Recruiting Intelligence

Millennials are the core "customer group" for undergraduate and graduate programs. For university marketers understanding their target audience is absolutely crucial to reaching and attracting prospective students. Obviously the "education program" is not defined by admissions staff and university marketers, so academic staff has an equal stake in understanding the desires, priorities, likes and dislikes of this generation. Designing a compelling offering with marketing messages that attract and core academic content that delivers on the marketing promise...well, we can all dream of that perfect world. Trying to achieve it is what keeps us employed.

During the past couple of weeks we have analyzed international student data for trends showing us which universities have been successful with their international student recruitment activities. See Consider the Competition (Insight 4/10/13) and the blogs onOhio and Massachusetts. One of our readers suggested that we compare trends between universities using independent international recruiting agencies and those using only internal resources for their international enrollment efforts.

Customer demographics are important for many businesses. Education is no exception. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) publishes a must-read report for higher education executives, senior admissions officers and trustees creating mid to long-term strategies for academic institutions.

WICHE’s April policy insights “Demography as Destiny: Policy Considerations in Enrollment Management” provides highlights of the detailed report “Knocking on the College door.” The report’s ideas are not necessarily new or surprising, but they are well documented and graphically presented. Helpful state-by-state analyses are available (here is the example for Ohio).

In the business world, companies measure their influence and success in financial metrics: revenue growth and profits. Add share price and market capitalization as measures for publicly listed companies. The education world is dominated by not-for-profit and public universities as well as a large number of non-profit education-related associations. This Intead Insight looks into two, admittedly crude, measures of influence for the non-profit education world: revenue generated by leading non-profit education associations and social media presence.