This blog was kindly authored by Dr. Ismini Vasileiou, Associate Professor at De Montfort University.
The government’s new Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper reframes how the UK prepares people for work, learning, and life. It promises a simpler, more coherent system built around quality, parity of esteem, and progression – introducing new V-Levels, reforming Level 3 and below qualifications, and setting out clearer routes into higher education and skilled employment.
Within it there is an unmistakable message for universities: higher education is no longer a separate tier but a partner in a joined-up skills ecosystem.
This direction of travel strongly echoes the recommendations of the Cyber Workforce of the Future white paper, which called for a unified national skills taxonomy, stronger coordination between education and employers, and consistent frameworks for developing technical talent. The government’s post-16 reforms, though broader in scope, now seeks to achieve at system level what the cyber sector has already begun to pilot.
Reimagining pathways: from fragmentation to flow
At the heart of the White Paper lies the ambition to create “a seamless system where every learner can progress, without duplication or dead ends.” The proposed V-Levels for 16-19-year-olds aim to sit alongside A-Levels, replacing hundreds of overlapping technical qualifications and creating a nationally recognised route into both higher technical and academic study.
Reforms to Level 2 and entry-level qualifications will introduce new “Foundation Programmes” that build essential skills and prepare learners for work or further study. Alongside these, stepping-stone qualifications in English and Mathematics will replace automatic GCSE resits, acknowledging that linear repetition has failed to deliver progress for many young people.
The emphasis on simplified, stackable routes reflects the very principles behind the Cyber Workforce of the Future model, which proposed interoperable learning pathways connecting schools, further education, higher education, and industry within a single skills continuum. What began as a sector-specific call for alignment in cyber is now being written into national policy.
Higher education’s new context
The White Paper links post-16 reform directly to the Industrial Strategy and to Skills England’s mission to align learning with labour-market demand. For universities, several themes stand out:
Progression and parity: Higher education is expected to work together with further education and employers to ensure that learners completing V-Levels and higher technical qualifications can progress seamlessly into Level 4, 5, and 6 provision.
Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs): The expansion of HTQs in growth areas such as AI, cyber security, and green technology positions universities as key co-developers and deliverers of technical education.
Quality and accountability: The Office for Students will have powers to limit recruitment to poor-quality courses and tie tuition-fee flexibility to demonstrable outcomes, reinforcing the need for robust progression and employability data.
Lifelong learning and modularity: The commitment to the Lifelong Learning Entitlement demands interoperability of credits across further education and higher education – another concept long championed in the cyber-skills ecosystem.
Taken together, these reforms require universities to move beyond disciplinary silos and become brokers of opportunity – enabling flexible, lifelong learning rather than simply delivering three-year degrees.
From strategy to delivery: lessons from cyber that can scale
The Cyber Workforce of the Future paper provides a live example of how the government’s post-16 vision can be delivered in practice. Its framework rests on three transferable pillars:
Unified skills taxonomy – mapping qualifications and competencies against occupational standards to create a common language for education and industry.
Education – industry bridge – aligning curriculum design and placements to real-world demand through structured partnerships between universities, FE colleges, and employers.
Inclusive pipeline development – embedding equity and access by designing pathways that work for diverse learners and career changers, not just traditional entrants.
These principles are not unique to cyber; they represent a template for how any technical or digital field can align with the White Paper’s objectives. The challenge now is scaling this joined-up approach nationally across disciplines – from advanced manufacturing to health tech and green energy.
Six priorities for universities
Redefine admissions and progression routes Recognise new qualifications such as V-Levels and HTQs as rigorous, valued entry points to higher education.
Co-design regional skills ecosystems Partner with futher education colleges, local authorities, and industry to map regional growth sectors and align provision accordingly.
Develop flexible, modular curricula Build stackable learning blocks that learners can access and re-enter throughout their careers under the Lifelong Learning Entitlement.
Co-create with employers Move from consultation to collaboration, embedding placements, apprenticeships, and micro-credentials that reflect labour-market demand.
Support learner transition Provide structured academic and digital-skills support for students from vocational or stepping-stone routes.
Measure outcomes transparently Track progression, attainment, and employability by qualification route to evidence value and inform continuous improvement.
Opportunities and risks
The White Paper’s success will depend on genuine partnership between universities, further education providers, and employers. Without coordination, the new structure could replicate old hierarchies – leaving V-Levels or technical routes seen as second-tier options. Similarly, tighter regulation must not deter universities from widening participation or admitting learners who require additional support.
The cyber-skills sector demonstrates what can work when these risks are managed: clear frameworks, shared standards, and collaborative delivery that bridges academic and technical domains. Replicating this across disciplines will require sustained investment and policy stability, not short-term pilots.
A new social contract for tertiary education
The Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper represents a genuine reset for tertiary education – one that values technical excellence, lifelong learning, and regional growth alongside academic achievement.
Its goals mirror those already embedded within the Cyber Workforce of the Future initiative: building a national system where education and employment are continuous, mutually reinforcing stages of one journey. The cyber model shows that when universities act as integrators – connecting further education, employers, and government – policy ambitions translate into measurable workforce outcomes.
What began as a sector-specific experiment can now serve as a blueprint for system-wide reform. If universities across all disciplines embrace this pivot, they can help turn the White Paper’s vision into reality – a cohesive, agile, and inclusive skills ecosystem ready for the future economy.
This blog was kindly authored by Professor Abigail Marks, Associate Dean of Research, Newcastle University Business School, and member of the Chartered Association of Business Schools Policy Committee.
From January 2026, public funding for the vast majority of Level 7 apprenticeships in England will be withdrawn for learners aged 22 and over. Funding will remain for those aged 16 to 21, alongside narrow exceptions for care leavers and learners with Education, Health and Care Plans. Current apprentices will continue to be supported. Ministers present the change as a rebalancing of spending toward younger learners and lower levels, where they argue returns are higher and budgets are more constrained.
At first sight, this decision looks like a simple trade-off: concentrating scarce resources on school-leavers and early career entrants, while expecting employers to bear the costs of advanced, Master’s-level training. For business schools, however, particularly those that have invested in Level 7 pathways, such as the Senior Leader Apprenticeship, the implications for widening participation are likely to be profound. The Senior Leader Apprenticeship is often integrated with an MBA or Executive MBA. Alongside this, many institutions align Level 7 apprenticeships with specialist MSc degrees, often with embedded professional accreditation. In essence, Level 7 apprenticeships in business schools provide structured, work-based routes into advanced leadership and management education, usually culminating in an MBA or MSc.
Why Level 7 apprenticeships matter for widening participation
Since the apprenticeship levy was introduced in 2017, Level 7 programmes have provided business schools with a powerful route to widen participation, particularly among groups that have been historically excluded from postgraduate education. According to the Department for Education’s 2023 Apprenticeship Evaluation, almost half (48 per cent) of Level 7 apprentices are first-generation students, with neither parent having attended university, and around one in five live in the most deprived areas of the country. Analysis by the Chartered Association of Business Schools shows that in 2022/23, a quarter of business and management Level 7 apprentices held no prior degree qualification before starting, with a small minority having no formal qualifications at all. The age profile further underscores the differences between these learners and conventional Master’s students, with 88 per cent of business and management Level 7 apprentices aged over 31, indicating that these programmes primarily serve mature learners and career changers rather than recent graduates.
This picture contrasts sharply with the traditional MBA market, both in the UK and internationally. Research on MBA demographics from the Association of MBAs in 2023 highlights that students are typically in their late twenties to early thirties, often already possessing a strong undergraduate degree and professional background, and participation is skewed toward those with access to significant financial resources. An Office for Students analysis of Higher Education Statistics Agency data shows that conventional graduate business and management entrants are disproportionately from higher socio-economic backgrounds, with lower representation from disadvantaged areas compared to undergraduate cohorts. In practice, this means that the subsidised Level 7 apprenticeship route has been one of the few mechanisms allowing those without financial capital, prior academic credentials, or family background in higher education to gain access to advanced management education in business schools.
