...or has student behaviour evolved faster than higher education?
By Chris Kenny, Chief Recruitment Officer at QA Higher Education
At EnrolyCon26, I asked the room three simple questions:
- Are you confident your student journey matches how students behave today?
- Have student expectations evolved faster than your systems?
- Would you personally recommend your own application journey?
The reaction said a lot.
Because the reality is this - student expectations are changing faster than many institutional processes can keep up with.
And increasingly, those expectations are not being shaped by universities. They are being shaped by Amazon, Uber, TikTok and ChatGPT.
Students now live in a world of:
- instant updates
- personalised recommendations
- seamless digital journeys
- real-time tracking
- video-first communication
- AI-assisted discovery
Then they arrive at university recruitment and admissions journeys that can still feel fragmented, slow and unclear.
That gap is becoming harder to ignore.
“Student expectations are shaped outside of education”
One of the biggest shifts we’re seeing is that discovery is no longer linear.
Students move constantly between awareness, research, validation and decision-making - often across multiple devices and platforms at the same time.
A university website is no longer the centre of the journey. It is simply one stop within it.
Today’s students are:
- mobile-first by default
- heavily influenced by peer content
- increasingly AI-curious
- used to instant responses
- sceptical of overly polished messaging
- expecting transparency and clarity throughout the process
Importantly, many institutions still design journeys around internal structures rather than student behaviour.
That creates friction.
Friction compounds faster than persuasion
One line from the session that particularly resonated was:
“Friction compounds faster than persuasion.”
Universities cannot simply market harder to solve conversion challenges.
Students increasingly expect experiences that feel connected, responsive and easy to navigate. Even small delays, unclear next steps or inconsistent communications can create disengagement.
Some of the biggest pressure points students experience include:
- slow or unclear responses
- fragmented communications
- confusing application stages
- inconsistent digital experiences
- systems that don’t work together
- processes not designed for real-time expectations
In many cases, institutions are still asking students to adapt to university systems rather than designing systems around how students actually behave.
The universities winning attention are behaving differently
At QA Higher Education, we’ve spent time rethinking recruitment around observed student behaviour rather than traditional assumptions.
That meant moving away from intuition-led campaigns towards:
- audience-first planning
- behaviour-led channel selection
- full-funnel campaign design
- faster live optimisation
- peer-driven content
- clearer, lower-friction digital journeys
The impact has been significant:
- 30x increase in enquiries per month
- 80% increase in applications started year-on-year
- strategic rollout across multiple partners
But for me, this conversation is bigger than marketing performance. This is becoming an operational challenge across the entire student journey.
This is no longer just a marketing problem
From enquiry management and admissions workflows through to communications, integrations and response times, student expectations now touch every part of the institution.
The bigger questions universities need to ask are:
- Are your systems designed around student behaviour or institutional comfort?
- Is discovery happening earlier than your recruitment model assumes?
- Where does friction exist because expectations have outpaced process?
- Are insights shaping decisions or simply validating intuition afterwards?
In a sector navigating AI disruption, changing student behaviour and growing competition, the institutions that adapt fastest may not necessarily be the loudest. They may simply be the easiest to engage with.
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