Recruiting Intelligence

For a while, there were fairly common rules. First you graduate high school around age 18. Then go to university. Four years later you graduate with a degree and an employable set of skills. Got it. 

But times have changed. And university tuitions don’t stop rising. And that’s exactly what’s happening right now. Traditional students are heading for the enrollment cliff making way for a more non-traditional set of students. And that means new rules.

Last week we started this 5-part blog series on reaching and enrolling non-traditional students. 

Today’s students are vastly different from those of decades ago, but colleges are still structured as if 18- to 21-year-old, full-time students are in the majority. ~ The Lumina Foundation Report on Today’s Students

Let’s look at the basics. Typically, a traditional university student is:

• 18-24 years old
• Enrolled full time
• Lives on campus
• Financially dependent
  

Intead’s ebook is a timely resource appropriate for the seasoned administrator as well as educators just beginning to tackle the challenges of digital marketing today. Bringing together expert advice from experienced administrative colleagues and successful marketing strategies from work with Intead’s institutional partners, this book stimulates the reader to address the recruitment of non-traditional students from a holistic context that pays attention to student learning methods, delivery of academic content, academic success services, and other areas of student support non-traditional students need to achieve their goals. ~ Jon Stauff, Assistant Vice President for International Affairs at South Dakota State University

Per the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), of the 15+ million students enrolled at US Colleges and universities in 2021, nearly 65%  were between ages of 18 – 24. Of course, age only tells us so much. A student can be both 18 and non-traditional.

By NCES standards, a non-traditional student is someone who meets one or more of the following criteria :

• Outside the traditional 18-24 age range
• Financially independent
• Has one or more dependents
• Is a single parent or caregiver
• Does not have a high school diploma
• Delayed enrollment into postsecondary education
• Works full time
• Enrolled part-time

Other bodies of research define the term more broadly, also including students who are either married or are veterans.

And yes, we hear you. There’s more than a few of you who are bristling at our use of the term “non-traditional.” Truth is, traditionally “traditional” students are no longer the overwhelming majority. And that matters. Which is why understanding the growing and highly important non-traditional audience has become a priority for enrollment teams. In fact, it should be a priority across all of your departmental teams, from nutrition services, to housing, registrar, IT, and career services. (Please tell us that Academic Affairs, Student Services, Career Services and Development are considered a given.)

We can ditch the non-traditional label in due time.

You may see where this is going and why it is important to you as an enrollment professional. The demographic cliff has arrived and non-traditional students are one option for your institution’s continued success. Take a few minutes and we will help you clarify the path forward.

Read on to learn more about reaching specific non-traditional student market niches and the process of engaging them…

Meet Darlene. Her journey as a non-traditional student is one you need to know. Not because it’s unique. But because it no longer is.

Darlene’s dad was a full-time tractor trailer mechanic who stopped his education after high school to take over his father’s business. Her mom was a stay-at-home parent who did not pursue college. It was Darlene’s older sister who became the first in the family to obtain a postsecondary degree.

In high school Darlene was a good student. She even received a trustee scholarship to attend the same university her sister did, but she had her eye on another school. Still, mostly because her parents were footing the bill, she gave that college a try. It lasted a year. Despite her 3.5 GPA, she never did feel at home there. So, she paused her education and went to work. 

You may see where this is going and why it is important to you as an enrollment professional. The demographic cliff has arrived and non-traditional students are one option for your institution’s continued success. Take a few minutes and we will help you clarify the path forward.

Darlene started as a part-time teaching assistant before spending three years working at Walmart. Then Darlene found her way to an office associate position at Columbus State Community College where she thrived. It was there, while successfully holding down a full-time job, she finally returned to her academic pursuits and enrolled in a digital design and graphics program.

She worked full-time while fitting in courses at night, on weekends, and online. When she needed to take classes during weekdays, her department chair was willing to adjust her schedule. And it worked. She earned her associate degree and even got her tuition covered thanks to her school’s tuition reimbursement program.

But that’s not the end of Darlene’s student journey. In fact, a few years and one state later, a friend encouraged her to return to school, but Darlene wasn’t sure if it was the right time. After all, along with her associate degree, she now had a husband, a child, and a full-time job.

This must-read primer will help anyone looking to better position their institution within today’s complex and competitive recruitment landscape. Read this publication, share it with your colleagues and then apply its insights to your marketing strategy. Non-traditional is quickly becoming the new traditional. This is your guide to adapting to the new competitive environment. ~ David Di Maria, Associate Vice Provost for International Education at University of Maryland, Baltimore County

It took her all of one week to decide. She had heard from a friend who had heard from a friend that Western Governors University was a good program. So, she applied.

 “I was surprised more people haven’t heard of the university. It’s fully accredited and has a really good success rate as far as graduation and employment rates,” she said.

