Student voices are clear. Are universities listening?

New widescale global research finds many universities are missing the mark when it comes to meeting current student expectations.

I’m thrilled to share our new research report documenting the voices of the students, faculty and administrators: the people who are at the heart of higher education. Earlier this year, we worked with Times Higher Education to survey more than 3,000 students and hold focus groups with hundreds of teaching faculty and professional staff across eight geographies, to understand their expectations and experiences. We conducted in-depth interviews with university leaders across the same countries to learn more about their digital transformation plans and approaches.

For me, one of the most startling findings was that a third of students – a third! – are less than happy with their choice of university. Our report drills into the “Why” behind this and many other revealing statistics from across the university campus – and suggests how the sector should respond to better meet the needs of the people at the center of higher education.

Just focusing in on what students are saying, the messages are consistent and compelling:

“Convince me … that I belong in your university”

A sense of belonging is a universal and fundamental human motivation that research has found is vital to support academic achievement. When current students experience “belonging uncertainty”, they interpret negative experiences as evidence that they do not belong. Imagine the heightened power of this effect on prospective students – especially those who are first in family to enter higher education.

Imagine how these young people feel if their initial interaction with a university is an overwhelming maze of confusing program information. What if, instead, a university home page opened with a human message — “Tell us about yourself so we can show you programs to support your career goals” — before gently guiding individuals to a program they are likely to enjoy and complete.

As Dr. Paul LeBlanc, President of Southern New Hampshire University, says, “Student centricity is all about students feeling like they matter, like the university knows them and cares about them.”

“Teach me … effectively using digital technology”

Students told us that quality of teaching is the most important aspect of the university experience, and the top reason for both happiness and unhappiness with their choice of university. They gave particularly low ratings to their experience of “online learning” — putting it at the bottom of the many aspects of university life we asked them about.

What’s missing from their digital learning experience is engagement. Our research suggests that the online teaching being rolled out by many universities is not designed to engage students, enable productive collaboration or check understanding. In other words, teaching faculty are still simply putting recordings of traditional lectures online – and some of that content is years out of date! This is far short of the sophisticated digital experiences we receive from a vast range of retail, and even government entities. No wonder 45% of the current student population would like their universities to invest in training faculty to deliver digital learning more effectively!

“Support me … to juggle my studies with other commitments”

Today’s students live increasingly complicated lives and their expectations of higher education have fundamentally shifted. Three in five of the students in our survey have some kind of work or family commitment outside of university life. More than half are working. One in eight are managing childcare or other caring commitments.

This means that, no matter what faculty and parents believe, for students, pure in-person teaching is no longer the gold standard of higher education.

All in all, what we’re hearing is a clarion call for higher education to get on board with quality digital learning and move to a flipped learning model. At their convenience, students should be engaging with multimedia-based, bite-sized digital content, before convening with faculty (in person or online) to deepen their understanding. It will be in interactive activities and discussions during class time that students gain a deeper subject understanding, while developing their critical thinking, analysis, synthesis and evaluation skills.

Digital transformation must have a human focus.

While technology will be a key enabler to sector transformation, many digital initiatives are failing to meet student or staff expectations. The reason has little to do with the underlying technology, which is mature enough to “just implement”. At issue is the fact that new tools and systems are being implemented piecemeal and in silos, without regard to the frustrating user experience this creates.

As a matter of urgency, the patchwork of campus digital systems must be stitched together to give students and staff seamless experiences, time-saving processes and critical information. At the same time, many universities need to convince teaching faculty of the merits of digital pedagogy and empower them to create content for and deliver a flipped learning model.

Read more about these ideas and discover a host of other insights about the university student and staff experience in our new report, Is your university’s transformation centered on tech or people?