Digital Futures: Prospective Students in 2020, 2025 and 2030

In 2020

• The role that university websites play in the decision making process becomes central to their experience, with greater expectation that websites will generate content that is personalised to their interests, educational background, social graph and demographic factors.
• Third party sites and spaces play an increasing role as prospective students seek authentic views, opinions and experiences of existing and former students. They become more savvy in accessing and assessing such information.
• Apps, chat bots and non-screen based technologies (such as voice controlled devices) are used to organise, filter and process questions and information for prospective students in their decision making process.
• With the rise of non-traditional providers and alternative routes to higher education, prospective students consider options beyond the traditional campus-based degrees, including distance learning options with providers around the world.

In 2025

• As different apps and channels become portals through which prospective students access information from a range of aggregated sources, the centrality of the university website as a decision making tool declines. Instead, content created by a university for prospective students must be adaptable and able to travel to a wide range of different platforms and channels.
• Big data services evolve to profile-match prospective students with prospective providers. Data from their social graph and digital education record combine to provide an automated matching service that recommends the best universities and programmes for that student.
• Students seek to develop alternative campus experiences, building their social and intellectual communities around common interests over digital networks, instead of based purely around a geographic location. The concept of the "campus" is no longer about location, but shared values, aspirations and interests. Prospective students seek the campuses most closely aligned to their values and aspirations, rather than a sense of "place".
• The on-demand mentality drives the desire for students to study what they want, when they want. Thus the entry- and exit-points of the student experience and relationship with the university are blurred.

In 2030

• Transferable modularity in global higher education is the norm. Students use connected digital platforms to curate their own entirely personalised education experience. They draw from modules and experiences offered by a blend of traditional universities, alternative providers (such as media companies) and businesses. The prospective student experience focuses less on accessing whole degrees and more on specific modules.
• Artificial intelligence systems using complex algorithms guide the way in which prospective students curate their education programme. Systems take into account education achievement, learning styles, aspirations, social graph, values and beliefs, as well as health and wellbeing data to determine not just what they should study, but when and where they should study.
• In making their decisions, students virtually participate in learning experiences online through through mobile, virtual and augmented reality experiences.
• Big data informs decision making processes, providing detailed information about the impact of specific modules, tutors, institutions in easily manipulated ways. For example, a prospective student can select their curated programme based on the known current average earnings of students formerly taught by a specific tutor.