Challenges on the Road to One Million Students: Delivering an Authentic Brand

The journey to one million is set to test the sector. Rebecca Hollington from University College Birmingham delves into the challenges around keeping an authentic brand in a diversifying audience.

The road ahead

The topic of the ‘Journey to a Million’ has been a regular one, and one often quoted at many interviews of many colleagues working across the HE sector, for the last few years. UCAS has been projecting increases as a result of not only demographic shifts in 18-year-olds, but also anticipated increases in participation rates in higher education. This, alongside recent announcements on the workings of the Lifelong Loan Entitlement and increases in international recruitment, has resulted in a fresh wave of news around the Journey to a Million. 

Much of the chatter focuses on the increase in the volume of applicants come the magical year of 2030, with some nods towards potential uncertainties in the projection models used by UCAS (mature learner behaviours, volatility of international student numbers etc.). More recently, there has been focus on the challenges that a million applicants would present to the sector, with significant airtime given to questions around widening access, the demand to increase and diversify course offer, ensuring students have the right support in place to navigate a more complex course offer, and institutional ability to scale the student experience. These challenges are challenges for the whole sector, all higher education institutions regardless of size, specialism or educational ‘mission group’. 

A challenge presented to all institutions inevitably becomes a challenge for all the institution. A challenge that may result in significant changes around how an institution presents and behaves will fundamentally impact their brand.

The challenge

Brands are less and less the result of what an organisation may present, and more and more a result of how an organisation behaves. Actions have always spoken louder than words and, with the largest generation in history – Gen A- already beginning to consider their higher education options, it’s clear that responsible and authentic organisational behaviours are increasingly key to brand reputation. 

With 13 years’ experience working in higher education there are many occasions I can recall where I experienced a disconnect between brand behaviour and organisational reality. 

An example of this was in a previous role, my team and I worked hard to constantly support applicants to the University. Our communications and activities were proactive, clear, and reassuring. Our marketing messaging was inspiring and spoke to the support and the community that we delivered to our students. We developed a strong reputation within the University and our applicant community to deliver a positive and welcoming experience for students, and it landed well! 

Roll on a year later and we were seeing comments on our social posts from newly enrolled students, and they made for some uncomfortable reading. Their supportive experience of the team pre-enrolment had been overshadowed by the less supportive experience they’d had as a current student. This was a handful of students but, in the world where the Google review (or What Uni…) is champion, it was enough to question our character. 

Essentially, the marketing, messaging, content, activities and support they’d received as an applicant had not translated into their student experience. The brand we’d portrayed was challenged by the lack of consistency in the experience our students had across their interactions with us. As this was a small number of students in a specific programme area, we were able to address this with targeted actions and responses and these became part of our ‘brand response’. If this were a bigger number and a wider gap between expectation and actions, this would have been a much bigger problem. 

As a sector, we’ve risen to the challenge - so far. We’ve tried to strike a balance between delivering a strong, positive brand image whilst remaining authentic to who we are, how we behave and the true value we offer to our audiences as universities. We’ve recognised that personality is key in delivering our unique brand as a university, and even ‘big brand’ institutions have shifted how they relay their brand essence as a reflection of our audiences’ shifting values. 

The Journey to a Million is set to challenge our universities. More students, from more varied backgrounds, with more varied needs (and expectations), studying an increasingly varied course offer. How do we scale the wrap-around support for these students with rising costs and frozen tuition fees? Will the student experience suffer? And, if it does, how will we present our university brand externally whilst internally there may be more challenges than ever before in delivering what we promise? 

The solution?

The challenge is evolving, and the higher education sector is constantly shifting which makes identifying a solution (or multiple) a bit of a conundrum. Nevertheless, here are some possible options.

We are a unique sector, with unique challenges that often result in unique opportunities for collaboration and sharing good practice. Sharing our thoughts and discussing solutions to problems that we all face is what we do best. As a sector, we also need to remind ourselves that students are what really matters. Focusing on what is best for students, using this to ground us and drive all our decisions (including our brand), gives us a clearer path to follow. 

Brand and marketing teams need to ensure that they look internally when strengthening their brand proposition. Listening to your students’ experience, needs and challenges will help to shape the messaging that underpins your brand. 

There will, inevitably, be issues that students experience. Issues that marketeers might usually try to ignore or steer away from in their messaging. Get involved in these and understand how your university is listening to students and responding to these challenges- share this. There are multiple examples of where brands have strengthened their position when holding their hands up and acknowledging issues, whilst demonstrating how they are ‘living their values’ by tackling matters head-on. Sharing this journey with your audiences enhances the personal connection and authenticity of your brand. 

Remember that the visual brand is only part of the brand mission. When looking at brand it’s important to ensure that you also look at organisational behaviours and how these impact on your brand. For example, sharing insights with your student recruitment team on key brand messages is valuable in influencing how they interact with prospective students on the ground and keeping that consistency of behaviours. 

Dial up your student voice! The sector has seen the rise of the use of student voice in creating content as well as supporting peer-to-peer engagement, and we could enable even more access to our student voice. This really helps deliver brand authenticity, when your students are saying the same as you and, even better, demonstrating how they are living the student experience. 

Feedback in sector from some prospective students speaks to their worries on the negative ‘noise’ they are hearing: Worries around cost of living, the struggles students are facing on mental health and wellbeing support, and many others. There is value in universities addressing these worries in their messaging and content, but it’s not always heard. There is greater value in sharing content and providing access to students who can speak to these worries, who can speak with confidence on challenges they are facing around cost of living yet in the same breath talk about the support from the University on applying to hardship funding, or budgeting support, or on campus food provision etc. This lived experience and the confidence that you have in exposing this to your audience adds to your brand authenticity.

The reality…

We must prioritise. The financial challenges to the sector are clear and resources are more and more limited. Tuition fees are frozen at £9,250 and, with rising inflation, universities will be losing an average of £4,000 a year on every UK undergraduate by 2024. 

Universities need to have a clear brand, with clear messages that deliver on the overall institutional strategy. Where the strategic direction and brand don’t align, this will create confusion and result in misdirection of resource. 

The simple fact is we may not be able to grow resource in line with the changing needs of our students and the sector, and the million applicants of 2030. We must get smarter and more efficient, whilst still delivering great content and great experience for our audiences. It sounds simple, and something all universities should already have, but we don’t. Brand needs to become a priority. 

The next step

There is better understanding of the importance of brand within the sector, but much to do to develop understanding on what impacts on brand. Those tasked with the custodianship of your institutional brand need to continually reiterate how institutional strategy, decisions, plans, and actions always impact on brand. If that’s you, or your team, make sure you’re at the table when these conversations happen.

The Journey to a Million won’t happen overnight, but one day we will wake up and it will be here with all the opportunities it brings. If we don’t take time now to reflect, plan and shape our brand for the future we may find ourselves left behind. 

About the author

Rebecca Hollington is Director of External Engagement and Communications at University College Birmingham.

Rebecca has 13 years’ experience working in higher education in a variety of roles covering admissions, recruitment, outreach, marketing, alumni development, PR and communications, policy, and business engagement. Rebecca is practised in working with college and education partners, policy organisations, industry and sector partners, prospective students of varying backgrounds, parents/carers of prospective students, external associations, and local government.

In her current role at University College Birmingham, Rebecca provides strategic leadership for PR, media and communications, alumni engagement and development and is responsible for purposeful and sustained growth of the University brand and reputation. As a specialist institution providing FE and HE level education, University College Birmingham is a unique offer to the HE sector and champions pathway education supporting students from level 2 through to level 7.