Beyond the word-of-mouth approval, Darlene chose WGU because the price was right and the program was highly flexible. It was online and offered a “competency unit” curriculum that allowed her to go at her own pace and take as many classes as she wanted for a flat rate. WGU also provided her with a supportive student mentor who connected with her weekly and served as an involved mentor. In a few years’ time, she earned her B.S. in Business—Human Resources Management.

It's a success story for sure, but is Darlene’s degree the end of her student journey? Time will tell, though she does offer a hint at her mindset: “I want to make sure that I can continue to grow professionally, both in terms of responsibility and salary.”

Are you taking notes?

Darlene’s story is one of perseverance and it’s one of practicality. It takes a whole lot of both to make postsecondary education a possibility for non-traditional students.

Understanding that matters a lot, especially as you seek to fill the void being left in your enrollment from the decline in traditional students. Read on for our take on what you should be doing now to engage with this key audience now…

Consider the fact that postsecondary institutions have lost nearly 1.3 million students over the course of the past two years. And last year over 940,000 “Some College, No Credential” students re-enrolled. Do the math.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center issued its latest “Some College, No Credential Student Outcomes” report, and the numbers are as you may expect. Large.

Based on July 2020 headcount, the NSC shows there are now 39 million people who can claim some-college, no-credential (SCNC) status—up 8.6% from 2019. In real-time, though, we are confident those numbers are even higher.

Look, we don’t need to tell you that we just wrapped up the fifth consecutive semester of declining student yield. After all, you’re knee-deep in recruitment expectations right now. And those of us working with the undergrad population, well, we’re down about 1.4 million students since 2020.

We are all feeling that and struggling with how all those predictive models seem to be anything but predictive right now. Weren’t they supposed to help us all hone in on growth? A few assumptions there need to be recalibrated.

But, there’s a story in this latest data that may be more optimistic than the doomsday headlines would suggest. Per various pundits’ predictions, a recovery rise in enrollment is on the horizon along with the demographic shift that points to an overall decline in the number of high school graduates. The SCNC crowd represents a significant opportunity that is so often overlooked as traditional recruitment efforts focus on the fresh out of high school crowd.

For the SCNC segment (a rather large segment that requires further segmentation -- they are not one block with common traits), it’s a matter of finding them and presenting your institution’s distinct opportunities to them. They clearly have different motivators and a different decision-making timelines than high school graduates.

Taking a closer look at the National Student Clearinghouse SCNC report – the third in a series – you’ll find that it quantifies the population growth of this large student subset and identifies levels of opportunity for re-engaging these one-time students. Sound interesting? It should if you’re looking to boost enrollment.

Unlike previous reports, this one tracks:

• Re-enrollment (students who hold a valid enrollment record)
• First credential (those earning their first-ever credential during the first academic year of stopping out)
• Perseverance (indicated by continuous enrollment after re-enrolling in 2019/20).

So, lots of good stuff.

For our key takeaways on SCNC prospects including best-bet recruitment opportunities, read on. And for actionable inspiration on how to woo this important crowd, check out our ebook: “Quality. Cost. Convenience.”

What others are saying: This must-read primer will help anyone looking to better position their institution within today’s complex and competitive recruitment landscape. This is your guide to adapting to the new competitive environment.

~ Dr. David DiMaria, Senior International Officer & Associate Vice Provost, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

It is wonderful to see a number of institutions touting strong, even incredible, increases in applications for their fall 2021 enrollment. And then the crowing over the record number of students actually enrolling. These successes are fabulous, for sure.

Yet, NCES data just released, with about 50% of all institutions reporting, shows the broader, less rosy picture. Most institutions saw average enrollment declines of around 3% (or worse) in various student segments.

Those few who are cheering, and the larger number of enrollment managers furrowing their brows, are evaluating all of this in the context of what happened in fall 2020 when so many institutions saw frightening and dramatic declines. Bigger than the enrollment blips that 2020 and 2021 represent is, of course, the enrollment cliff predicted for 2025/2026. How are institutions preparing for the challenges ahead?

We’ve seen an increasing number of institutions re-evaluating the game plan and getting very concerned about whether or not they appeal to Gen Z. It is a valid question. An important question. And here’s the thing: marketing agencies everywhere are making the most of that question in ways that can be highly misleading – the level of exaggeration coming from the marketing world prompts a bit of an eyeroll.

Sure, the decision-making process has differences today, but honestly, it is more the same than it is different. Not saying institutions seeking to attract and enroll students don’t need to adjust. They do.

Note: We recently presented an AIRC-hosted webinar alongside Technion Israel Institute of Technology talking about digital marketing and Gen Z that is now available to subscribers to our Intead Plus library.

Read on for insights on two important avenues for getting Gen Z to think more seriously about your institution. And join us at the AIRC conference in Miami in December 2021, where there will be plenty of talk on this topic.

