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Recruiting Intelligence

New Book Review: The Real World of College

Like you, we spend a lot of time getting into the mindset of students. We need to understand their behavior, their decision making process, by region, by study interest, by age and other demographics.

So, when we read that education luminaries Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner released a book based on more than 2,000 interviews with higher ed students, alumni, faculty, administrators, parents, trustees, and more, we couldn’t help ourselves. We had to get it.

The book, The Real World of College, What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be, is an analysis of interviews conducted at ten US institutions representative of a range of schools, from the highly selective to the lesser so. For us, the results reveal new insights and confirm long-held beliefs. It’s worth the read for anyone who cares about the student experience, student outcomes, and the long-term viability of our industry.

Reading it through the lens of student recruitment, of course, we’ve gathered key takeaways that can inform the work you’re doing now (recruitment marketing) as well as the longer-term stuff (onboarding, student services, career services, and alumni relations).

Always insight and action-oriented: Below we offer our top 5 takeaways from this great read and importantly, your clear action item for each insight.

Let’s meet in person!

If you’re at NAFSA next week, be in touch. We will absolutely do our best to fit in another meeting while in Denver. You’ll see Ben, Patricia, and Iliana racing from our presentations to a bunch of IEM sessions and all those networking events.

Our 2022 can’t miss sessions:

Read on for our top 5 book review takeaways for your admissions team…

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Transformation of Higher Education - New Books in 2015

The transformation of higher education is a hot topic for authors.  Two new books will be released this spring by Kevin Carey from the New America Institute and Ryan Craig from University Ventures. While the authors have very different professional backgrounds - a policy analyst versus a professional venture capital manager -- they derive at similar conclusions and insights about the future of higher education.  Higher education as we know it will not be sustainable according to the authors and a great deal of disruption and change will be upon future student generations.  

Both books have a remarkable optimism that sees the future of education with greater access, more innovation, better outcomes and lower costs.   Yet change will not happen without pain for many existing institutions. 

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