Offering Financial Support to Help Students Attend Your Open Days
By Simon Fairbanks, Head of Community Engagement, UniTasterDays
“I fell in love with the university at an open day.”
We’ve all heard those famous words when speaking to our students over the years.
The intangible, immeasurable benefit of being on a campus, sensing the community, soaking up the atmosphere… That’s often the clincher when students are torn between universities. Hard to prove, but easy to see.
And inevitably, we’ve echoed that sentiment as student recruitment professionals with our own go-to catchphrase:
“If we can just get them to an open day, then they’ll make us their Firm choice.”
This is why open days remain the flagship milestones in our student recruitment marketing campaigns. And no matter the platform - school presentations, exhibition stands, printed prospectuses, omnichannel advertising campaigns - there is one CTA that rings out loud and clear: register for our open days.
Happily, lots of prospective students want to come to our open days. Our inspirational interactions and glossy promotional materials take care of that. But what if they can’t come to an open day?
Because there is a significant barrier. A growing barrier. Cost.
Open days are expensive
Petrol and Premier Inns. Trains tickets and Travelodges. Coffees and cakes across campus. Parents missing work, students skipping their Saturday jobs… The expenditure soon racks up.
Of course, cost has always been a barrier for open days. But it’s escalated since the cost-of-living-crisis. If we can’t help students attend our open days, then they’ll find a more affordable alternative.
Instead, they might make do with a virtual open day, a social media deep-dive, a lengthy scroll through course webpages, a peer-to-peer chat on a messaging platform, or a rummage through online forums. These are all incredibly helpful options, but none replicate the conversion potential of welcoming a student onto our campus in real life.
Alternatively, students might only visit the universities in their local area to save on travel costs. A local journey will be quicker and cheaper than trekking across the country (or countries).
But there is another type of university which cost-conscious students might choose to visit: a university offering financial support for their open days.
Financial support for open days
I’ve led open days at several universities, most recently at the University of Nottingham. Over the years, I’ve received lots of emails asking if the university offered financial support to help people attend open days. Invariably, I would say, “No, but I don’t think any university does.”
It wasn’t until I started working for UniTasterDays that I realised I was mistaken. In the summer of 2024, I helped the founder of UniTasterDays, Jon Cheek, with a new project to identify every university offering financial support for open days.
In the research stage, I visited the open day pages of every UK university website… and I was blown away by how much financial support was available.
Most commonly, support is offered to cover travel – mileage, train tickets, coach tickets, bus travel - but there are also universities offering discounted hotels and free refreshments. One university has even arranged discounts at local restaurants.
This support is allowing more people to attend open days. And it’s a worthy investment for the universities. After all, a hundred quid towards petrol could lead to tens of thousands of pounds of tuition fees. It’s a no brainer, right?
Challenges with financial support for open days
The challenge is that the cost-of-living crisis is happening to everyone, including our universities.
And beyond cost-of-living, there are additional crises in the HE sector: reduced international student numbers, rising alternatives to traditional degrees, and universities with additional problems that have led to budget constraints.
In that context, offering financial support to help people attend open days is possibly an expense too far. After all, open days already attract thousands of people who are happy to pay for their own visit.
So, why offer open day financial support?
Opportunities with financial support for open days
Firstly, financial support will attract students.
Yes, some established universities might attract high numbers already, without the need to offer financial support, but not every university enjoys that privilege. And even those privileged few might need to rethink their position in this challenging climate. Remember, it’s an intensely competitive environment for universities at the moment.
Secondly, financial support will attract widening participation students. Every university must continue to recruit students from underrepresented groups and challenging backgrounds. In many cases, these will be students without a high level of disposable income.
As such, if you want these students to attend your open days – and recruit them to meet your APP targets, and therefore earn the right to charge the full tuition fees – then enabling them to overcome financial barriers is critical.
But again, universities are struggling with their own finances, so what’s the compromise?
Eligibility criteria.
Eligibility criteria for financial support
The majority of universities currently offering financial support for open days have eligibility criteria in place. Many universities only offer travel scholarships to people from a widening participation background.
Other universities set a distance criteria. For instance, those students living further away from the university are awarded higher financial support than those living nearby. This encourages a greater geographical diversity of open day attendees, rather than solely local attendees. This is particularly valuable for universities with ambitious plans to grow their student numbers, with recruitment targets across different regions, and even countries.
This eligibility criteria allows the financial support to be targeted at high priority students, allowing university resources to be spent more carefully.
And the other challenge
Naturally, there isn’t just a financial cost. There’s a staff cost too.
Travel scholarships generate the administrative burden of checking through receipts and reclaim forms and liaising with colleagues in the finance department. It’s a lot to ask of a busy student recruitment team.
But again, this is time well spent.
This admin will contribute to more (under-represented) prospective students at your open day, which is a strategic priority for universities everywhere.
Our event incentive search tool is yours
You might be reading this as a coordinator, officer, manager, head, or higher. Regardless, you will have leaders and peers and entire departments who will need convincing before they agree to offering financial support for open days. You might still need convincing yourself.
To that end, our event incentive search tool is free for you to explore. It has already been cited in project proposals to secure open day travel scholarships from senior budget-holders. You can do the same.
It’s a compelling reference point, if we do say so ourselves. Every university offering financial support for open days, and the details of their support, is listed there for you to reference and benchmark against.
Open wide
Please do consider offering an open day travel scholarship (and other freebies) for your prospective students. It will allow them to visit your university in a challenging financial time. In doing so, they will have the opportunity to make the best possible choice about their future.
And like generations of students before them, they’ll have the chance to fall in love with your university at an open day.
Simon has almost 20 years of experience in the higher education sector. This includes student recruitment, marketing, and events roles at Nottingham, Birmingham, Warwick, and Coventry, and a consultancy role at Pickle Jar Communications.
Simon is the Head of Community Engagement at UniTasterDays. Their platform helps teachers, careers advisors, prospective students, and parents discover university taster events, whilst offering a range of valuable HE guidance and resources.
Simon has spoken at a variety of international HE conferences, including CASE, ContentEd, EFMD, HighEdWeb, and PSEWeb. He was Chair of the Newcomers Track at CASE Europe Annual Conference from 2020 to 2023.
You can access the UniTasterDays event incentive search tool for free. You’ll find information, inspiration, and motivation to inform your own open day financial support plans. Equally, if you offer financial support which isn’t currently listed, please do contact Simon Fairbanks and he’ll be happy to add it to the platform.
