Recruiting Intelligence

Online learning is becoming integral part of teaching and education. We recently covered the impact of Khan Academy (Insight: Recruiting Students with Video: Lessons from Khan Academy), today we are looking at how public universities cope with that challenge and opportunity. We selected a report from American Association of State Colleges (AASCU) and Learninghouse, called Online Learning at Public Universities a new path to a degree, addressing the implementation of online teaching at universities. 

We have entered the season in which we become fully entrenched in deep thoughts on learning and growing, living and celebrating. There will be memorable moments shared by families throughout the world. It is graduation season, a time when we review accomplishments of the past and look towards future achievements. Celebrated college graduation speakers often draw upon quotes of earlier orators and authors. Those very best life lessons are distilled into brilliant quotes for future generations to share and appreciate. We at Intead would like to commend all recent graduates, as well as the individuals who are called upon to give the commencement addresses. Our passion for education runs deep; we celebrate and promote education everyday on our site Why Education Matters. 

By 2025, the Lumina Foundation wants to announce: Mission Accomplished!

They want to announce that 60% of Americans are obtaining a college degree, certificate or other high quality post-secondary credential. Hey, MOOCS, do you think that you will count?   

We have admired for many years the single, focused mission of this foundation. This month, Lumina published its report "a stronger nation through higher education." It's not only a beautifully prepared report and website, but we love the message and data provided to all of us.  

Lumina Foundation CEO Jamie Merisotis, a relentless advocate for education, says, "we see even more encouraging signs - unmistakable signals that the need, the hunger for education is stronger than ever." He quotes that three of four Americans believe that a postsecondary degree or credential is important to attaining a better quality of life, while fully 90% believe it's important for the nation to increase college attainment rates. We second that. 

Demographics are destiny. And educational institutionals rely on demographic trends to chart their futures. In most cases, the demographic trends that are most important to any particular institution are fairly narrowly defined by geography. A relatively small percentage of US institutions can effectively draw students from across the country and around the world. 

To give us insight into the demographic trends that will define our future, the U.S. government's National Center for Education Statistic's published it's very comprehensive updated Education Statistics to 2022 . Do the math -- you are only 8 years from this recruiting environment. 

Here it is. Delivered fresh to your mailbox. Another exciting edition of the Intead Index, one in a series of indices that provides you with all of the information you need to make informed decisions.

We will cover a variety of information sources, marketing and technology services international university admissions and marketing departments purchase or use regularly. We will publish the lists regularly on the blog over the next few months. We will be publishing a compilation of these lists on a yearly basis. While we'd like to think that our research is comprehensive, we know that there might be service providers we inadvertently overlooked. That's where you, our loyal readers, come into the picture.  We welcome your comments and additions to the lists. Feel free to use the provided link to share your feedback. 

If you are a regular reader of this blog you might have noticed how I fondly reminisce about my experience as an admission counselor. I spent three years working at my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. This was my first real job so the experience was pivotal in shaping me as a budding professional. I can appreciate firsthand how the last few months have been an utter whirlwind for admission counselors. From a winter spent in the depths of file reading to a spring spent trying to enroll all of the admitted students, there has been little time to breathe, let alone spend time reading this blog. So today I want to point out some blog posts you might have missed over the last few months.

Five Trends to Watch in Higher Education, published this month by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a management consulting group, has some dramatic and valuable things to say. You may recall that last week, we presented our thoughts on another BCG report in our Intead Insight: Can Millennials Change Marketing Forever? Uh, yes (eyeroll). We certainly consider both of these BCG reports worthy your attention. 

In this latest BCG report, the authors talk about influential forces rather than trends, saying that "five forces are reshaping Higher Education." Today, we'll review these forces and offer up a few of the report's charts that we find the most informative and intriguing.

Would you like to increase your accessibility to prospective international students?  Would you like to increase your own productivity? We will show you two ways to be more accessible to students in a controlled and organized way.  

"How Millennials Are Changing the Face of Marketing Forever -- The Reciprocity Principle" is a research piece published by BCG (Boston Consulting Group), a management consulting firm. While the report reviews how millennials interact with a range of consumer brands and products, there are valuable lessons for those of us in academia. After all, this age group is pretty heavily represented in our classrooms, hallways, and registrars. Let's see what we can learn from BCG.