Clearing 2026: why UK universities need recruitment intelligence
UK universities face a deficit crisis. Student Recruitment Intelligence can transform Clearing from chaos to precision.

This is my first time speaking at any analyics conference, let alone MeasureFest, and I'm looking forward to sharing my passion for SQL and BigQuery. I've been a data analyst for over 10 years, I've used SQL with Oracle, Microsoft and now Google BigQuery, and I can honestly say that Google has been my favourite so far! They are constantly thinking of new ways to improve the user experience, and the speed of the code is amazing. Plus they have a suite of products which have been made to speak to one another with ease.
I love extracting data using SQL, the control you have is amazing. Lots of people can code SQL to extract data, but only the best ones will be checking their outputs and ensuring the data you are looking at is correct. All you need to get started is a little imagination for what you want to extract and how you are going to use that data, a question to ask your data is a good start. From there it's just a case of building up your code and testing along the way. This article I wrote will help with what you should think about when testing your SQL code.
Before you start using BigQuery with your GA4 data, you'll need to get the exports all set up. Here's a guide I wrote on how to do it step by step:
https://www.measurelab.co.uk/insights/set-up-ga4-bigquery-export/
Here's some resources related to the talk to help get started and utilising BigQuery now:
And here's some handy free resources for learning SQL (and beyond):
For other people to follow, podcasts to listen to, newsletters to subscribe to, websites to visit, and other things that we recommend, see our full recommended list that we pulled together.
Below are my slides from my MeasureFest talk. Here is the link to Google Slides in case that doesn't work.
UK universities face a deficit crisis. Student Recruitment Intelligence can transform Clearing from chaos to precision.
At the start of the year, if you’d asked us whether Measurelab would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Europe’s biggest consultancies by September, we would've been surprised. Not because we don't believe in ourselves, but because these things feel so distant - until suddenly, they’re not. So, here it is: we’ve been awarded the Marketing Analytics Services Partner Specialisation in Google Cloud Partner Advantage. What’s the big deal? In Google’s own words (with the obligatory Zs): “Spec
BigQuery just got a major upgrade, you can now plug directly into Vertex AI using the new AI.GENERATE function. Translation: your analytics data and generative AI are now best friends, and they’re hanging out right inside SQL. That opens up a whole world of new analysis options for GA4 data, but it also raises some questions: * How do you actually set it up? * What’s it good for (and when should you avoid it)? * Why would you batch the query? Let’s walk through it step by step. Step 1: H