Students online: Global trends

Until recently, there were two popular higher education internet-related stats: 1 in 5 prospective students said they they removed a university from their list after a bad website experience, and 9 out of 10 used the internet to research universities.

By Jenny Boden

That was two years ago, and since then internet usage has become even more engrained in everyday life. A recent report published by Top Universities explores how students use the internet while researching universities, the types of online platforms they value the most, and the information they find the most challenging to access.

Key findings

• Online resources are indispensable for most prospective students — but offline resources remain almost equally valued. Almost two-thirds of survey respondents said they considered online and offline resources equally important when researching higher education options, while just over 30% placed greater emphasis on the online world. Respondents in Africa were most likely to prioritise online resources, and men were more likely to choose this option than women. Perhaps surprisingly, the youngest respondents were least likely to prioritize online resources.
• Research about higher education is often conducted across multiple devices. More than half of respondents said they used at least two types of device to research universities and courses online. Across every region and age group, the most commonly used device was the laptop. Smartphone usage came next, and was most prevalent among younger respondents and those in Africa.
• Different types of online resource are perceived within a clear hierarchy of importance. Respondents displayed substantial consistency when allocating levels of importance to different types of online resource, with a majority rating official university websites as ‘essential’, and university rankings websites most likely to be classed as “very important”. At the same time, most applicants placed at least some level of importance on a broad spectrum of online resources, including forums and social media.
• Different online resources fulfil differentiated functions in prospective students’ research, but there is significant overlap. The survey also revealed clear trends in the tasks with which applicants associate different types of online resource. Rankings websites, for example, were most commonly associated with comparing universities, while social media and forums were perceived mainly as sources of inspiration. However, there was significant cross-over, indicating that prospective students draw on a diverse portfolio of resources at each stage of their research.
• Social media is widely used in prospective students’ research, though considered a comparatively less important resource. While the majority of respondents said social media played at least some role in their higher education research, most perceived it as playing a less important role than other online resources. Overall, the most-used social networks were Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, but there was significant variation both at regional level and by age.
• Despite making use of a diverse array of online resources, students still report difficulty finding information in several crucial fields — especially scholarships and funding. Almost 40% of respondents said they’d had difficulty finding information about scholarships and funding, while almost 20% identified student visas as a problem area. Information about course content was a particular priority for those in the US and Canada, while those in Latin America and Europe were most likely to express difficulty accessing information about applications and admission requirements. Priorities and challenges also varied depending on the level of course being applied for.
• Email remains the most common and preferred means of contacting and being contacted by universities. While many universities are focusing on stepping up communications via social media, our respondents demonstrate that email remains the most popular method of contacting and being contacted by universities — though accompanied by a new pressure to speed up response times to match expectations set by platforms such as Twitter. Significant numbers of participants also favoured phone calls and letters as methods of corresponding with universities, including the youngest respondents.

You can read the full report here.

Originally published at studentcomms.wordpress.com on October 21, 2014.