The economic and societal cost of defunding Level 7
Employer behaviour is likely to shift in predictable ways once the subsidy is removed. Some large levy-paying firms may continue to sponsor a limited number of Level 7 places, but many smaller employers, as well as organisations in the public and third sectors, will struggle to justify the full cost. Data from the Chartered Management Institute suggests that 60 per cent of Level 7 management apprentices are in public services such as the NHS, social care, and local government. Less than 10 per cent are in FTSE 350 companies. Consequently, there is a risk of further narrowing provision to those already in advantaged positions.
The progression ladder is also threatened. Level 7 apprenticeships have been a natural progression for people who began at Levels 3 to 5, building their qualifications as they moved into supervisory roles. Closing the door at this point reinforces the glass ceiling for those seeking to rise from technical or frontline work into leadership. With data from the Department for Education reported in FE Week reporting that 89 per cent of Level 7 apprentices are currently aged over 22, the vast majority of those who have benefited from these opportunities will be excluded from January 2026.
The consequences extend beyond widening participation metrics. Leadership and management skills are consistently linked to firm-level productivity and the diffusion of innovation. Studies such as the World Management Survey have shown that effective management correlates strongly with higher productivity and competitiveness. Restricting adult access to advanced apprenticeships risks slowing the spread of these practices across the economy. For business schools, it reduces their ability to act as engines of regional development and knowledge transfer. At a national level, the UK’s prospects for growth depend not only on new entrants but also on upskilling the existing workforce. Apprenticeships have been one of the few proven ways of achieving this. If opportunities narrow, it is possible that firms may struggle to adopt new technologies, deliver green transitions, or address regional productivity gaps. The effects may also be felt in export performance, scale-up survival, and international competitiveness.
The removal of public funding for adults over 21 threatens to dismantle a pathway that has enabled business schools to transform the profile of their postgraduate cohorts. Where once mature students, first-generation graduates, and learners from deprived regions could progress into Master’s-level management education, the policy shift risks returning provision in England to a preserve of the already advantaged. In contrast, our European counterparts, where degree and higher-level apprenticeships retain open access for adults, will continue to allow business schools to deliver on widening participation commitments across the life course.
Lessons from Europe
Germany’s dual study system has expanded, with degree-apprenticeship style programmes now making up almost five per cent of higher education enrolments. Data from the OECD shows that the proportion of young adults aged 25–34 with a tertiary degree in Germany has risen to around 40 per cent, driven partly by these integrated vocational–academic routes. Switzerland shows even more dramatic results: between 2000 and 2021, the share of 25–34-year-olds with a tertiary qualification rose from 26 to 52 per cent. Crucially, Switzerland also leads Europe in lifelong learning, with around 67.5 per cent of adults aged 25–65 participating in continuing education and training. For Swiss business schools, this creates a mature, diverse learner base and allows firms to continually upgrade leadership and management capacity. Both countries demonstrate how keeping lifelong pathways open is central to sustaining firm-level productivity, innovation, and international competitiveness.
Conclusion
The decision to defund most adult participation at Level 7 thus represents more than a budgetary tweak. It narrows opportunities in advanced management education and risks reversing progress in widening participation. Unless English business schools, employers, and policymakers act swiftly to design new pathways, the effect will be a return to elite provision. More worryingly, England risks falling behind international counterparts in building the leadership capacity that underpins innovation, productivity, and growth.
This guest blog was kindly authored by Imran Mir, Campus Head and Programme Lead, Apex College Leicester
Leadership in higher education is often measured by indicators such as retention rates, research outputs and league table positions. These are important, but leadership is far deeper than numbers. Growing up with autism and then becoming a leader in higher education has shaped how I approach leadership. Being neurodiverse means I see situations differently, notice patterns others may miss, and feel deep empathy with students and colleagues who are often invisible in our systems.
This is why neurodiverse leadership must be treated as a quality issue. Universities are rightly talking more about inclusive curriculum design and student support, but these conversations rarely extend to who sits at the decision-making table. Representation in leadership is not about tokenism. It is about ensuring the sector benefits from different ways of thinking, which is vital for quality, resilience and innovation.
Why neurodiverse leadership matters
According to the University of Edinburgh 2024, in the UK, one in seven people are neurodiverse. Advance HE 2024 report shows leadership teams in higher education remain overwhelmingly homogenous. This lack of representation is not just an issue of fairness, it is also a missed opportunity for innovation. Research by Deloitte 2017 shows that neurodiverse teams can be up to 30 per cent more productive in tasks requiring creativity and pattern recognition. Universities are currently facing challenges in relation to funding and digital disruption, and they will need this kind of productivity and resilience more than ever.
Further, Made By Dyslexia 2023 claims that one in five people are dyslexic, many of whom bring excellent problem-solving and communication skills. These strengths align with what is expected in leadership roles, where complex challenges and clear communication are requirements. Yet recruitment and promotion processes can often filter out people who think or communicate differently.
Austin & Pisano, 2017 adds that neurodiverse leaders frequently demonstrate empathy and adaptability. These qualities are imperative in higher education as institutions are trying their best to meet diverse student needs, respond to rapid change and rebuild trust in their systems. Without neurodiverse leadership, universities risk reinforcing the very barriers which they are trying to eradicate.
Lessons for higher education leaders
From my own experience, I have learned three lessons that apply directly to leadership in higher education.
The first lesson is the power of clarity. Neurodiverse staff and students excel when expectations are clear. As a leader, I have seen first-hand that communicating with clarity in strategy documents, policies and day-to-day interactions builds trust in the academic institution. Research on organisational effectiveness suggests that clear communication consistently improves outcomes across diverse teams
The second lesson is valuing flexibility. Traditional recruitment, professional development and promotion systems seem to reward conformity. This is a missed opportunity because neurodiverse teams will bring innovation and productivity benefits. Strong leaders can change this by adopting flexible approaches such as task-based interviews, blended assessments that combine written, oral and practical elements, and CPD which takes into consideration various communication styles.
The third lesson is role modelling openness. For years I believed that revealing my autism would be seen as a weakness. In reality, sharing my story has made me a stronger leader. It has encouraged colleagues to be open about their own experiences and helped students feel less isolated. Austin & Pisano 2017 show that when leaders model vulnerability and authenticity, it strengthens organisational culture and increases trust across teams.
A quality issue, not a side project
These lessons outline why neurodiverse leadership should not be viewed as a side project. Quality frameworks such as the Office for Students’ conditions and the QAA Quality Code are built on assumptions of fairness, reliability and inclusivity. If leadership itself is not inclusive, then the credibility of these frameworks is undermined. If the voices of the one-in-seven neurodiverse people are not present in leadership, then universities are failing to reflect the diversity of the communities they are trying to serve.
Neurodiverse leadership will strengthen governance, enhances decision-making and ensures policies reflect the diversity of the student body. It is a direct contributor to educational quality, not an optional extra.
Conclusion
As someone working in higher education, I know these lessons are transferable across the sector. But they feel especially urgent now, as universities face funding pressures, digital disruption and growing student expectations. In such times, leaders who think differently are not optional. They are essential.
Neurodiverse leadership is not about meeting quotas. It is about strengthening quality. The sector cannot afford to waste talent or exclude perspectives that could help it adapt and thrive. If universities want to remain resilient, they must recognise that diversity of thought at the leadership table is just as important as diversity in the classroom. At its heart, this is about shaping the future of higher education in a way that is inclusive, innovative and sustainable.
HEPI Director, Nick Hillman OBE, spent some of his weekend listening to, and participating in, discussions about higher education at the Battle of Ideas at Church House in Westminster.
Here are his remarks from a debate on whether we are now in ‘The Era of the Downwardly Mobile Graduate’.
Thanks for inviting me to speak. I agreed to do so for two reasons. First, the Battle of Ideas is a wonderful grassroots event. Secondly, Claire Fox invited me to speak immediately after the murder of Charlie Kirk. My daughter is keen on telling me where Charlie Kirk was misguided but, whether she is right or wrong, universities should be places where free and fervent debate thrives; not places where discussion gets closed down with a bullet. That should not need saying but, sadly, of course it does.
