With education costs on the rise, it can feel daunting for education marketers to show prospective students the value of pursuing a graduate degree. Be strategic and clear when sharing the potential of specific graduate degrees. Here are a few points to consider:
The Demand Is Clear
When prospective students see demand in the job market for people with master’s degrees, they will be more inclined to pursue them. Let the numbers speak for themselves—job openings requiring a master’s degree are expected to increase by more than 20 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Better Skills
Students who pursue a graduate degree can also be better prepared for the working world, since the self-discipline and time management skills gained from a graduate program will enable students to engage in their workplaces as professionals, rather than as students or interns. Coming in with a master’s degree as opposed to a bachelor’s degree will help job candidates enter their interviews with a new level of self-assured confidence.
Better Funding
While funding can be difficult to acquire in crowded undergraduate programs, graduate students often have better access to funding from their university or national fellowship programs, making further education more accessible than ever before. In more specialized programs, there is an inclination for schools to invest in students.
Better Pay
Students want to make sure that their master’s degree will pay off with a higher career salary. While the extra degree can never hurt while applying for any job, the master’s programs with the highest salaries are in electrical engineering (median salary of $121,000), finance (median pay $120,000), chemical engineering (median salary $117,000), economics (median salary $114,000), and physics (median salary $113,000).
This can be useful information to encourage students who are considering pursuing a graduate degree in one of these fields, since you can show the data that demonstrates their efforts will pay off in a big way.
Strategize & Use Technology
Higher education marketers can show the highlights of graduate programs through creative, engaging presentations that help students visualize their future.
In today’s tech-savvy world, it can be incredibly useful to create high-quality video content in order to appeal to potential graduate students. Shutterstock is a great resource for finding stock video footage for your specific needs.
Go Online
For those who can’t take the plunge and commit to a full-time, on-campus program, many master’s degrees can now be earned entirely (or nearly entirely) online. Students can earn degrees from reputable schools like Arizona State University, without ever stepping foot in a classroom.
To help students research and compare online programs, U.S. News & World Report recently released the 2015 Best Online Programs rankings.
Be Realistic
Remind potential students that pursuing graduate-level education is not just about the piece of paper certifying their degree, but about how they use it. Ideally, time spent in grad school can also be used to strategize one’s next steps in life, and they can also use that time to participate in internships and take classes that will help them pursue their ultimate career goals.