Making Progress on UG to PG Now 

Quick highlights:

• Prospective postgraduates 'price-in' up-front cost: decisions to progress may be driven by ROI instead
• Undergraduates consider switching for a novel experience; postgraduates say they switched for better resources and outcomes
• Interest in postgrad study takes root earlier - and grows during undergrad

An actionable-sounding title is always a nice thing to have, right? But there are three quite specific reasons for mine.

The first is that I’m here to pull out some highlights from a new report on UG to PG progress – on ‘The UG – PG Progression Opportunity’ to be precise. It’s been produced by SMRS (friends of FAU) in partnership with Keystone (home of FAU). More on that shortly.

The second is that this report draws on genuinely new research that gets closer to answering some important questions about PG than we ever have before, well… now.

And the third is that one of the most important things this research uncovers – in my view – is the need for universities to explain “why now?” when attempting to recruit prospective undergraduate-to-postgraduate continuers (as we call them in these parts).

Because postgrad is a difficult ‘sell’ at the best of times. We’ve said repeatedly here (and elsewhere) that funding for domestic students is effectively broken. And it wasn’t so long ago that I was setting up recent shifts in PG recruitment data against a challenging employment market.

In that context, what this research gets uniquely right, I think, is the need to substantiate and nuance the UG to PG offer and really explain why someone should choose the up-front cost and the apparent opportunity cost of postgraduate over alternatives.

The research itself

This work was led by experts at SMRS with a small amount of consultation from myself and the Keystone research and insights team. The core input was a survey of 1,000 current UK undergraduate and 500 current UK postgraduate students alongside c.3,000 prospective or current international students sourced via Keystone Pulse and a further c.3,500 current employees researched in partnership with StudySmarter.

SMRS will also be saying a lot more about this research at LovePG later this year and I won’t attempt to do justice to its breadth and depth in one short blog post. But I will share a few things that stood out to me as someone who spends a lot of time in PG audience data – and perhaps help show why you should definitely consider coming to that session in October.

1. Cost matters; opportunity cost probably matters more

This is absolutely key to the ‘why now?’ question. We know that cost of tuition and living is a key concern for prospective postgraduate students. We’ve seen it in Pulse data for years. This research confirms that. But it does something new too: it calculates how predictive cost-concern is of immediate progression. And the simple answer is that this isn’t what most immediately drives most decisions.

That may feel counter-intuitive, but I don’t think it is. Rather, I think cost is quite quickly ‘priced in’ by prospective students who, in the main, can’t do much to remove it. What influences progression isn’t whether cost is an issue (it always is) but the presence of other factors - a much more nuanced and actionable finding.

One of those factors is ROI and, particularly, ROI vs the immediate alternative of heading into employment. The most significant predictors of progression for current students are actually perceptions of career value, including in the longer-term. And both current and prospective postgraduates also value the ability of PG to differentiate them in the workplace, longer term.

But here’s the thing: those respondents who are currently employed and chose not to do PG are also chiefly motivated, at present, by progression in careers and income.

Which is to say that the groups who do and don’t opt for PG value similar things. The difference is whether they’ve been convinced postgraduate study offers the best route to that from where they are. This is where PG marketing and recruitment needs to do its work, supported by the wider findings and recommendations here.

2.  There’s a difference between what undergraduates think will matter and postgraduates say did

This is a more incidental finding that stood out to me. One of the questions in the research set is around reasons for changing universities, presented both to undergraduates considering doing so and postgraduates who actually did.

The factors that matter more for current PG than current UG are generally quite ‘concrete’ elements of the university offer: better reputation is top for both audiences but wins by 6pp at PG, better facilities and lower cost both win by 4pp, better career prospects wins by 2pp.

Conversely, factors that are more important for current UG but didn’t end up being as important for current PG cluster around a more general desire for change: the desire for a new environment or experience wins by 3pp here and the wish to live in a new location wins by 4pp.

What matters isn’t wildly different, but there’s a logical from the desire for change at UG to the more practical sides of the offer potentially having an outsized impact on what drives actual choice.

That’s reassuring, I think.

Your current undergraduate students cannot, by definition, switch university to you for a fundamentally new location and experience (let’s leave aside the question of multiple campuses).

But you very much can differentiate the practical elements of your offer. Are you relatively affordable? Do you have a strong reputation with key employers? Is the grass actually always greener elsewhere? (And, in any case, that bit of campus your postgrads use probably has very green grass, right?). 

3. Postgrad becomes more appealing to undergrads over time

This research confirms something that’s always felt intuitive and logical but is now proven: 42% of UG and 44% of PG students say they became more interested in postgraduate study over the course of their first degree.

It also indicates something that – I don’t mind saying – surprised me a lot more: 33% of UG and 42% of PG state that they already planned to pursue postgraduate study before starting university.

That’s intriguing in terms of how ‘salient’ PG might be with audiences who are very early in their university journey, and it challenges some assumptions about positioning. Universities may have less work to do in building current students’ fundamental awareness and understanding of PG and more to do in preparing them to negotiate – or see past the blockers that become more apparent at the end. Not simply to answer ‘is PG worth it?’ but ‘is PG worth it now?’.

That’s something the research does address and which I’m sure the LovePG session will too. After all, actionable talks are even better than actionable titles.