Newsletter #190: Why rankings don’t belong on your homepage; How education marketers can build trust with academics; Why students don’t want to be marketers
✏️ From the Education Marketer desk
Why rankings don’t belong on your homepage. Read
How marketers can build trust with academics. Read
Why students don’t want to be marketers. Read
📰 HE news
The Milburn Review into the state of youth employment and skills suggested that “too many young people go to university” (yawn) and end up not in education, employment or training (NEET). Still, let’s do the maths and appreciate the scale of the problem. 1 in 8 of those aged 16-24 are classified as NEET. That’s bad, but still shy of 2010/2011 (post-financial crash) NEET levels of 17%. But what about graduates specifically? Today, 1 in 10 NEETs are educated to degree level. That means that only 1 in 80 young people are both degree-educated and NEET. Okay, some students might be “underemployed” - maybe they're building a career in a different way - or not in a related field to their qualifications (who among us is), but shouldn’t we be celebrating that a degree significantly reduces the chance of NEET status? Framing matters, especially when negative headlines rock up to your open day. Read
📊 Marketing and media news
Google announced the future of search at its I/O conference last week. In place of blue links, it will now drop searchers into an AI-powered “intelligent search box” — essentially, a place where you can create stupidly complex queries, get answers and spend less time on websites. Of course, university websites are still among the most popular research tools for students discovering institutions and courses. But AI-overviews alone now have more than 2.5 billion monthly users. If you still have web traffic as a KPI, you might need a new set of metrics. Also, more accessible AI tools in Google change the kind of information students expect from your website. If they can learn everything about you (in a way that matters to them) before arriving on your website, what remains? Are you just providing citations, or something deeper, like a community or peer-to-peer experience? Create something worth visiting. Read
LinkedIn is updating its algorithm to reduce the reach of AI-generated posts and comments. “When AI is overused, especially at scale and in an automated way, it dilutes the valuable insights that real human conversations can spark.” Said Laura Lorenzetti, Global Editorial VP of LinkedIn, the platform that enables advertisers to spam your DMs at scale and in an automated way. “It’s ok to use AI to help you write, but your posts and comments need to represent your voice and your perspectives. The ultimate value comes from the human behind the tool.” I agree with all of this, but that POV is hard to square when every new post on the platform starts with the prompt “Rewrite this post with AI.” No doubt the update will significantly impact the performance of both personal and brand posts over the next few weeks. Get ahead of it. You don’t spark conversations by asking your AI to write a summary. Read
🏫 What unis are doing
University of Leicester shared its prospectus from 1924. As far as the format goes, not much has changed in over a century - pictures of facilities, details about where to eat. Even the Union gets a mention. It’s worth digging through your own archives. Posts like these are easy numbers. Look
Another speaker, this time former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, was booed by students for talking about AI at their graduation ceremony. This is now a trend. Unless your university is all-in on AI, don’t even bring it up. Graduation is far too late if you haven’t already done the groundwork. Look
Every year, Bath Spa University commissions a student to design a prize for its VC awards. It’s a small thing, but I don’t often see internal staff awards directly benefit students. This is refreshing. It goes beyond having ambassadors support an event, generates media and builds portfolios. Look
🧑🎓 What students are saying
“My room is facing the wrong way and gets little to no sunlight. It makes it very dark, even when sunny outside. I think this has contributed to poor mental health over the winter months especially.” A new report from GSL Index reveals that of students living in UK student accommodation, fewer than four in ten (37%) say they feel calm and peaceful most or all of the time. To be honest, that’s more than I expected. Read
👾 Culture shock
Princeton ended a 133-year honour code (because of AI). Read
Eldin Ring on the N64.Read