Last night, I went to a gig in Oxford by the fabulous band EMF – I first saw them as a fresher 35 years ago and, yes, they are still going. As you doubtless know, their most famous song is ‘Unbelievable’. And most of what we have heard, and are going to hear, is exactly that: unbelievable. Not in the ‘incroyable’ sense of the word, but in the sense that the claims are simply not true.
We are told there are millions upon millions of people in ‘non-graduate roles’. But this relies on weird and poorly understood definitions of what graduate jobs are. Official definitions obviously rely on jobs being categorised into graduate and non-graduate.
My favourite critique of what this means comes from an – admittedly – old article by Peter Brant (on Wonkhe), which looked at the official classification from a few years ago, writing:
A civil servant who was promoted from an Executive Officer to a Higher Executive Officer would be moving from a graduate job to a non-graduate job. Managing an off-licence is a graduate job, managing a pub or a wine bar is a non-graduate job. A singer is a graduate role, a dancer is a non-graduate role. A clown is a graduate job, the manager of a circus is a non-graduate job. And – my personal favourite – a rag-and-bone man is a graduate job, an antiques dealer is a non-graduate job. The list goes on and on.
Myth 2
Myth number 2 is the idea that graduates ‘face grim prospects’. The OECD’s new Education at a Glance, which is an annual compendium of global education facts, shows this to be untrue.
Unemployment is much lower among UK graduates than among non-graduates – irrespective of subject area studied. Indeed, unemployment is much lower among UK graduates than graduates in other developed countries too.
There isn’t time to go into the huge other benefits of higher education but they include better physical and better mental health.
The OECD also show the UK does have a problem of low incomes. But this is not among graduates, where our outcomes are positive and comparable with those in other countries. We are literally at the bottom of the OECD league when it comes to earnings for people who have left school with low or no qualifications. They are the people being most let down.
Myth 3
The third myth in the blurb for today is that AI will remove the need for employers to recruit people with higher level skills. This is just a revamped version of John Maynard Keynes’s nonsense prediction that people at the end of this current decade would in future work for just 15-hours a week.
We published a collection of essays on AI last week. Perhaps the most thought-provoking one was by Professor Rose Luckin of the UCL Knowledge Lab. She argues persuasively that:
The AI revolution represents a pivotal moment where humans need to become more intelligent, not less, as we develop increasingly sophisticated tools.
The fourth myth is that there are multiple really good alternative options to higher education. Ministers of different stripes have been telling us for years that there is about to be a huge expansion of apprenticeships for young people. Meanwhile, your children and mine are being pumped full of information about why they should do an apprenticeship rather than traditional higher education.
Yet the number of degree apprenticeships for school leaver is tiny, the number of apprenticeships has fallen since the Apprenticeship Levy was introduced and all those people who worry about university drop-outs should take a look at the high non-continuation rate for apprenticeships.
Apprenticeships don’t just happen because Keir Starmer or Kemi Badenoch say they should. Apprenticeships are jobs with training attached and the state of the labour market and the regulation of apprenticeships, not to mention the structure of the British economy, are not conducive to big increases in supply.
Myth 5
The final myth is the idea that there are tonnes of ‘disaffected university leavers’. Of course, higher education does not work out for all those who go all of the time. Indeed, we have shown in work with the University of Bristol that a high proportion of graduates would make a different choice, such as a different course and / or institution, if they were going back in time.
However, whether they chose exactly the right course or not, in our new work with King’s College Policy Institute, we show shows that a mere 8% of graduates regret their decision to enter higher education. Meanwhile other work shows younger graduates might have even lower regret rates than that.
This blog was kindly authored by Professor Paul Marshall, Vice-President (Global Campus) and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Careers & Enterprise), University of East London.
As the UK Government prepares its long-awaited White Paper on the future of higher education, it is timely to reflect on the purpose and impact of our universities. At their best, they are not simply sites of knowledge creation – they are instruments of national capability. Few challenges illustrate that more vividly than cybersecurity.
When I joined a panel at the CyberBay Cybersecurity Conference in Tampa earlier this month, Dr Richard Munassi, Managing Director of Tampa Bay Wave, opened with a warning that set the tone for the discussion:
We are in a cyber war – a war waged by well-financed, state-backed criminal organisations so sophisticated that they have their own HR divisions.
He was right. Earlier this year, Jaguar Land Rover was forced to suspend production after a ransomware attack that rippled across its global supply chain. The UK Government’s intervention – with a support package approaching £1.5 billion – made clear that cybersecurity is not an IT issue; it is economic infrastructure.
As the sector awaits the Government’s vision for the future, one truth already stands out: higher education must not only prepare individuals for work – it must prepare the nation for risk.
At the University of East London (UEL), that challenge sits at the heart of our institutional strategy, Vision 2028, which seeks to transform lives through education, innovation, and enterprise. The strategy’s organising principle – Careers-First – redefines employability as capability.
Rather than positioning careers as an outcome of study, it embeds professional practice, enterprise, and resilience into every degree and partnership. The test for every programme is simple: does it equip our students to adapt, contribute, and lead in industries defined by constant change?
Nowhere is this approach more tangible than in cybersecurity. Our BSc Cyber Security & Networks, MSc Information Security & Digital Forensics, and Cyber Security Technical Professional Degree Apprenticeship all combine rigorous academic study with live, industry-based application.
Students work directly with BT, IBM, Fujitsu, and Ford, tackling real-time challenges in threat analysis, data forensics, and network defence. By the time they graduate, they are not simply work-ready — they are work-proven, having contributed to the resilience of the very sectors they will soon join.
The results speak for themselves:
With Siemens UK, students tested firmware vulnerabilities in industrial systems, informing Siemens’ internal training programmes.
With Barclays Eagle Labs, they created a fraud-analysis dashboard now in pilot testing.
With NHS Digital, they developed a ransomware-simulation tool to train hospital teams in incident response.
Each collaboration demonstrates a single idea: learning is most powerful when it changes the world beyond the classroom.
UEL’s Institute for Connected Communities (ICC), led by Professor Julia Davidson OBE, anchors this model in research excellence and policy leadership. The ICC brings together computing, criminology, psychology, and social science to examine the human, technical, and organisational dimensions of online safety.
Its research informs the UK Council for Internet Safety, Ofcom, UNICEF, and multiple international governments. Through projects such as Global Kids Online, ICC research directly shapes teaching, ensuring that our graduates understand not only how to secure systems, but why digital trust matters to society.
As policymakers consider the future role of universities in the forthcoming White Paper, the ICC already provides a working example of how academic research translates into practical and regulatory impact.
The White Paper will also need to consider how global collaboration strengthens national capability. UEL’s Global Campus model demonstrates how this can work in practice — connecting students and employers across India, Greece, Egypt, and the United States to create shared pathways for study, innovation, and employment.
Our developing partnership with Tampa Bay Wave, framed within the UK–Florida Memorandum of Understanding (2023), offers one illustration. We are building both virtual and physical experiences that will enable UEL students to engage with Florida’s growing cybersecurity and fintech ecosystem through mentoring, live projects, and placements, while providing a London base for US start-ups entering the UK market.
A genuine transatlantic bridge is being constructed – designed for movement in both directions, connecting students, researchers, and entrepreneurs to co-create secure-by-design technologies and governance frameworks. It is the Careers-First model, scaled globally.
The next phase of cybersecurity will occur where AI, data, and physical systems converge. Attacks will target intelligent infrastructure – transport grids, hospitals and manufacturing. UEL is already embedding these challenges into its curriculum, guided by ICC research. Students design adversarial-AI tests, examine supply-chain vulnerabilities, and develop frameworks for organisational resilience.
This approach recognises that technology evolves faster than any static syllabus. Students are therefore treated as co-creators, working alongside academics and employers to design the solutions industry will need next.
