Hundreds of student members, then silence
Your body offers free or low-cost student membership, and universities with accredited courses promote it. Students join in their first or second year with their university email address. You send them newsletters, invite them to events and send them the student magazine.
Then they graduate. The university email stops working. The student grade expires at the end of the membership year, and the database moves them to lapsed. A few remember to join as a graduate member. Most do not, because they never heard from you at the point it mattered. The investment in their student years is largely lost.
Why students fall away
The transfer from student to graduate grade happens at a moment when students are moving house, starting jobs and changing email, and the process relies on them doing it themselves.
- Student records hold a university email that stops working after graduation.
- Expected graduation dates are not recorded, so nobody knows when to contact them.
- Transfer to a graduate grade is a new application.
- The student grade simply expires, with no step in between.
- Graduates starting work do not know whether their employer might pay.
The underlying gap is that graduation is not treated as an event in the member's record.
What the lost students cost
Student members are the future of the membership. Losing them at graduation means the body pays for their student years without keeping them as professionals. Recruiting the same people later, as experienced practitioners, is much harder.
Graduates who do stay often join late, after a gap, and miss the benefits that would have helped them most in their first job. Accredited course partners also notice when few of their students continue as members, and that can colour the relationship between the body and the universities it depends on for its pipeline.
How we build the student transfer process
- At joining, students give a personal email as well as their university one, and their course and expected graduation date.
- Students are asked to confirm or update their personal email at a couple of points during their studies.
- In the months before expected graduation, they receive a sequence you approve explaining the graduate grade, what it offers and how employers sometimes pay.
- Transfer is a short confirmation from their account: the course, qualification and date are already held, and only anything new is asked.
- If a student does not transfer by the end of their grade, they move to a graduate follow-up list rather than lapsed, with a small number of reminders.
- Accredited course leaders can see anonymous transfer figures for their cohort, if you want to share them, to encourage students to stay.
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Joining | Personal email, course and expected graduation recorded |
| During studies | Personal email confirmed |
| Before graduation | Graduate grade explained, employer payment information |
| Graduation | One-step transfer from their account |
| No transfer yet | Graduate follow-up list, not lapsed |
Your grades, fees and any evidence for the graduate grade stay as your body sets them. The process only makes the step easy to take.
Graduation season afterwards
In spring, students due to graduate receive a friendly explanation of the graduate grade at their personal email. In summer, many transfer in a couple of minutes from their account. Those who have not transferred by autumn receive a short reminder when they are more likely to have started work.
The membership team sees transfer rates by course and university and can work with course leaders where they are low.
Is this happening to your student members?
- Student records only hold university email addresses.
- You do not know when students are due to graduate.
- Transfer to a graduate grade is a new application.
- Student memberships simply expire.
- Few graduates stay on as members.