If you talk to college leaders these days, you’ll hear that one of their biggest worries is the demographic headwind facing their institutions. The number of U.S. high-school graduates is mostly flat and projected to remain that way until it declines by the middle of the next decade. The cohort that arrives on campus in the 2020s will be more racially and ethnically diverse, and will include more first-generation and low-income students than any other group of undergraduates previously served by American higher education. And all of those recent high-school graduates will hail from Generation Z, a group with different expectations than those of the millennials.
While those demographic trends have been on the radar of colleges for nearly a decade, finding a strategy to serve those students has proved elusive. So college leaders return to what is familiar, rather than listen to what prospective students want from higher education or even how current students navigate it.
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Without a clear understanding of their students, institutions often fail to think beyond the core populations they are already enrolling or assume the academic programs and student services they’re offering are suitable. This strategy plays out at institutions again and again as leaders picture their students mostly through the lens of age: traditional (18 to 22 years old) and nontraditional (everyone else).
Take, as an example, adult students. Because of the decline in high-school graduates, colleges realize that adults, part-timers, and other nontraditional students will increasingly become the norm at most institutions. But once again, colleges are failing to differentiate their offerings to the distinct needs of those new sets of students. Rather than create a set of experiences for the adult market — such as learning communities to provide academic support or competency-based degrees to move them through school more quickly — many institutions merely tweak the course schedule aimed at traditional teenagers and then add night, weekend, or online options.
The process to better align an institution with learners starts with a concept called “student segmentation.” Students of all ages are increasingly vocal about what they want from a college degree and more skeptical of the existing system. Online survey tools allow colleges to constantly ask about students’ experiences. And thanks to the growing digitization of campuses, we know so much more about how students learn in the classroom and how they interact with campus services, from academic advising to the library.
Until now, however, those data have often remained isolated within academic departments or specific schools at a university and haven’t worked to the overall benefit of students or the institutions. The next step is to use that survey research and data to segment students in order to build new academic offerings and personalize campus services.
While the idea of student segmentation is not new in higher education, the concept has failed to gain widespread adoption. Recent research I conducted on behalf of the education company Pearson suggests that by more broadly adopting a segmentation approach to inform academic majors, help students navigate campuses, and enhance recruitment practices, colleges can put themselves on stronger financial footing and improve student success.
As part of our research, the Harris Poll conducted a survey of more than 2,500 Americans, ages 14 to 40, about how they learn and about their attitudes toward college and education in general. The results point to a significant shift in the mind-sets of teenagers and adults in how they approach higher education — their purpose for going to college, what motivates them, how they want to learn, and the value they place on the degree for the price they pay.
Our survey found, for example, that adults want a degree to provide broad learning, and they understand the relevance of their education even if it’s not readily apparent. Younger students, in contrast, want college to provide financial security and to apply immediately. What this means is that colleges should design additional and flexible pathways to a degree that allow students to choose among a mix of majors combined with a healthy dose of short training courses and intensive career advising.
Our research also revealed that alternative credentials and certificates are just as popular as legacy degrees among both college graduates and nongraduates who plan to continue their education. Around a quarter of college graduates, high-school graduates, and those who started college but didn’t finish want opportunities for alternative certificates. This calls for an acceleration of existing experiments with nanodegrees, micro-master’s programs, and badges in order to sort out what is now a convoluted market for new credentials.
Using the results of the Harris survey, we developed a set of five student “personas” that function as a guide for how institutions might use segmentation to build academic programs, market to prospective students, and serve them in new ways.
The Traditional Learner is the prototypical college student, who favors in-person interactions with classmates and professors and prefers reading and listening to lectures over group study and watching videos. While such learners believe the purpose of college is to prepare them for life, a big motivation for going to college is also to get a better job. This is the largest segment of the five, accounting for 25 percent of learners.
The Hobby Learner refers to a diverse set of older students who view education as a journey of learning about new things rather than as a way to make it to the top of their professions. What really makes this group stand out is that they are under financial pressure: A majority said ability to pay might prevent them from going to college.
The Career Learner is similar to the Traditional Learner in many ways, but members of this group have made getting a job their main focus. While this segment is made up of learners of all ages, the largest subgroup represents Generation Z — traditional undergraduates in college right now.
The Reluctant Learner is the most diverse segment in terms of enrollment, and includes those currently in college, those without a degree, and even college graduates. They are academically average students who have little passion for learning. Because they place a low value on higher education, they are searching for the best price or the biggest return on investment when comparing colleges.
The Skeptical Learner is essentially the converse of the Hobby Learner. A little more than half of this group’s members describe themselves as average or below-average learners. This segment likes the social aspects of education, such as seeing friends, but not the academic pursuit.
Each of these personas offers opportunities for colleges to expand their markets and serve new ones. For instance, institutions could design shorter, flexible academic programs, even at the single-course level, that appeal to the Hobby Learner’s desire to seek knowledge about interesting topics, or build a pricing approach based on degree progress that would incentivize price-sensitive Reluctant Learners to complete their studies.
This list of five categories is not meant to encompass all types of learners, nor do all these categories exist at every institution. But such a segmentation approach should kick off any planning exercise in higher education nowadays. To remain relevant in the decades ahead, it is critical that leaders start thinking about the broad swath of students they want to serve — or need to serve — and how to appeal to their specific needs and desires.
Jeffrey J. Selingo, formerly editor of The Chronicle, is founding director of the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership, a partnership between Arizona State University and Georgetown University, and a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities. This article was adapted from a report he wrote for Pearson.