As the UK Government prepares its White Paper, one principle should underpin the national conversation: universities are not peripheral to resilience – they are central to it. They educate the workforce, generate the research, and sustain the partnerships that keep the nation secure.
UEL’s Careers-First model, aligned to Vision 2028, embodies that principle. It fuses employability, enterprise, and global engagement into one coherent system of capability. Our collaboration with Tampa Bay Wave is a single, tangible expression of this – connecting East London’s lecture theatres to innovation ecosystems across the Atlantic.
In a global cyber war, the question is not whether universities should respond, but how fast they can. At UEL, that response is already underway – this is what Careers-First looks like.
This speech was delivered by HEPI Director Nick Hillman at the University of Cardiff on Thursday, 16 October 2025.
Introduction
The other day, I was speaking to the University of Liverpool Council at the Ness Botanic Gardens on the Wirral, which as you know is four hours due north of here, pretty much on the Welsh / English border. I started my speech there by noting that I only exist because of the University of Liverpool, as my maternal grandparents met there in the early 1930s. Well, I also only exist because of the Welsh university system, as my parents met while they were students here in Wales in the early 1960s, just as my own children only exist because I met my wife in the early 1990s at university.
The fact that three generations of my family originally met while at university is a powerful reminder, at least to me, that higher education change lives. And at HEPI, we had another powerful reminder of that during our first event of this academic year, when – last month – we hosted the UK launch of the OECD’s Education at a Glance publication.
Education at a Glance
In case you have not come across it before, this is the most useful but worst titled publication on education that appears anywhere in the world each year. It is a vast 541-page compendium of comparative data that you need to pore over rather than glance at.
This year’s OECD report had a particular focus on tertiary education. While we have become used to people beating up on the UK higher education sector, the OECD actually painted a picture of a very successful sector playing to its strengths. When you look in from the outside, it seems the UK’s higher education institutions are not so bad after all.
For example, the OECD showed that, among the many developed countries covered in their report, the UK has:
higher than average participation in higher education;
lower than average graduate unemployment, irrespective of whether the individuals studied STEM, business or humanities; and
among the very highest undergraduate completion rates anywhere in the world, vying with Ireland for the top spot.
I recognise the OECD is looking at averages for the UK as a whole and the position of Wales is not necessarily the same but, in general, the weaknesses the OECD found in were on the lack of good opportunities for people who do not succeed in education first time around.
Specifically, the OECD found a profound problem among young men, a rising proportion of whom are classified as NEETs (Not in Employment, Education or Training). While the OECD use historic data for a year or two past, last week’s brand new NEET data for Wales confirms the depressing picture. Indeed, it was even more salutary, noting:
The proportion of young people aged 16 to 24 in Wales who were not in employment, education or training (NEET) was 15.1% in the year ending June 2025, an increase of 3.6 percentage points over the year.
The OECD additionally found that the UK has the biggest gap of all developed countries when it comes to the difference in earnings between low-skilled adults and those who leave school with A-Levels (or equivalent). This should perhaps worry Wales even more than the rest of the UK, given that Wales scores the worst for schoolchildren’s academic performance for any part of the UK. Indeed, Wales is the only part of the UK to perform worse than the OECD average in all three areas of Mathematics, Reading and Science.
When it comes to funding of higher education, the OECD found the UK spends more than most other countries … but the shift to loan-based finance means direct government spending on each student in higher education is only half the OECD average and only half the amount spent ‘at primary to post-secondary non-tertiary levels’ ($13,000). Of course, the UK’s figures are distorted by England’s numbers because England is much larger than the other parts of the UK and has moved towards loans to a greater degree than Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. That is one reason why we have worked with London Economics and the Nuffield Foundation to look at the picture in each part of the UK separately.
There are three profound differences. First, the Exchequer cost is lowest in England, which also has the highest per-student income for institutions. Scotland is at the other end of the scale, with the largest Exchequer cost but the lowest unit-of-resource for institutions. Wales is, as you may expect, somewhere in the middle, with an Exchequer cost and a per-student income for institutions that lies between those in England and Scotland.
There is a similar picture when we look – secondly – at the balance of who is paying the costs of higher education. In England, it is mainly former students via the loan system; in Scotland, it is entirely taxpayers (and then some). In Wales there is a more even split approaching 50:50 between the Exchequer and graduates, arguably reflecting the public and private benefits of higher education more accurately. There are probably lessons from Wales for the rest of the UK here, though seemingly not for Kemi Badenoch, who complained at the Conservative Party Conference last week that higher education in England still costs taxpayers too much.
The third big difference is on student maintenance, where the system in Wales is more generous and more logical than those elsewhere in the UK. Each student gets more and the non-repayable grants are more generous in Wales than elsewhere – all undergraduates have at least a small grant whereas no one currently gets a grant in England, where grants were abolished in 2016. (Ministers promised the return of grants in England at the Labour Conference a fortnight ago, but only for some students on some courses, meaning it is likely to prove a mouse of an intervention and a very complicated one at that. It is certainly set to be nothing like the Welsh system.)
Many people I know are fans of the system in Wales for the way that it tries to strike a balance. However, while there are certainly far worse systems even within the rest of the UK, I personally think the benefits of the Welsh system are sometimes oversold. For example, I think the structure of student support in Wales is excessively generous to students who come from wealthy households. In other words, it is not means tested enough, perhaps explaining the need for the recent cuts to postgraduate support.
I have held this view consistently since the current Welsh funding system was introduced on the back of the Diamond review in 2018, but it has got me in trouble. After my concerns reached the front page of the Western Mail, I got not only an official rebuke from the Welsh Government but HEPI also received a formal complaint that came jointly from Universities Wales and NUS Wales. Rather than persuading me to change my view, I must admit this mainly had the effect of making me wonder if higher education debates in Wales are sometimes a little too cosy and stifled.
Boys, Boys, Boys
One other area where the OECD painted a less positive picture is on the differential educational performance of young men and young women. Women are more likely to obtain tertiary education across the developed world but the gap between men and women is bigger in the UK than elsewhere and has been growing while it has stayed the same on average across the OECD as a whole. According to the OECD:
In the United Kingdom, they [women] accounted for 56% of first-time entrants in 2023, up from 55% in 2013. Across the OECD, women make up 54% of new entrants on average, the same share as in 2013.
This is a convenient segue into some more of HEPI’s recent output because we have long worried about the educational performance of boys and young men and have published a number of papers on the topic over the years, with the most recent one appearing in March 2025. As Mary Curnock Cook wrote in the Foreword:
Something has surely gone wrong with education if boys – in aggregate at least – do worse than girls at all stages of education from early years to higher education and beyond.
Overall, out of every 100 female school leavers, 54 proceed to higher education by the age of 19; out of every 100 male school leavers, just 40 do so.
Again, the problems are worse in Wales than elsewhere. Over half of Inner London school leavers eligible for Free School Meals reach higher education by the age of 19; it is hard to get directly comparable figures for Wales but it seems the numbers are less than half as much for FSM Welsh-domiciled school leavers. Overall, while the gap in school leavers’ entry rates to higher education between men and women is dire in England, it is even worse in Wales. In fact, the proportion of young men who make it to higher education in Wales is lower than in every other part of the UK. It has been a known problem for at least 20 years yet for whatever reason, and perhaps because of misplaced fears of seeming politically incorrect, it has not been addressed.
Yet if male educational underachievement is not tackled, it seems certain that we will store up further societal problems for the future – including having more under-educated men veering towards the political extremes. Here, I note in passing the high polling of Reform for next year’s Senedd election. It is not rocket science to solve the boy problem, however, to take just one example, some schools following a ‘boy positive’ approach have managed to equalise their results for boys and girls and there is some great work underway in our own sector – for example, at Ulster University and the Arts University Bournemouth.
