for 2022.
We’ve been looking at the overall data but our clients are able to see specific programme performance, audiences and benchmark against competitors using our Masters Compass product. Book a free, no obligation demo by emailing