The domestic market has rapidly changed over the past five years – and the sector needs to change with it if institutions hope to unlock growth.
Having worked in Higher Education marketing and recruitment for over ten years on campaigns for more than 40 universities, TAFE, and private providers across New Zealand and Australia, I’ve seen many changes in how recruitment and promotional campaigns have been delivered and evolved.
Undoubtedly, COVID caused (and still is affecting) major changes in such higher education trends. In a previous role, I delved into the Good Universities Guide digital course and career views across the country, comparing viewing trends pre- and post-COVID and highlighting massive changes in viewing trends. For example, one well-known Melbourne university pre-COVID had less than 20% interstate views, post-COVID this shifted to almost 60% interstate views. There were also massive shifts in both WA and SA course views and where the viewers came from.
Together with Tim Winkler (Future Campus publisher), we analysed the shifts of career views in the eighteen months pre-COVID against the 18 months post-COVID – a total of almost four million career views. The comparisons highlighted how COVID completely shifted interest in both courses and careers, with some examples being pre-COVID career views dominated by Allied Health. This completely flipped post-COVID to Frontline Health career interest.
Other concerning trends we noticed were:
- A challenge for universities to convince students to spend time studying for a university degree, in a time of reduced freedoms, often reduced time on campus, and heightened uncertainty;
- Significant challenges to recruit students into careers essential to the community and/or economy, such as allied health and IT;
- Loss of demand for careers related to languages and travel;
- Decline in environmental career search – eg 39% reduction in searches for climate change analyst; and
- Strong increase in outdoor jobs as essential workers – including agriculture, outdoor council roles, and defence careers.
While some of these trends continue today, there has been a more profound change in how people digest information/offerings. COVID completely changed people’s attitudes around messaging.
Two recent events demonstrate just how much attitudes have changed: the “Yes” campaign here in Australia and the 2024 American Presidential elections.
In both cases, good old celebrities, footballers, musicians, et al. were rolled out, pushing the good old marketing aim of “telling” people how to vote.
In both cases, this backfired badly.
Quite simply, people don’t want to be told what to do or how to act anymore – and marketing needs to change as a result.
The old digital message of “Study Accounting at XX University” doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. At least considering messaging highlighting how beneficial studying Accounting at XX University is for the target market is a start.
People demand more now; just telling them to study doesn’t cut through.
A more aspirational message is required. This is also relevant for most universities as a whole. Simply expecting the power of your logo to drive engagement and interest doesn’t work as it once did.
Want a better example?
According to a recent RMIT survey, corporate training across Australia will grow to 8 billion dollars annually. However, most of this projected money will be spent with RTO/TAFE on short courses, not universities.
Think how a small slice of this spend could benefit your institution – just 0.01% of this revenue would equate to an additional annual $80 million in revenue for a university.
Why are universities not receiving a bigger slice of this spending?
From my experience, there are numerous reasons. Most of which can easily be overcome.
There are numerous new potential domestic cohorts and revenue opportunities for universities out there, but a fresh wave of thinking and approach is required.
Times have changed.