What remains completely absent, however, is any concerted interest at a national and ministerial level – certainly at Westminster and as far as I can tell in the Senedd too. People who did not want to take the Black Lives Matter protests seriously a few years ago sought to deflect attention from them by saying ‘All Lives Matter’, as if that was ever in doubt. Similarly, when Ministers wish to deflect attention from the crisis in boys’ education they like to respond by saying things like ‘Opportunity should be available to all’, which is true but it papers over the specific challenges faced by young men.
Our work on male underachievement sits alongside our work on the disadvantages faced by women, such as our reports on the substantial gender pay gap that remains in higher education as well as our other work on the overall gender pay gap among graduates. It also sits alongside a new HEPI report published just three months ago on the impact of menstruation on undergraduates’ attendance, academic engagement and wellbeing.
This revealed 70% of female students report being unable to concentrate on their studies or assessments due to period pain and that female students miss an average of 10 study days per academic year due to menstrual symptoms. It also suggested that just 15% of universities have a specific menstruation policy and, for those that do, the policy relates solely to staff rather than students.
So as I hope you can sense, the topics that tend to work best for HEPI are issues – like boys’ underperformance and the impact of menstruation on learning – that we should be speaking about more than we have done. Another area where that is true is public perceptions of higher education.
Misperceptions
A year ago, I had a drink with a neighbour who has a background in banking and two graduate children, meaning – in theory at least – that he knows the value of money and the value of education. However, when it came to universities, he expressed some typical rhetoric about them being too numerous, too big, too expensive and so on.
I responded by telling him I was on the Board at the University of Manchester and asking him to guess that institution’s financial turnover. His reply was £30 million – which is between 40 and 50 times smaller than the actual number of c.£1.3 billion (and over 20 times smaller than Cardiff’s turnover). Once my hangover had subsided, I contacted Bobby Duffy of the King’s College Policy Institute, who is the UK’s greatest expert on misperceptions – that is, the difference between what is true and what we tend to believe is true. This led over a process of many months to a new research project on what the public think about higher education, which we and King’s College launched the results of last month.
The findings are worth poring over in detail and we have brought hard copies of the work along for each you. Sone of the results particularly stand out.
For example, we gave people a list of seven institutions: Manchester City, Manchester United, the University of Manchester, the University of Oxford, the Daily Mail, MoneySupermarket.com and Greggs bakery.
When the public were asked about the relative financial size of these seven, the University of Oxford came fifth and the University of Manchester seventh, at the very bottom. More than half of respondents said they thought either Manchester City or Manchester United was the biggest in terms of their financial size; only 6% chose the right answer, the University of Oxford. The University of Manchester should be third in that list of seven by the way because, while it easily beats City and United in terms of its financial size, you might be surprised to know that Greggs has a turnover of £2 billion.
Similarly, when we gave the public a list of five big industries – legal services, accountancy services, aircraft manufacturing, telecommunications and higher education – and asked them to say which is least important in terms of export revenues, higher education was the most popular option. That result could not be any more wrong because higher education actually brings in much more export income than each of the others.
Let me share three other fascinating data points from the survey with you too:
people greatly overestimate the level of graduate regret about going to higher education – on average, the public guess 40% of graduates would opt not to go to university if they had their again, when the actual proportion of graduates who say this is only 8%;
on average, the public guess half (49%) of graduates say their university debt has negatively impacted their lives – in reality only 16% of graduates feel this way; and
a majority of people, including a majority of Reform voters at the 2024 general election, have positive feelings about universities.
Oversight and regulation
Over the past decade, the oversight of tertiary education and research has been transformed in England, though not necessarily for the better. When I worked as a Special Adviser in Whitehall a dozen years ago, there was one Minister for Universities and Science who sat in one Government Department and who had oversight of one regulator that oversaw both teaching and research (known as the Higher Education Funding Council for England). But in recent years we have had different regulators, different Ministers and different Departments for the teaching and research functions of universities, meaning coordinated oversight has been missing.
Moreover, while the Westminster Government has promised more ‘clarity and coherence’, the latest Machinery of Government changes have made the current situation even more of a dog’s dinner. The Minister for Skills, who has responsibility for higher education, now has one foot in the Department for Education and another in the Department for Work and Pensions, which has just taken on the responsibility for ‘skills’, while the Minister for Science has one foot in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and another in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Split ministerial posts tend to be a recipe for chaos, as I saw close up during my own time in Whitehall.
So while I know that the new Medr (the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research) here in Wales has had some teething challenges, on paper it makes a lot more sense than what England has. At one point, it was thought England’s long-awaited post-16 skills white paper was likely to be heavily influenced by Wales; given the latest reshuffle and associated changes, that now – perhaps regrettably – seems less likely.
International students
Finally, I want to end by touching on the issue of international students. The majority of the really big projects HEPI has undertaken over the past few years have focused on international students. Perhaps that is not surprising, given the OECD data I started with, which shows that, while there is one international student for every thirteen home students across the OECD as a whole, the ratio in the UK is completely different at 1:3.
That helps to explain why we have calculated (more than once) the net economic benefits of international students to the UK. The latest iteration found a gross benefit of £41.9 billion for just one incoming cohort of students and a net benefit (after taking account of the impact on public services and so on) of £37.4 billion. We split up this total to reveal a number for each one of the 650 parliamentary constituencies across the UK, including Cardiff South and Penarth, which is the top-performing constituency in Wales and one where international students contribute significantly over £300 million a year.
We have separately calculated the positive tax contributions of those former international students who stay in the UK to work after completing their studies, undertaken detailed studies on the Graduate Route visa and looked specifically at the experience of Chinese students in the UK. In addition, we produce each year a Soft-Power Index that looks at how many very senior world leaders have been educated to a higher level outside of their own home country. If they return home with fond memories of their time in the UK and a better understanding of our country, then this tends to bring real benefits. We will be launching the results for 2025 next week but last year’s Soft-Power Index, which is regularly quoted by Ministers, showed that, across the globe’s 195 countries, there were 58 serving world leaders who received some higher education in the UK, second only to the US.
I am going to stop here because I started the speech on a positive – on the way higher education changes lives for the better. And despite all the numerous political, financial and geopolitical challenges facing higher education across the UK, the continuing immense soft-power benefits delivered by UK higher education institutions is another area where there is a huge amount of which we can be proud.
This blog was kindly authored by Professor Annabel Kiernan, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Education and Student Experience at Goldsmiths University. It follows her speech at a HEPI event with the same title as this blog, held at the 2025 Conservative Party Conference.
To accept this question at its face and to understand what universities can and should do to build back public support, we need to look at how we got here. In broad terms, universities are not the only institutions whose role, purpose and efficacy are being challenged. There has been a wider breakdown of trust between the public and a wide range of local and national infrastructure, both public and private – from water and train companies, to the courts and local government.
In part, this is the inevitable consequence of two periods of significant financial stress – firstly from the 2008 financial crash and its resulting ten-year austerity programme, followed swiftly by the post-COVID cost-of-living crisis. The economic bite for the personal and public purse and the knock-on impact of such economic dislocation has been a considerable shrinking of the wider public realm and a gnawing away at the previous slowly progressive move towards a more ‘bread and roses’ type of social compact for all: of needing the fundamentals of life (bread), but also making available what brings beauty, culture and wellbeing (roses) to wider society, irrespective of economic circumstance. The shrinking of the public realm has pushed back this access to public goods.
Many education institutions, including universities, have attempted to be a buttress for this impact – whether that’s filling in social, behavioural, skills and knowledge gaps from lost learning, responding to increased mental health pressures, trying to mitigate, where possible, the impacts of poverty and other generalised impacts of closures of youth centres, libraries, museums and so on.
Clearly then, universities play a key role in delivering progress to individuals and the broader public. They are core to economic and social growth, delivering these while managing the public’s varied aspirations and differing expectations. The expansion of higher education was sought to widen the benefits of a university education and experience. Even before the Blair expansion in the 2000s, my own family – my mum, the eldest of six, with a miner and a housewife as parents – were beneficiaries, with all six children going to university during the 1970s and 1980s. Despite both leaving school at 14, my grandparents knew that university was the route to a different life. It paid off for all six brothers and sisters, and here I am today, the eldest grandchild of that mobility, a Deputy Vice Chancellor contributing a HEPI blog on public trust in universities.
