Inside the Student Experience Gap that No One Talks About

Students today live in a digital-first world. They’re used to personalisation, instant updates, and 24/7 access – and they expect the same from their education experience.

As Sean O’Dea, Senior Account Executive at Full Fabric, put it during our webinar with AWS:

“Students are expecting consumer-grade experiences and often comparing the digital experience they have with you to that they have with the majority of the other digital apps and platforms that they spend their time in.”

But as expectations rise, institutions are being asked to do more with less. Technical debt, tight budgets, and burnout are making it harder for teams to deliver the kind of student journeys they know are needed.

This gap – between what students want and what institutions can realistically deliver – was the focus of our joint webinar with AWS. Sean and Christopher Dye, Education Account Manager at AWS, shared real-world observations from the UK and Europe, supported by live poll responses from higher education professionals across the sector.

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What’s Creating the Gap?

Expectations Are High – and They’re Not Slowing Down

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“Students still want a seamless, mobile-first and always-on journey with personalised communications and visibility.” – Sean O’Dea

Throughout the session, both speakers highlighted how students now expect:

• Instant access to information and updates.
• More personalised communication.
• Self-service tools that put them in control.
• Transparency from enquiry to enrolment.

Chris shared supporting data from the Higher Ed Digital Experience Report:

“70% of students compare their university's digital experience with Netflix or Amazon... and 50% say that quality is a deal breaker when choosing where to study.”

The challenge? Most institutions aren’t designed to meet these expectations.

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Why It’s So Hard to Keep Up

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“You’re fighting the likes of technical debt, shrinking budgets, or staff burnout.” – Sean O’Dea

Both speakers acknowledged the complexity of institutional transformation.

Chris noted:

“Budget and funding cuts... that is a major challenge. Total expenditure [in UK HE] is about £48.6 billion and 51% of that is on staffing costs. A lot of universities in the UK are working in a deficit. (...) Adopting new solutions and new technologies takes higher education, I think, twice as long as a typical public sector organisation.”

This is compounded by issues like:

• Disconnected tools.
• Manual handoffs between teams.
• Siloed data and internal resistance.

As Sean explained:

“Staff have become accidental system integrators... constantly reconciling data between different platforms to make sense of it.”

He also shared how voluntary redundancies and staff churn are exposing how much day-to-day operations depend on individual workarounds.

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What the Polls Revealed

To close the webinar, attendees were invited to respond to a series of live polls.

When asked how confident they felt that their institution is meeting modern student expectations:

• 47% said not confident.
• 37% said somewhat confident.
• 5% said very confident.
• 11% said they weren’t sure what students expect.

Chris reflected:

“It kind of points to underinvestment, the legacy systems, and the disconnect between internal planning and student reality.”

Sean added:

“I think the friction often comes down to siloed systems... duplicated forms, clunky portals, or stretched staff dealing with manual processes.”

On what’s holding digital transformation back:

• 51% said lack of budget.
• 40% said resistance to change.
• 37% said competing priorities.
• 34% said legacy systems and limited internal expertise.

And when asked where they’d start if they could:

• 35% said workflow automation.
• 22% said data visibility and reporting.
• 19% said admissions and onboarding.

Chris responded:

“It’s about identifying the area where change could create the biggest ripple effect.”

Sean echoed:

“Fixing this means automating those handoffs... building clever workflows where no one’s waiting for an email to move to the next step.”

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A Real-World Example – London Film School

To illustrate what progress can look like, Sean shared the story of London Film School.

“Relatively small but very globally focused… they were using seven different tools just to manage the pre-enrolment journey.”

With Full Fabric, they:

• Streamlined their processes into one system.
• Gained full visibility from enquiry to enrolment.
• Reclaimed time and reduced manual tasks.
• Positioned themselves to adopt Full Fabric’s student information system.

“It’s been a really good example of how you don’t need a huge team or a huge budget to make real progress.”

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Moving Forward – Start Where It Hurts

Sean wrapped up the session with this reminder:

“You don’t need to fix everything all at once. But if you can start with what’s broken – and also very visible to your students – that’s often where the biggest and fastest impact happens.”

If your institution is facing similar challenges, a clear path forward doesn’t need to be overwhelming.

Book a free strategy call and let’s explore how we can help close your student experience gap – one step at a time.