A key idea: re-evaluate the hoops you make applicants jump through.

Lead generation is more critical, and more complex, than ever. If you don’t get the top of the funnel right, it’s difficult to fix it further down the enrollment stream.

Likely your institution is already licensing significant numbers of student names through lists from vendors like College Board, ACT, Education Testing Service (ETS), Hobsons, Niche, EduCo, among others. These lists have value. However, your institution may not be leveraging the full benefit. 

There is tremendous upheaval impacting the lists: dramatically shifting demographics, changing patterns of student behavior, severely reduced participation in testing programs, and changing policies related to student privacy.

Accumulating the names is the easy part. But with a bewildering array of names and filters available for searching, the challenge is to identify, target, and – ultimately – convert prospective students that are the right match for your institution.

How can you best navigate these platforms to license and leverage the leads for right-match prospective students?  

Intead can help: 

We’re talking a fresh, more focused strategy to your list approach, both internationally and domestically, that can transform your lead generation process for the next recruiting cycle.

Tailoring and refining your outreach is as important as acquiring the lists. And, in this particularly challenging and dynamic year for student decision-making, the need for an innovative approach is even more urgent.

What you can achieve:

• Increased conversions
• Lower CPAs
• Greater diversity in your application pool

We spoke with someone who knows these platforms inside and out: Clay Hensley, former Senior Director of International Strategy & Outreach at the College Board (and Intead Research Advisory Board member). Having represented the College Board and its programs to international constituents for more than 20 years, Clay’s deep product and market knowledge is an invaluable resource for your institution as you take a fresh look at how you acquire and nurture leads.

Pair that expertise with Intead’s capacity to analyze your institution’s enrollment and paid social media data, website traffic, and census and other demographic data – and the results you can achieve will raise eyebrows and produce smiles.

Read on to learn how your institution can avoid common pitfalls, boost the utility of those licensed names, and make the data work for you. Spoiler: The expertise you need is just an email away.

You don’t need to be a CMO to know that there’s more to attracting students than coming up with a pithy headline for your Instagram ads and postcard mailers.

And yet, what we often see are institutions full of creative minds doing the same marketing initiatives year after year, not really realizing how they appear to their target audiences.

At the end of the day you want your institution to stand out in a field of sameness, ubiquitous blather, and endless repeats of campus images and smiling students with backpacks and laptops. You want to highlight your institution’s differentiators and deliver the right message to a targeted audience at the right time.

But we get it — whether it’s lack of budget, time, or most likely, both, swapping out last year’s campaign photos, shuffling around your headlines, and hitting a few buttons in Facebook Ads Manager are sometimes the only levers that are in scope. And establishing a feedback loop of performance analysis for continuous campaign iteration and optimization? An even more distant goal state.

So, before you reach for that updated “smiling student with backpack” image to juice your Fall 2021 recruitment campaigns, turn your attention to today’s post: 3 recruitment marketing ideas to help you reach students where they are right now.

We’re talking specifics on topics, audience, tone, and dissemination channels for campaigns that can set your institution apart and attract and nurture those high-quality leads you’re looking for. And what would an Intead blog post be without an insight on  how to use your data better?

Throw these ideas to your creative team and see if something valuable emerges from the brainstorm session. Something that truly fits your institution. 

Read on.

As an education professional, you know deeply the power of a knowledgeable guide to expand your mind, challenge your beliefs, and push you to new heights.

Whether this guide takes the form of a favorite professor, dean, mentor, colleague (or a favorite blog), even the most experienced leaders among us can benefit from a little outside perspective and wisdom from time to time (read: always).

For Intead, that source of wisdom is our recently expanded Intead Research Advisory Board, a veritable who’s who of education industry leaders who guide our student recruitment and enrollment research on both domestic and international approaches.  

Don’t worry, we’re not just here today to sing their praises (although we could do that all day) or talk about how they help us look smart (although they do). ;)

The truth is, the Intead Research Advisory Board isn’t really for Intead. They’re here to serve you. With their expertise, we are able to provide you with fresh and deeply knowledgeable perspectives and new research and insights on topics that drive our industry and your institution forward. We’re ever grateful for their valuable work.

Read on to learn more about this powerful line-up, how their wealth of experience can help to power your institution, and the market intelligence we are working on and presenting soon.

Your budget is the tactical expression of your strategy. What you value most is where you put your funds. Or at least, that’s how it should be.

Whether you are submitting your budget for approval or evaluating the budget requests others submit to you, this year’s budget season is looking a little different. International recruitment travel? Still off the table. Student recruitment dollars? Still in need of allocation.

With your standard recruitment playbook out the window, a comprehensive budgetary framework  to evaluate all the different strategic initiatives on the horizon becomes more important than ever.