But, whilst the cost of university entry has now significantly increased, the mobility pay off, or graduate premium, appears more challenged. This is despite the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2025 report showing that, over the course of a lifetime, attending university still delivers financially. In times of heightened economic stress, however, the public needs more immediacy in the financial payoff and surety in the belief that infrastructure delivers a high-quality service. We can see the political articulation of the need to see, feel and believe things work and have tangible benefits for individuals, their families and communities now. People’s sacrifices need to matter, and their investment needs to pay off.
So what do universities do to play their part?
As a sector, we work very hard on our civic role, but we need to be more porous. We can’t be seen to effectively privatise public space. We need to be of our places, and lead the charge on building solutions and helping people to navigate change – from how we work with local communities to how we contribute to global challenges. In other words, we need to reemphasise our role in sustaining the social, cultural and intellectual infrastructure of society,
To support that civic role, we need to offer more seamless education journeys and be accessible for learners throughout their lifetime. That means accelerating the ways in which we work in partnership with each other, with colleges, schools, employers and local authorities. Lifelong education is a philosophy, not just a government policy. The Lifelong Learning Entitlement needs to align with a wide range of policies. For example, now that ‘skills’ is situated with the Department for Work and Pensions, what harm in referring people to a bit of modular learning to get their employment on track rather than piecemeal training or benefit sanctions? Universities are a public infrastructure, so we need to connect well with other infrastructure to deliver our part of the ecosystem for individual and collective economic and social gains.
We must remain intentional, be high quality, deliver an excellent experience. There should continue to be robust regulation of bad actors. We should deliver success for all our students and we shouldn’t be a homogeneous model; learners take different pathways through higher learning and need to access it in different ways, through different modes and will have different needs for flexibility. There are specialisms and expertise in research and teaching, and these should remain available as choices. There has been much written about the detrimental impact of out-of-town shopping centres on our high streets. Similarly, if all universities have to deliver at scale for efficiencies, the impact of closures on the towns and cities of smaller, more specialist institutions would be devastating.
At this moment, we need to emphasise our value in relation to the individual economic benefit gained from the investment of a student loan. In other words, highly paid graduate employment. I’m not sure how potent the arguments for the collective economic benefit of universities currently are. Personal storytelling of meaningful impacts, like that of my own family, may have traction in our university locales.
Overall, we need to continue to deliver and continue to engage. We work hard in these spaces already, but we need to tell our story differently and continue to adapt our model.
Importantly, universities have a central part to play in delivering space for reflection, intellectual enquiry, creative and critical action and solutions which will help to navigate us, the public, through these significant and challenging periods of rapid economic, political and technological transition.
As Oppenheim wrote in his 1911 poem:
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.
What better challenge for universities to continue to rise to.
This blog was kindly authored by Dr. Ismini Vasileiou, Associate Professor at De Montfort University.
The UK Higher Education sector is at a crossroads. With the government’s skills agenda being reshaped, institutions under growing financial pressure, and the first-ever merger between two English universities announced, the landscape is shifting faster than many had anticipated. Into this mix comes Ofsted’s new Report Card for Further Education & Skills (September 2025), which introduces a sharper accountability framework for further education providers.
The report card grades institutions across areas such as Leadership & Governance, Inclusion, Safeguarding, and Contribution to Meeting Skills Needs. At programme level, it assesses Curriculum, Teaching & Training, Achievement, and Participation & Development against a tiered scale ranging from Exceptional to Urgent Improvement.
While this is designed for further education and skills providers, its arrival raises an uncomfortable but necessary question for universities: what if higher education were graded in the same way?
By contrast, the further education report card is direct. A parent, student, or employer can understand at a glance whether a provider is exceptional, strong, or in urgent need of improvement. Were higher education to adopt a similar model, judgments might cover:
Safeguarding/Wellbeing: provision for student welfare, mental health, harassment and misconduct.
Skills Contribution: alignment with regional economic needs, national priorities in AI and cybersecurity, and graduate employment outcomes.
At the programme level, Achievement and Participation could map onto retention, progression, and graduate success, offering students and employers a clear view of performance.
Risks and rewards for higher education
Of course, importing a schools-style accountability regime into higher education carries risks. Universities are not homogeneous, and reducing their diverse missions to a traffic-light system risks oversimplification. A specialist arts institution and a research-intensive university might both be rated ‘Needs Attention’ on skills contribution, despite playing very different roles in the national ecosystem.
There is also the danger of gaming the system: universities optimising for ratings rather than long-term innovation. And autonomy, long a cornerstone of higher education, would be at stake.
Yet there are potential rewards. Public trust in higher education has been under strain, with questions over value for money and financial viability dominating the narrative. Transparent, comprehensible reporting could rebuild confidence and demonstrate sector-wide commitment to accountability. It could also strengthen alignment with further education at a time when government is explicitly seeking a joined-up skills system.
A shifting policy landscape
The September 2025 government reshuffle underscores why this debate matters. The resignation of Angela Rayner triggered a wide Cabinet reorganisation, with skills responsibilities moving out of the Department for Education and into a new ‘growth’ portfolio under the Department for Work and Pensions, led by Pat McFadden. This shift signals that some elements of skills policy are now seen primarily through an economic and labour market lens.
For Higher Education, this presents both challenges and opportunities. As argued in Bridging the Skills Divide: Higher Education’s Role in Delivering the UK’s Plan for Change, universities must demonstrate that they are not just centres of academic excellence but engines of workforce development, innovation, and regional growth. A report-card style framework could make these contributions more visible, but only if universities are part of its design.
Structural Change: The Kent–Greenwich merger
The announcement that the Universities of Kent and Greenwich will merge in autumn 2026 to form the London and South East University Group is a watershed moment for the sector. It is the first merger of its kind in England, driven by financial pressures from declining international student enrolments, static domestic fees, and mounting operational costs.
The merged entity will serve around 28,000 undergraduates, retain the identities of both institutions, and be led by Greenwich Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane Harrington. Yet concerns remain. The University and College Union (UCU) has warned that ‘this isn’t a merger; it is a takeover’ and called for urgent reassurance on staff jobs and student provision.
In a system with Ofsted-style ratings, such a merger would be scrutinised not just for its financial logic but also for its impact on governance, inclusion, and skills contribution. A transparent rating system might reassure stakeholders that the merged institution is not only viable but also delivering quality and meeting regional needs.
Building on skills agendas
National initiatives like Skills England, the Digital Skills Partnership, and programmes such as CyberLocal demonstrate how higher education can contribute to workforce resilience at scale. The Ofsted report card reinforces this agenda. Its emphasis on contribution to meeting skills needs aligns directly with the notion that higher education must play a central role in the UK’s skills ecosystem, not only through degree provision but through continuous upskilling, regional collaboration, and adaptive curricula.
Shaping the framework before it shapes us
Ofsted’s further education report card is not just an accountability mechanism; it is a signal of where education policy is heading, toward clarity, comparability, and alignment with skills needs.
For higher education, the choice is stark. Resist the model and risk having it imposed in ways that do not fit the sector’s diversity. Or lead the design, shaping a framework that balances accountability with autonomy, and skills with scholarship.
As Universities confront financial pressures, policy reshuffles, and structural change, one thing is clear: the sector cannot afford to sit this debate out. The real question is not whether Higher Education should be graded, but what kind of grading system we would design if given the chance.
A new collection of essays, AI and the Future of Universitiespublished by HEPI and the University of Southampton, edited by Dr Giles Carden and Josh Freeman, brings together leading voices from universities, industry and policy. The collection comes at a point when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is projected to have a profound and transformative impact on virtually every sector of society and the economy, driving changes that are both beneficial and challenging. The various pieces look at how AI is reshaping higher education – from strategy, teaching and assessment to research and professional services.
You can read the press release and access the full report here.
