Clear vision: a step towards unravelling student recruitment in English universities?
Abstract
Purpose
The recruitment of undergraduate students within English universities is of vital importance to both the academic success and the financial stability of the organisation. Despite the primacy of the task, there has been a dearth of research looking at related performance and how to ensure that the process is optimised. The purpose of this study was to investigate the degree of variation both within a university and between different universities. The reliance that individual programmes and/or universities place on the Clearing process is key; given its uncertainty, resource demands and timing shortly before students take up their places.
Design/methodology/approach
The Nomogramma di Gandy diagrammatical approach utilises readily available data to analyse universities’ performance in recruiting students to different programmes, and the degree to which they each rely of the Clearing process. Inter-university performance was investigated on a whole-student intake basis for a sample of English universities, representative of type and region.
Findings
The study found that there were disparate patterns for the many programmes within the pilot university and also disparate patterns between different types of universities across England. Accordingly, universities should internally benchmark their programmes to inform both strategic and tactical decision-making. Similarly, Universities and Colleges Admissions Service benchmarking inter-university patterns could inform the overall sector.
Originality/value
The approach and findings provide lessons for analysing student recruitment which could be critical to universities’ academic and financial health, in an increasingly competitive environment.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions and help of Louise Deer and Samantha Wood of UCAS in the provision of data for the inter-university comparisons. Similarly, they wish to acknowledge the contributions and advice of staff at the Pilot University, who cannot be named for confidentiality reasons.
No funding was involved in the research covered by this paper, and none of the authors has any financial interest or benefit arising from the direct applications of this research.
Conflict of interest: There are no conflicts of interest
Ethics: No identifiable personal data was involved in the research and therefore no ethical approval was required.
Citation
Gandy, R., Wolstencroft, P., Geer, K. and de Main, L. (2023), "Clear vision: a step towards unravelling student recruitment in English universities?", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-02-2023-0094
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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