A college president's least favorite book title is Silent Spring.
Not
the one about pesticides and the environment penned by Rachel Carson in
1962. I am referring to a book about our campuses that we hope never
sees publication -- a story of failure at the college enrollment office,
during spring recruitment season.
In my 23 years as a college
president, I have never seen the enrollment war so fierce. And that's
what it truly is, a war for the hearts, minds and housing deposits of
the next incoming freshman class.
Time was, there existed a kind
of gentlemen's agreement that colleges wouldn't play hardball
admissions. Advertising was low key. Branch campuses weren't opened in
the competition's backyard, or even in the same region. And nobody
played "Let's Make a Deal" with financial-aid offers.
All of that has gone the way of the printed college catalog as an admissions tool.
These
days, most colleges exist in a buyer's market. Prospective parents and
their students have an unprecedented array of higher-education options
from which to choose -- large and small, public and private, four-year
and two-year, online and for-profit. The notion of "college" has long
since ceased to denote only the residential, four-year experience. Now
you can assemble a higher-education package as easily as you can buy
furnishings for a new house.
What's changed?
Higher
education is -- hold your ears, academic purists -- a consumer-driven
business. Individual preference rules, though there's nothing new about
promoting the advantages of choice. Bethany College's archives contain
early view books expounding the virtues of our academic program and
scenic destination. "There is not a more delightful location of a
college, east, west, north or south than that of Bethany College,"
founder Alexander Campbell proclaimed in the mid-nineteenth century.
Illustrations of the period showed an elegant, stately campus
constructed from the surrounding wilderness, suggesting that students
could benefit immeasurably from the civilizing influence of such a
setting.
Now it's more about money than manors.
A growing
trend is trumping a student's financial-aid offer from a competitor. 38
percent of American college-admissions officers indicated in one recent
study that they continued to court prospects even after the students had
committed to another institution. In some cases, not only are
financial-aid packages matched or exceeded but the student's original
deposit to the other college is covered, as well.
Photographing
beautiful campus buildings for printed publications has given way to
launching precision strikes via social media. It's faster and cheaper to
reach students where they dwell rather than to print a fancy brochure
that increasingly they don't read.
"Postcards, viewbooks and
mailings in general are going the way of the print newspaper. Marketers
have to plan their communications to play nicely with mobile devices,"
writes Craig Maslowsky, vice president of enrollment management and
marketing at Excelsior College, in The evolllution.
Also effective is tailoring communications to students' special
interests. Comments Excelsior's Maslowsky, "We must anticipate our
relevant audiences and align communication with their behavior before
they even reach our website. Once they reach the website, that
experience needs to be customized to the extent that it adjusts to their
needs."
All of this makes perfect sense. What is less clear is how to keep
students once they enroll. As with any business, it takes twice the
effort to lure a new customer than to retain an existing one. Most
competitive colleges do an admirable job of employing analysis on the
front end, the recruitment and matriculation stages, but less so on the
vitally important area of the actual collegiate experience. Anecdotal
evidence, social media communications, exit surveys and the like offer
some clues. But where much of higher education fails today is useful
assessment of living and learning on campus.
A notable exception
is the National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE) which measures "the
amount of time and effort students put into their studies and other
educationally purposeful activities" and "how the institution deploys
its resources and organizes the curriculum and other learning
opportunities to get students to participate in activities that decades
of research
studies show are linked to student learning." Comparative data reveal
how happy -- or dissatisfied -- your students may be with those of peer
institutions.
Colleges also do well to encourage employees to
keep their ears to the ground, listening for what works and what doesn't
among today's student consumers. This is especially important for
front-line staff in the offices of enrollment and financial aid,
housing/student affairs, the finance department and the registrar.
Although some institutions have aggressively pursued customer-service
training and quality-control measurement, such exercises often go the
way of campus strategic plans -- directly to a shelf in the library.
As
with other wars, the admissions version is increasingly high-tech, and
the stakes sometimes seem just as high. I devote many hours to
individual recruitment of students, spending time with prospects in my
office, reaching out to parents and siblings and making the process as
personal as possible. Scholarships remain the cornerstone of our
fundraising. And we keep our gorgeous campus photo-ready for visitation
days.
Still, I know that competition for students will occupy
more of our time and resources. If current trends are any indication, we
will be fighting over fewer prospects, and offering more incentives to
enroll and stay. Bethany has joined some other institutions in
announcing a tuition freeze for the forthcoming academic year. This will
give families added flexibility in financing their students' education.
But
we and our peer institutions will need to stay at the top of our game
in every respect to win our individual admissions wars. Not only is
failing not an option, but judging from the intensity of competition in
higher education now, I would say that even success is a relative term.
These days, you're only as good as your next freshman class.