As summer wraps up, education marketers everywhere know what’s next? The back-to-school rush. It’s that time when inboxes fill up, campaigns go live, and every message counts. This season isn’t just about new classes or fresh notebooks; it’s the start of a new student recruitment marketing cycle, a chance to re-engage current students, attract new ones, and build momentum for the year ahead.
In a competitive space like higher education, you can’t rely on luck. You need a clear, intentional strategy that speaks directly to your students and stands out in a noisy market. Whether you’re a career college, university, or language school, this is the chance is to set the tone and build lasting connections.
In this playbook, you’ll find practical, proven back-to-school marketing strategies for success. From personalized outreach and short-form video to smart content planning and accessible design, consider this your guide to an A+ marketing season.
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Audit Last Year’s Campaigns and Set SMART Goals
Before launching any new campaign, take a breath and look back. What worked in your student recruitment marketing last year, and what didn’t? Pull up your analytics and dig deep into the data: conversion rates, click-through rates (CTR), engagement metrics, and ROI for every channel. If your online open house had strong attendance but few follow-up applications, ask why. If your email series saw above-average opens, figure out what made it work: was it timing, tone, or topic?
Use these insights to set SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Avoid vague aims like “increase applications.” Instead, go for something concrete, like “increase undergraduate application starts by 15% by the end of Q3.”
Why is it important for schools to audit previous marketing campaigns before launching new ones? Auditing past campaigns helps schools understand their previous recruitment efforts. By analyzing data such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI, institutions can set SMART goals for the new academic year. This ensures resources are directed toward tactics that actually drive inquiries, applications, and enrollments instead of repeating ineffective strategies.
Example: City School District of Albany (NY) The district undertook a comprehensive communications audit with the National School Public Relations Association, reviewing all print and digital outreach. The 2024 audit report identified strengths and challenges and led to specific 2024–25 implementation goals, for example, hiring a new school communications specialist and streamlining internal communication protocols. These SMART goals were directly tied to audit recommendations, ensuring measurable improvements in engagement and consistency.
Tactical Tip: Create a simple scorecard or dashboard with last year’s metrics and this year’s goals. Track results on a weekly or monthly basis, and adjust tactics as needed. Data-driven agility is your best advantage.
Personalize Your Outreach to Prospective Students
Personalization should already be part of your strategy. Between 70 – 80% of students now expect it from schools. The back-to-school period is the perfect time to show you understand each prospect’s needs.
Start with your CRM data. Segment audiences by program, location, or funnel stage, then tailor messages accordingly. Send unfinished applicants a quick “deadline reminder” email, while offering current students a “Welcome Back” guide. Both feel personal and drive engagement.
Your website can do this too. Dynamic banners or content blocks that change by visitor type make a big impact. Tools like HubSpot, Slate, or Mautic by HEM help automate it all, even inserting names or programs into messages.
Example: University of Idaho. To personalize outreach at scale, U of I introduced AI-driven personalized video messages for prospective students during the 2024 recruitment cycle. Applicants received videos addressing them by name, hometown, and academic interest, creating a one-to-one connection. This individualized approach was added on top of existing personalized print and email campaigns. The results were impressive: emails containing the personalized video links saw a 45% open rate (versus 24% for standard emails), and the university reported higher application and admission rates across all student segments after launching over ten such video campaigns.
How can educational institutions use personalization to improve student engagement? Personalization allows schools to communicate directly to a student’s interests, program choices, and stage in the admissions funnel. Using CRM and marketing automation tools like Mautic by HEM, teams can segment audiences, send customized emails, and display dynamic website content based on visitor data. When prospective students receive tailored messages, like deadline reminders or personalized welcome guides, they’re more likely to respond, apply, and enroll.
Tactical Tip: Gather preferences early through short surveys (“What’s your dream career?”). Feed those insights into your campaigns, and when prospects see content that matches their interests, they’re far more likely to apply or enroll.
Engage Through Video and Social Media Content
Currently your audience is scrolling, and fast. Gen Z and Gen Alpha spend hours on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where video dominates. In fact, video now makes up more than 80% of all internet traffic, so if it’s not central to your strategy, you’re already behind.
Show what campus life feels like. Create short videos that capture move-in day buzz, a lively lab session, or the roar of the first football game. Student testimonials and livestreamed Q&As work especially well because they’re authentic and emotional, two things today’s viewers respond to.
Your social media profiles are your school’s digital storefront. Keep them fresh with “Day in the Life” takeovers, campus challenges, and UGC that shows students’ real experiences. Repost their content (with credit) to build authenticity. Even micro-influencers (popular students or alumni) can amplify your reach organically.
Use social media to build community, too. Create incoming class groups groups on Facebook or Discord where students connect before arriving, or run quick Instagram polls (“What are you most excited about this fall?”) to boost engagement.
Example: University of Minnesota. The university kicked off the 2024 academic year with an energetic “Welcome Back to School 2024” video message from the new president, Dr. Rebecca Cunningham. Shared on the official UMN YouTube channel and social media, the video welcomes students and faculty to campus and sets an enthusiastic tone for the year. This engaging content, featuring the president and campus scenes, was used to boost school spirit online and was widely viewed and shared within the community.
What role do video and social media play in back-to-school marketing? Video and social media are now essential tools for reaching Gen Z and Gen Alpha students. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are where prospective students spend most of their time, making short-form, authentic videos key to capturing attention. Schools can share move-in day highlights, “Day in the Life” student takeovers, or live Q&As to showcase campus life and build emotional connections with their audience before the academic year begins.
Tactical Tip: Format videos for each platform: vertical and under 60 seconds for TikTok or Reels, longer for YouTube. Post “move-in prep” content in August and “welcome week” highlights in September to match student timelines.
Visual Tip: Mix polished and raw footage. A sleek virtual tour pairs perfectly with a student’s unfiltered dorm vlog. That balance between professional and real builds trust and attention.
Plan an Integrated Content Calendar for the Academic Year
When you’re juggling multiple channels, such as email, social media, blogs, print, and events, it’s easy for campaigns to lose focus. A well-structured content calendar keeps everything aligned. It outlines what you’ll publish, when, and where, ensuring every platform supports the same strategy.
Start with a brainstorming session before fall begins. Identify monthly themes that match your recruitment cycle. August could highlight move-in and orientation, September might focus on study tips and student life, and October on deadlines and fall events. Include major dates like FAFSA deadlines, holidays, and open houses so nothing slips through the cracks.
For each theme, plan content across different stages of the funnel. During back-to-school, for instance, pair “slice of campus life” stories for awareness with targeted “why choose us” posts for decision-making prospects.
Example: Los Rios Community College District (CA). For the 2024–2025 recruitment cycle, Los Rios (a district of four colleges) developed an integrated marketing content strategy spanning grassroots outreach, traditional media, and digital channels. Their annual marketing campaign plan was managed through a central calendar and included coordinated content across platforms: social media posts, email campaigns, community events, billboards, and more.
Tactical Tip: Add columns in your calendar for audience, goal, and platform. Tools like Trello, Airtable, or even Google Sheets can help your team stay organized.
Pro Tip: Capture new assets early in the semester. Fresh photos, short videos, and student testimonials from those first lively weeks will fill your content library with authentic, high-energy material you can repurpose all year.
Maximize Reach With Targeted Digital Advertising
Even the strongest content needs help reaching the right audience. Digital advertising ensures your message gets in front of prospective students and their parents at the right time and place.
Begin by defining your audience and selecting the platforms that align with their habits. For high school seniors, Google Ads and Instagram are usually most effective. For local adult learners, Facebook or regional streaming ads may deliver better results. Match your spend to where your audience is most active.
Example: University of Texas at Dallas. In late 2024, UT Dallas launched a new branding campaign, “The Future Demands Different,” which employed highly targeted digital and media advertising to recruit students. The campaign focused heavily on specific geographic markets: primarily North Texas, with select expansion into other Texas cities and neighboring Oklahoma, where the university offers special tuition rates. UTD produced its first-ever broadly distributed TV commercial featuring current students and placed these ads strategically on local television newscasts, streaming platforms, and even during NBA game broadcasts (Dallas Mavericks) to reach its target audience.
