Students lack loyalty to British universities

Research conducted by The Student Room has sought to understand students’ attitudes toward postgraduate study and findings have found that few remain at their undergrad university.

In a study of over 650 students currently or intent on studying a postgrad course  just 20% are expected to remain at the university they do their undergraduate degree at, despite having spent 3 or more years there.

Students were split on whether to study abroad (47%) or stay in the UK (47%) with the remaining 6% still undecided.

For universities this means that an emphasis should be placed on external marketing strategies to capture those postgraduate candidates looking for a new uni to study at and replace their own exodus of undergraduates.

Of those that said they would look at changing uni’s to do their postgrad the UK capital featured highly, with 14% identifying London universities as their preferred place to study a postgraduate course; both King’s College London and UCL featured strongly in this list.

Overall University of Manchester and University of Sussex were the most frequently mentioned universities with 4% and 3% respectively of respondents saying that they wish to study there.

The spread of students remaining loyal to their university was much wider and only 3 institutions stood out, one being University of Sussex again, followed by University of Southampton and The Open University.

Why students stay at…

The Open University – “Flexibility and best possible value for money.”

Why students move to…

University of Sussex – “It’s academic reputation was attractive & upon spending some time at the university itself, I decided to apply for my LLM at Sussex.”

University of Manchester - “because of the unique course being offered and the great reputaion of manchester university in terms of career growth.”

More Postgraduate Research

• Why students are turning down postgraduate opportunities
• The effect of rising tuition fees on postgraduate study