A review of the academic year so far

The 2021–22 academic year is like no other. And we said the same in 2020–21. The global higher education sector is evolving at an unprecedented rate. Institutions are seeking to make change to multiple aspects of the student lifecycle in response to students’ needs and to new markets. Delivery and operating models are changing in response, with efficiency and effectiveness top of many institutions’ agendas.

In talking about this evolution, we cannot ignore the impact of the pandemic. Physical lockdowns necessitated institutions to establish in-the-moment alternative solutions to enable the student experience to continue. That immediate response now feels like a long time ago because so much has happened since. Yet, a different kind of immediacy remains. For multiple reasons, we know that there are few aspects of the student or staff experience that will be entirely as they were pre-pandemic. And that context inevitably sets part of the scene for the sector to address in looking at what now—and what next.

The Review of the Start of the Academic Year webinar delved into some of these challenges, and this blog highlights just a few of the areas we discussed. Drawing upon colleagues’ experience from several institutions across the globe, we explored responses being made to different parts of the student lifecycle as well as how working practices are being adapted.

First off, we heard from Rami Mahfouz, Director of Enrolment Services at the American University of Sharjah about how his institution had gone about adapting its recruitment and admissions processes in response to changing needs. As a user of Ellucian CRM Recruit, the University has continued to embed this technology to underpin multiple aspects of the activity. Behind the scenes, the admissions process has become much more efficient through a fully digitised operation. More directly, CRM Recruit has enabled the University to establish a greater level of personalised communication with applicants which, in turn, is supporting conversions.

While greater use of technology is resulting in multiple benefits to university operations, the American University of Sharjah has also been assessing what student recruitment activities still benefit from being face-to-face. The easing of pandemic restrictions reintroduced the opportunity for physical human interaction, but within a world where the technology and face-to-face axis has shifted. Sharjah has found that applicants still want and need the opportunity to visit campus. They want the chance to grasp the culture and atmosphere of the institution before committing to invest their time and money into their medium-term futures. And this physical interaction can only also be of benefit to the University to know that students are making truly informed choices.

That balance between remote and in-person activities was a theme that threaded through our session. A wide-ranging discussion—which you can explore fully in the webinar with Heriot-Watt University Academic Registrar, Paul Travill—included a focus on the challenges of reintroducing students to a face-to-face setting. Two years of stringent pandemic restrictions in education settings in Scotland have led to a large proportion of students studying and living large parts of their lives in a virtual environment. Resetting that balance as restrictions lift means not only inducting new students to a physical setting, but also inducting students who have already completed much of their education online. The implications of this challenge are vast, cutting across both learning and social settings, and the University is addressing this whilst also determining the direction of its online presence. The global context of Heriot-Watt—with campuses in Scotland, Malaysia and Dubai—provides a further dimension to the University’s wider decision-making about its post-pandemic response, including how it builds upon successful implementation of technological solutions such as Ellucian CRM Recruit that operate across all its provision.

Collectively, panel members considered how institutions are adapting their strategies and operations to address the pace of change. Colleagues highlighted how many parts of the sector are necessarily reprioritising budgets towards technology. Institutional decision-making is becoming more agile than in the pre-pandemic setting and greater collaborative working styles are resulting in increasingly effective implementation.

For those of us fortunate enough to have had the technology, pandemic lockdowns took us to an extreme and often uncomfortable position of operating in an entirely virtual world. But this extremity also showed us a proof of concept: that we can use technology to solve future challenges in ways that we may not otherwise have accepted so quickly or been brave enough to countenance. In looking forward, while many factors remain unknown, panel members were unanimous that greater integration of technological systems across campus—or in the case of Heriot-Watt, across its global campuses—will be necessary to underpin an effective student experience of the future.

Watch the webinar on-demand.