Next, focus on timing and relevance. Seasonal messages like “Apply by October 15” or “Start your future this fall” create urgency and keep your campaigns connected to the academic calendar. Pair them with engaging, authentic visuals that reflect campus life and excitement for the new year.
Retargeting is another essential tactic. Students who visit your website or start an application are warm leads. Remind them to take the next step with a clear, encouraging ad.
Tactical Tip: Track your campaigns closely. Test headlines, images, and calls to action to see what resonates, and refine your approach as data comes in. Ensure your landing pages are fast, mobile-friendly, and consistent with your ads. That seamless experience is what turns clicks into conversions.
Streamline Marketing with Automation and AI
The back-to-school season can feel like organized chaos, with hundreds of inquiries, events to manage, and deadlines everywhere. That’s why automation and AI are no longer nice-to-haves; they’re essential for keeping communications personal while giving your team room to breathe.
Start with a strong CRM connected to a marketing automation system. Platforms like Mautic by HEM, designed for education marketers, make it easy to automate email campaigns, social posts, and lead nurturing. For example, when a student downloads your course catalog, your system can automatically follow up the next day with a webinar invite. This keeps engagement flowing without constant manual effort.
Email automation is especially effective this time of year. Set up a simple three-step sequence: welcome, tips for applying, and a deadline reminder. Keep your design clean, concise, and mobile-friendly, as most students will read emails on their phones.
AI chatbots are another huge time-saver. Schools like Georgia State University have seen success with their chatbot “Pounce,” which helped reduce summer melt by answering student questions around the clock. You can deploy similar chat tools on your website or Facebook Messenger to guide prospects when staff aren’t available.
AI can also optimize your digital ads, test creative variations, and even suggest the best posting times on social media. Just keep a human eye on the outputs. AI should assist with the creation process, not replace, a real connection.
Example: University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. UW–Green Bay became the first in its state system to deploy an AI-driven chatbot for student outreach in Fall 2024. Nicknamed “Phlash,” the bot engages undergraduate students via two-way text messaging, providing 24/7 answers to common questions and proactively checking in on students’ well-being. For example, every 7–10 days, Phlash sends a brief text asking how the student is doing and offers guidance or resources based on their needs. In its first week, 96% of UWGB students opted in to receive messages from Phlash, and over 2,100 student replies were recorded within 24 hours of the first check-in text.
Tactical Tip: Use automation analytics to fine-tune your back-to-school marketing strategies. Track open rates, chatbot inquiries, and ad conversions. If you notice a drop-off, tweak timing or content. Over time, these insights will help you refine your approach and build smarter, more human campaigns.
Ensure Accessible and Inclusive Marketing Materials
When your campaigns are accessible and welcoming to everyone, you reach more prospective students and reflect the values your institution stands for.
Start with accessibility basics. Add descriptive alt text to all images so screen readers can describe visuals to users with vision impairments. Caption every video and provide transcripts. These help not only Deaf or hard-of-hearing students but also anyone watching on mute. Check color contrast, too: combinations like red on green can be hard to read for color-blind users. Use clear fonts, readable sizes, and designs that meet accessibility standards.
Example: Binghamton University (Student Association). At Binghamton, student leaders launched an “accessible emails” initiative in Fall 2025 to improve the inclusivity of campus communications. The Student Association (SA), in partnership with the campus disability services office, rolled out digital accessibility guidelines and challenged all student organizations to apply them in their back-to-school email newsletters. These guidelines included using alt text on images, high-contrast colors, readable fonts, and captions on videos, and simple adjustments to make emails and social posts readable by screen readers and accessible to those with disabilities. To incentivize adoption, the SA offered $100 grants (via a raffle) to clubs that complied with the new accessibility standards in their October emails.
Make sure your content works across all devices. Responsive, mobile-friendly emails and web pages prevent frustration and help more users complete inquiry forms or explore programs on their phones.
Representation matters as well. Feature students from diverse backgrounds and experiences, and consider multilingual or culturally inclusive content if you serve international audiences.
Tactical Tip: Run a quick accessibility audit using tools like WAVE or Axe to spot missing tags or low-contrast text. Train your marketing team on simple habits, like using CamelCase in hashtags (#FirstDayAtCampus), that make your content more inclusive. Small changes go a long way toward making every student feel seen and included.
Measure, Adapt, and Refine Your Strategy
Great marketing doesn’t stop at launch; it evolves. Once your back-to-school campaigns are live, monitor results closely and be ready to adjust. Use Google Analytics 4, CRM dashboards, such as HEMs Mautic, and other social insights to see what’s working. Focus on metrics that matter, like inquiries and applications.
Hold quick debriefs with your team after major pushes. Ask what content resonated, which channels drove engagement, and whether event turnout met expectations. Maybe your career-focused posts got strong traction, or your TikTok videos outperformed Facebook. Use that data to refine your next phase of content and budget allocation.
Flexibility is your biggest advantage. Test different formats, refine your messaging, and pivot when something isn’t working. Every campaign teaches you more about your audience.
Example: Park Hill School District (MO). Park Hill’s communications department exemplifies a cycle of measurement and refinement in its marketing strategy. Each year, they collect detailed analytics on communication channels, email open rates, social media engagement, website traffic, and even advertising partnership revenue, and compare them to prior years’ benchmarks. In their 2023–24 report, for instance, the team noted improvements like an increase in the staff newsletter open rate from the mid-40% range up to 52%, and a jump in Facebook reach by 167% year-over-year. They also track outcomes of marketing initiatives (e.g., four years of in-house advertising brought in $148,800 in revenue in 2023–24) to evaluate ROI. These metrics inform mid-course corrections and the setting of new goals.
Tactical Tip: Keep communication open across teams. Marketing, admissions, and academics should share insights regularly. If your in-house resources are stretched, consider bringing in experts like HEM. Our team offers digital strategy, content, automation, and CRM support so you can scale campaigns efficiently and keep enrollment goals on track. Measure what matters, learn fast, and never stop improving.
Wrapping Up
The back-to-school season sets the tone for the entire year. When you combine strategy with creativity, the results speak for themselves. Reviewing last year’s data, setting SMART goals, personalizing outreach, producing engaging videos, organizing content calendars, and using automation or targeted ads all work together to move the needle. Add accessibility and inclusion, and your marketing becomes not just effective, but meaningful.
At the heart of it all is one principle: keep students front and center. Understand what drives them, where they spend time, and how your institution can meet their goals. That empathy fuels every great campaign.
Effective higher education marketing is a perfect blend of art and analysis. It’s about pairing strong storytelling with measurable outcomes. And when you need a partner to help balance both, Higher Education Marketing (HEM) is here. We specialize in data-driven strategy, automation, SEO, and social campaigns built to amplify your institution’s voice.
The new academic year is full of opportunities. With the right preparation and a willingness to adapt, your marketing can inspire action, drive enrollment, and welcome a new wave of students ready to thrive. Here’s to your most successful back-to-school season yet.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Why is it important for schools to audit previous marketing campaigns before launching new ones? Answer: Auditing past campaigns helps schools understand their previous recruitment efforts. By analyzing data such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI, institutions can set SMART goals for the new academic year. This ensures resources are directed toward tactics that actually drive inquiries, applications, and enrollments instead of repeating ineffective strategies.
Question: How can educational institutions use personalization to improve student engagement? Answer: Personalization allows schools to communicate directly to a student’s interests, program choices, and stage in the admissions funnel. Using CRM and marketing automation tools like Mautic by HEM, teams can segment audiences, send customized emails, and display dynamic website content based on visitor data.
Question: What role do video and social media play in back-to-school marketing? Answer: Video and social media are now essential tools for reaching Gen Z and Gen Alpha students. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are where prospective students spend most of their time, making short-form, authentic videos key to capturing attention.
