ASPIRATIONS AND
EXPECTATIONS FROM
POSTGRADUATE STUDY
QS Network
Every year QS Ltd., the organisers of the QS World Grad School Tour® (the world’s largest series of international masters and PhD events) and researchers/ writers of the QS World University Rankings® release the research paper— QS
TopGradSchool.com Applicant Research. This Applicant Research survey is the most comprehensive survey of its kind giving the most complete insight into the aspirations and expectations of potential postgraduate students around the world. With its 2011 postgraduate education fairs currently in full swing around the world, the 2011 survey has thrown up some surprising results…
Continuing a trend that has been observed for the past five annual surveys, the proportion of female applicants has again increased in every region. Female applicants now outnumber male in all regions
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except India, though even in this historically male-dominated applicant pool the proportion of females has risen to 23.7 per cent, up from 21.3 per cent in 2009 and 19.5 per cent in 2008. The large Indian response rate and its anomalous gender imbalance compared to other regions means that the overall global gender balance of survey respondents is 54.4 per cent male and 45.6 per cent female. However, if we normalize the results by region, the strong indication is that female applicants are now in the global ascendancy.
The tipping of the balance from male to female applicants is hugely evident in Latin America. Male applicants have generally been in the majority in the region in years gone by, but for the first time in 2010, they are outnumbered by female applicants (50.4 per cent female to 49.6 per cent male). In Europe and North America, the trend for a greater proportion of female candidates is more established, and the gap continued to widen in 2010.
It’s not only the demographics of who is looking to study that have changed. The choice of where in the world prospective students are considering taking postgraduate courses has also widened considerably. There are more countries in radars of prospective graduate applicants than ever before. The US and the UK remain by far the two most popular countries, with 50.6 per cent and 46.9 per cent of respondents expressing an interest in studying in the two countries. The gap between the two countries has closed somewhat to 3.7 per cent as compared to 2009, when the difference was 5.6 per cent.
Though the figure for the UK is still over twice as much as that for Germany— the third most popular country— it is interesting to note that the US and UK have both fallen substantially in popularity. The popularity of the US has dipped by 16.3 per cent this year (from a high of 75.8 per cent in 2007 to low of 50.57 per cent in 2011) and that of the UK has seen a decline of 14.9 per cent. . This is possibly down to rising fees in both the countries, and the increased complexity involved in getting a student visa for the UK.
These figures reveal that students no longer look upon just a handful of countries as their only options, but are now willing to consider other destinations for higher education. This can be ascribed to a number of factors, but certainly the increased availability of rankings and other such information on studying abroad will have played its part.
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