England's 18-year-old population peaks around 2030. The university brands that survive the decline are being built now.

In May, HEPI published Bahram Bekhradnia’s analysis of what happens after England’s population of 18-year-olds peaks around 2030. Having grown by 20 to 25% over this decade, it then begins a long decline. On current participation rates, the report projects student numbers falling by around 18.5% between 2030 and 2042.

The United States is already there. WICHE’s projections show American high-school graduates peaked last year at around 3.9 million, the highest number on record, and will fall by about 13% to roughly 3.4 million by 2041.

The HEPI report also highlights a second pressure. As the pool shrinks, higher-tariff universities are likely to recruit more deeply, taking students who would previously have gone elsewhere.

Why demographics have become a brand issue

When demand is high, almost every university can fill its places, and a lot of marketing is effectively about volume: reach, conversion and clearing. That model stops working when there are fewer applicants to go round. In a shrinking market, students choose between institutions they’ve already heard of and already rate, and recruitment becomes a contest of reputation.

The problem is timing. Brand building pays back over years, not recruitment cycles. A university that waits until applications fall to decide what it wants to be known for will be starting the work just as it needs the results.

Brand works on a five-year lag. If you start building it when the decline arrives, you’ve already lost the decline.

What I’d ask every university executive team to do

Model demand to 2040, not to next cycle. Look at your recruitment by region, subject and tariff against the population projections. Some markets will hold up far better than others, and the board should see that picture now.

Decide what you’ll be known for. Choose the handful of subjects, strengths and promises that will define the university in 2035, and start investing in them consistently. Distinctiveness takes years to register with families and teachers.

Learn from the United States. American institutions are living through their decline now. Some are merging, some are specialising and some are recruiting adult and international students in new ways. Their successes and failures are a free preview.

Shift budget from volume to reputation, gradually. Keep recruitment marketing working, but move a growing share into the things that build long-term preference: relationships with teachers and advisers, visible academic expertise, outcomes evidence and distinctive content.

Invest in schools and colleges now. When numbers fall, the advisers and teachers who guide students become even more influential. The universities they trust will be the ones that invested in those relationships when it wasn’t urgent.

The opportunity

The next few years of rising demand are the cheapest time the sector will ever have to build its brands. The universities that use them well will enter the 2030s with a reputation that recruits for them. The rest will be competing on price and clearing.

I’ll be exploring this with leaders in the UK and the US on Season 2 of the podcast, because the American experience over the next few years is the best warning, and the best guide, that British universities are going to get.

Jonathan Sabarre FCIM MBA is Principal Consultant at QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a keynote speaker and host of Marketing Greats in Higher Education. Get the weekly email or invite him to speak.