Newsletter #185: AI is causing students to change their degrees; The gap between student expectations and reality; Why Yale shouldn’t make seminars device-free
📝 From the Education Marketer desk
AI is causing students to change their degrees. Read
Working class postgrads feel more exposed to AI than other students. Read
Why Yale shouldn’t make seminars device-free. Read
📰 HE news
A new report by Advance HE reveals that students are overall “confident” about aspects of future study. However, while information-rich topics like “finding accommodation” inspired the greatest confidence (87%), less documented and soft areas like “making friends” were much lower at 68%. Of course, there’s an opportunity for differentiation - if your institution is better at helping prospective students make friends than the institution over the road, then you’re addressing a major pain point. But the report’s at its most useful when exploring the disconnect between student expectations and the reality of study. Case in point, 40% of students expect to work 16 hours a week on top of a “full-time” (35 - 40 hours per week) degree. That isn’t realistic, and for all the best marketing and recruitment efforts, could lead to withdrawal before enrolment and attrition thereafter. Are you educating students on their most significant knowledge gaps? Doing so will save you trouble down the line. Read
📊 Marketing and media news
I don’t think there is an HE marketing manager in existence who doesn’t understand the power of repurposing content, but what if the repurpose becomes more valuable than the original artefact? OpenAI recently acquired TBPN, a live daily podcast that’s popular in Silicon Valley. It gets 7,000 listens per episode and was purchased for $200m. For context, the largest podcast deal in history is Spotify’s exclusivity deal with The Joe Rogan Experience for $250m. That gets 11 million listens per episode. Why can 7,000 listens be in the same ballpark as 11 million? Clips! Cut downs of TBPN get an average of 257,000 views per clip. The format has been so successful for the show they now put ad segments at the end of the clips (LOL) because that’s where the engagement is. Spend as much time planning your repurposed content as your original work. Clips are how most people will engage with it. Read
Australia’s under-16 social media ban isn’t off to the best start with 61% of young people reporting “no action” from social media companies to remove or deactivate their account. This follows an investigation from The Guardian revealing that there has been no significant change in reported cases of cyberbullying. In fact, 14% of children felt “less safe” as a result of the ban. However, there are positives: 51% of 12-15 year olds who lost access reported better sleep and 43% a positive impact on the “connection” they feel with friends and family. So maybe the UK’s approach is reflecting this nuance? No. The House of Lords has tried to push even more blunt legislation through than the Australian government, willing to order a ban first and worry about specific apps and ages later. Advice for social media managers remains the same: Build capabilities for instant messaging and communities, they’re where under-16s are turning and are still exempt from legislation. Read
🏫 What unis are doing
University of Lincoln is welcoming prospects to the “university of no regrets”, which is a good riff on headlines stating students increasingly regret their degree. It also joins the ranks of universities hosting panels for “parent Q&A sessions” at applicant days. Definitely becoming more common. Look
DMU will end its relationship with the Oxford International Education Group at the end of the academic year. The University’s most recent accounts show an almost 50% decline in students from the partnership, and a consultation process has started for staff affected by its closure. Read
Small private colleges in the US are becoming ghost towns, recruiting students to only half their capacity. They are part of a squeezed middle. Students either stay local and attend community college (at low cost) or go big with prestigious schools. Read
🧑🎓 What students are saying
“I'm very much a home person, so aside from the whole financial thing, it was a big deal, me moving away from like a rural area to a city. So knowing that I put myself through that to maybe not even get a job at the end, that is bigger for me than the money side of things.” Students studying subjects allied to medicine respond to NHS recruitment freezes. Expect impacts to show up in future graduate outcomes data. Read
👾 Culture shock
Norway’s classroom iPad experiment backfired. Read
The petrol station speakeasy. Look
