Newsletter #106: The channel most likely to have a positive influence on students; When parents are most influential; MIT gets Doom running on cells
✏️ From the Education Marketer desk
De Montfort University is on it with peer-to-peer. Look
The channel most likely to have a positive influence on students. Read
We’ve reached the end of an era with content marketing. Read
When parents are most influential. Look
📰 HE news
Just in time for Christmas, spending per student is at its lowest since 2011 with inflation (and the freezing of UG tuition fees) largely to blame. It’s a pretty grim picture. Each undergrad student in 2012-13 had approximately £11,800 spent on teaching resources. But today it’s £2,200 less. Bear in mind too that in 2011, fees were just £3,335 and the government made significant contributions to teaching grants! Pressure on international recruitment won’t help the situation. The UK’s press continues to push that “British youngsters” are being “squeezed out” by international students, but UCAS’s end-of-cycle data shows that the opposite is true - international acceptances were DOWN last year, even though international applications were up! Now, a review of the graduate visa route is on the cards as well… Prediction for 2024: British youngsters are squeezed out of education because no one can afford to teach them. Read
Extra: Nearly half of companies plan to eliminate bachelor’s degree requirements in 2024. Read
📊 Marketing and media news
Threads finally opened in Europe last week and saw a nice bump in activity. However, that’s not the main story. Alongside the launch, Mark Zuckerberg announced that testing had begun on connecting Threads to the “fediverse.” If you’re non-technical and haven’t been following this story, think of the fediverse as one big social network. The idea is that if you post on Threads that same content will be available across other “federated” platforms like Mastodon and WordPress. The advantage? The last 10 years have been characterised by social media companies building walled gardens. You can’t port your YouTube subscribers to LinkedIn or your TikTok followers to Instagram, but if the fediverse takes off that may well be a possibility in the future. Imagine a world where as a Gmail user you could only send emails to other Gmail users. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, that’s the current state of social media. It needs an overhaul. Read
Pew Research Centre dropped its latest report on teen media habits. Buckle up, folks. 46% of teens say they are now online “almost constantly,” up from just 24% in 2014. Interestingly, 46% gave the same response last year so we may well have hit peak social media. In fact, most social media apps have seen a decline in the number of teens using them, other than Facebook - but there’s a caveat. Facebook “activity” may have increased but the no. of user posts has declined. Yes, teens are spending a lot of time on social, however, they’re mainly watching short-form video clips and not sharing their own updates. Reels are a big driver with the consumption of short-form media on Meta’s platforms up 20%, but that’s not to downplay the importance of community and conversation - that’s just happening elsewhere, and particularly on Discord. In 2022, 24% of 22 - 32-year-olds were members of private communities on Discord. This year, it’s 46%. Don’t be surprised if someone asks you for your “community strategy” in 2024. Teen media habits | Discord growth
🏫 What unis are doing
A PhD student at MIT got Doom running on cells. Let me explain. There’s a long-running meme that the game Doom can run on anything - calculators, iPods, even pregnancy tests - and there’s a huge community making it happen. But the best part of this particular MIT video? There are scientists in the comments advising how to make the game run faster. Look
Cardiff Metropolitan University has a blog dedicated to student stories. The differentiator? Its frequency. There have been 17 stories published in December alone, a lot of which include decent photography. It’s a good resource too. After searching a variety of subject areas there wasn’t one without a student story. Look
University of Hull has what can only be described as a “pitch page.” It’s a piece of web content that sets out to answer one question, “Why Hull should be your first choice” and, honestly, I think it does a damn good job. My favourite part is the cost of living comparison between Hull, London, York, Leeds and Manchester. Spoilers: Hull comes out on top. Look
🧑🎓 What students are saying
“I am sticking a very strict and detailed timetable to my fridge, making plans for who is going to walk the dog on which days and desperately trying not to say anything that makes me stand out as a late millennial, such as ‘I used to write all my essays by hand,’ and ‘Wow, literally everything’s online,’ both of which came out of my mouth very early on.” Mature students on what it’s like to return to university. Read
👾 Culture shock
This TikTok trend gives me the creeps. Look
Elon Musk wants to open a university. Yay. Look
