PS&L Blog

I like LinkedIn. I belong to several groups related to higher education marketing and admissions. In addition to the networking benefits, the discussions within the Groups are a good way to keep up with hot topics. Case in point – a recent discussion string from a member of the College Admissions Experts group raised this question:

“Is it frowned upon to try and get an admissions job in a non-profit college/university coming from a for-profit college/university?”

Perhaps this resonates with me because I experienced quite a bit of frowning as a job applicant when I made the move from for-profit enrollment management to the other side almost 15 years ago. Today with the front page issues related to gainful employment, title IV funds and unethical sales tactics, job applicants from the for-profit sector face more stigma (or “frowning”) than ever before.

The point I care to raise has to do with perspective and experience. Since making the transition, I’ve been involved with helping not-for-profit institutions generate the revenue they need to exist. During that time there has been a notable shift. Concepts that used to be just for the for-profits, such as enrollment planning, competitive marketing strategies and placing focus on ROI are now common and essential in the not-for-profit higher education marketplace. Traditional higher education, even community colleges are marketing, counting, analyzing and planning more than they did 15 years ago. Some institutions (not all) can tell you their yield statistics and enrollment goals, but yet there are still some who do not know their benchmarks. There is plenty to learn and room for improvement.

I will not open the debate of whether for-profit or not-for-profit is better for the student – or whether one business model is better than another. But I do want to say that if you are a not-for-profit and hiring do not disregard a candidate because he/she has for-profit experience. Someone from the for-profit world may give your admissions and marketing team a refreshed sales perspective. Furthermore, since not-for-profits do compete against for-profits, you might also gain some valuable insight into why so many for-profits succeed and what they do to challenge your enrollment.

If anyone reading this has experience working with people with for-profit experience in your not-for-profit institution, I’d love to hear how it worked out.

If you saw our cartoon you know it is laughable that any organization is still getting around to electricity. Even 60 years ago that premise would have been implausible. Here are some more laughable ideas and quotes from the past. Enjoy!

What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?

• The Quarterly Review, March, 1825.

Where a calculator like the ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1½ tons

•  Popular Mechanics, 1949

Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.

• Dr Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy,

This “telephone” has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.

• A memo at Western Union 1878

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?

• H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Bros., 1927.

We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.

• Decca Records, when they rejected The Beatles, 1962.

My point: Mobile web sites are a fait accompli, they are as inevitable as death and taxes but certainly a bit more fun. We can do all kinds of things with a well built mobile site. We can use a QR code to drive a smart phone user to a recruiting video. We can use a campus map to help a person find their appointment on campus. We can connect with our many audiences, all of whom will have a smart phone in way less than 10 years.

If you want to see More incorrect predictions click here.

Enrollment Research Survey: Results

We kept hearing that the downturn in the economy and escalation of the unemployment rate has had a dramatic effect on the applications and enrollments at many colleges.  Dramatic can be a good or a bad thing, so to find out what’s really happening out there in enrollment we did what we do well – conducted an online survey of admissions and enrollment professionals from across the nation.  We asked them a number of questions regarding application and yield for 2010 and what is currently happening for the 2011 class to get a sense of differences in the data.

We also wanted to find out if early action/ early decision applications were up, and whether that indicated overall interest and level of interest.  What we had been hearing through our clients and others is that an increase in early action/ early decision applications might be providing a false hope.

The survey and a summary of its findings are available on our website

http://www.psandl.com/survey.php .  The following are some of the highlights and commentary on the results of the survey.

Some of what we learned echoed what we had been hearing and reading in publications and the news, and some of the data is very different from what we have heard previously.

What we learned:

• For 2010, many colleges received more applications
• Of those colleges with an increase in applications, not a great deal of those schools saw an increase in yield in 2010, and that increase in yield was modest

This is interesting.  In many parts of the country, there are less students graduating from high schools, meaning potentially less people to apply to college. We also know that community colleges have had record enrollments in both traditional age students in the last couple of years. The increase in applications is likely from:

• Traditional age students applying to more colleges
• Applications from adult learners who are career changers and looking for career advancement
• Colleges developing new markets

The increase in yield is expectedly modest for the four-year college and university.

New markets, with proper marketing, will realize a good number of applications, but the yield conversions will be low for the first couple of years. Similarly, while four-year colleges will attract applications, the uncertainty of the economy will likely push those who are hesitant to enroll at the very affordable community colleges, if it is a viable academic option.

A glance at 2011:

• For 2011, applications are slightly higher for more than 1/3 of the colleges, and much higher for about another 2/3 of the colleges
• Yield for 2011 is expected the same or slightly better than last year

With the realization that more applications does not equate to more enrollments, it is important that changes be made in the recruiting process to yield more students.  The majority of the individuals who responded said they had made strategic changes to realize a better yield for 2011, and 22% said this was focused on an increase in communications and contacts.

We know from our consulting and marketing work at Paskill Stapleton & Lord that while more contact is good, what really makes a significant difference is the quality of those contacts. Targeted communications, combined with timely, real and meaningful interactions between the recruit and college personnel, will yield more students.

Early action/early decision is not a factor for the majority of colleges completing the survey; for those where it is a factor, small to no increases were realized this year.  This response was not what we were expecting as we had heard early in the cycle that colleges were reporting increases in applications in this area. Although 86% of the individuals who responded represent bachelor degree granting colleges or universities, 73% of the institutions responding do not have an early action/ early decision program.

We have data, including more on how colleges are addressing the issues, and the details of this survey available on our website http://www.psandl.com/survey.php.  We hope you find this useful in making decisions for 2011 and beyond.