Are you devoting enough to the digital channels available? Are you selecting the right channels for your institution? The virtual fair folks are telling you they are really the way to go. Of course they are. Have they shared hard attendance, engagement, and results numbers to prove it?

To help you and your team identify, assess, and evaluate your recruitment initiatives this year, the Intead team took our collective experience with so many different institutional assessments and strategic planning sessions and simplified the process of budget evaluation into 3 Essential Budget Questions — a 1-pager that offers a simplified, high-level approach to considering any budget request.

With this framework for evaluating your plans and whether they merit investment, you’ll take those complex quandaries down to a basic starting point and identify where the opportunities for growth really are.

We think you’ll want to share this one widely. This and a quick review of our recent, highly popular post about how to say no to ideas that are not good enough.

Read on to access the downloadable budget consideration flowchart.

The roadmap for EdTech implementations a decade ago had a linear feel. There was an expectation of securing a significant tech budget and allocating that to a carefully selected vendor with a 3-5 year plan. There was talk of “flexibility” and integrations. APIs would be built to tie different parts of the legacy systems together or the legacy piece would be replaced outright. The future system was going to be a real game changer.

It rarely worked out as planned…ever. Been there?

Today, replacing aging technology is an entirely different process. We’re eager to share insights into how campuses develop truly flexible systems and integrations with technology that is evolving every 6-12 months.

The technology process today has a heck of a lot more to do with justifying ROI than choosing technology.

Confused? Register for our webinar, "EdTech: The Road Map Has Changed. Successful Implementation Processes Look Like This" tomorrow, February 18th at 2pm Eastern. 

Join Intead as we talk about pushing decisive, cross-departmental collaboration at speed and scale like never before. We're talking agility in planning and innovation in technology and digital tools far beyond the usual benchmarks of annual progress in our notoriously slow-moving industry.

There’s a lot of work to do to pull complex technology and analytics projects all together. Best to have some really strong partners.

In the webinar, we’ll be sharing practical advice for successful, cost-effective technology implementations. Implementations that, long-term, produce stabilized and predictable revenue streams for your institution, even in unpredictable times.

You won’t want to miss this

Adding valuable perspective to this Ask Us Anything conversation will be:

• Seamus Harreys, Vice President, Global Enrollment, CIEE
• Kerry Salerno, CMO, Babson College

We’ll have plenty of real-world stories and insights to share. Stories about Northeastern University’s amazing growth from 2009 and onward. We’ll talk about technology investment approaches at different size institutions. Stories about vendor selection, technology features, and most importantly, the challenge of getting all of the internal stakeholders aligned. 

Throughout, we will welcome your questions.

Important note: if you can’t attend the event live, your registration will ensure you’re first to receive access to the recorded conversation.

And as a primer for tomorrow’s implementation-focused conversation, how about a free PDF download: “Using Tech to Thrive in a Volatile Time” sharing our 5 key takeaways from our February 4th panel event with The Chronicle of Higher Education and your colleagues from five different institutions.

Read on to access your copy of the 5 key takeaways and to learn how your peer institutions across the country are getting their technology investments right. A quick and helpful read before we dive deeper tomorrow.

In last week’s virtual event, “Using Tech to Thrive in a Volatile Time”, Chronicle of Higher Education host Ian Wilhelm surveyed attendees with one key question — 

Will the pandemic experience help your institution make better decisions about using technology?

The answer from respondents? A resounding YES.

But what exactly are those decisions? Who’s making them? And most importantly, how will these decisions about technology made now lead to successful implementation and transformational change for your institution down the road?

On Thursday, February 18th at 2pm Eastern, Ben Waxman, CEO of Intead will be leading a follow-up webinar, "EdTech: The Road Map Has Changed. Successful Implementation Processes Look Like This" to further the valuable Chronicle discussion of last week.

In this “Ask Us Anything” conversation, we’ll be getting practical, covering all things tactical implementation when it comes to technology on your campus. The key objective? Identifying how successful tech implementation really happens (despite the obstacles) and how you can create that new reality for your students, faculty, and staff. We want to discuss your specific case —wins, challenges, and all.

Adding valuable perspective to the event will be Jesus Trujillo Gomez, Strategic Business Executive for Higher Ed at Google Cloud, as well as other special guests from academic institutions across the country. Get those questions ready.

Registrants will receive access to the recording of this event, so if you can’t attend live, never fear. (And if you want your questions answered but can’t attend — let’s chat.)

And if you missed last week’s “Using Tech to Thrive in a Volatile Time” event, stay tuned in the coming weeks for the Director’s Cut recording, as well as a download of the key takeaways, including our, “6 Insights in 6 Minutes.” Exciting, valuable stuff to come.

Read on for a preview of the keys to tech implementation success. Plus, one of the most common tech myths, debunked.