This will be the the fifth academic year in which UK student finance has been available for Masters degrees. As revolutionary as they were back in 2016, postgraduate loans may understandly feel like part of the furniture now for marketers, for recruiters and for IAG professionals like me.
There’s one group of people for whom this funding option isn’t familiar though (and never really will be): prospective Masters students. This is partly because each new cohort obviously encounters and makes sense of student finance for the first time. But it’s also because a signficant part of each new postgraduate cohort arrives fresh from a very different undergraduate system. The transition between the two can be disorientating, if not also disheartening and discouraging.
I want to explain why that’s the case, what it means for prospective students and what postgraduate marketers and recruiters like you can do to help.