According to the HEFCE report Postgraduate education in England and Northern Irelend over the last ten years postgraduate recruitment has increased but has declined over the past two years. The reasons for the decline are as yet unknown but HEFCE suspects that the reasons include the recession, increased fees and employers less likely to sponsor employees.

A news report in The Daily Telegraph (from HESA) talks about postgraduate applicants going abroad to take masters degrees due to the lower cost (free to £500.00) and the opportunity to learn a new language and culture.

If it is the case that postgraduate recruitment is going to fall over the next few years universities will need to work hard to convert as many applicants as possible to enrolment. It is going to be necessary to develop strategies to keep applicants interested and engaged throughout the pre-enrolment period.

Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) it will be possible to describe the current ‘keep-warm’ processes and the structures and strategies of the university and to lead to explanations about the current situation and for improved processes and policies to be developed.

ANT can be used to follow the actor(s) through from the end of the recruitment process into the keep-warm and understand the roles of the human and non-human actors. Websites, emails, telephone communications, letters, personal contacts, meetings, events etc. and to understand the power relationships that exist throughout the process.

The process of getting applicants through to enrolment is fundamentally a service system. It would be beneficial to identify and describe any service innovations.

The research question can then become:

Strategies for increasing postgraduate enrolment: using Actor-Network Theory to describe and explore service innovation.