ASR Director Authors Featured Article in Campus Technology Magazine
March 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The March issue of Campus Technology magazine features a cover story written by ASR Analytics’ Director of Higher Education Services, Graham Tracey. The article, titled “Stir up Your BI Initiative,” details the ingredients needed to implement business intelligence successfully in higher education. His next article in the magazine is about data visualization and will be published in the May issue.
Population Trends Causing Universities to Scramble?
March 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
In a recent article featured on the front page of the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss looks at how major demographic trends are impacting the higher education landscape. These demographic trends include a drop in the number of high school graduates (starting with next year’s graduating class) and significant changes in the racial and ethnic characteristics of the high school graduates. It is projected that over the next decade the number of white graduates will decline by more than 10%, while the number of minority graduates will experience significant double-digit growth. Minority student enrollment at colleges and universities is expected to grow during the next several years, with some analysts projecting that it will be as high as 37% by 2015 (it was 30% in 2004).
So what do all of these demographic trends mean for colleges and universities around the country? First, the student population at most schools is probably going to look quite different in a decade. Just ask Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus and professor, from George Washington University who is quoted in the article as saying:
“The majority will become the minority, there will be more Hispanics, more African Americans, more Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Koreans. I anticipate that the most common last name in the freshman class will be Kim.”
These trends will also significantly impact the way colleges and universities recruit students, deliver financial aid, and market themselves to prospective students. A significant trend discussed in the article is for colleges and universities to focus recruiting efforts out of state, in areas where the pool of high school graduates is not shrinking like it is most areas of the country. For example, George Washington University has set up recruiting offices in cities around the country (e.g., Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, and northern New Jersey) to expand domestic recruiting and at the same time is devoting more time and resources to overseas recruiting. American University is pursuing a strategy of increasing recruiting in population growth areas such as Arizona and other western states.
At the same time, institutions are thinking about ways to reduce the financial burden of pursuing higher education. Actions highlighted in the article include increasing financial aid budgets and expanding scholarships for students that remain in-state to attend their public, state university.
It would be a very interesting study to expand on the findings in this article by talking to more institutions and finding out how they plan to deal with these challenges. Specifically, I’d like to know the following:
- Are all schools feeling the effects of these trends?
- To what extent are schools with different characteristics feeling the effects (e.g., geographical location, size, public vs. private, etc)?
- What are some innovative ways schools are dealing with these recruiting challenges? What about financial aid?
If you know the answers to any of these questions, or know of any additional studies please let me know.
Measuring the ROI of Social Networking as a Recruitment Tool
March 7, 2008 | 2 Comments
In a recent interview appearing in Campus Techology magazine, we hear from Brad Ward, electronic communcation coordinator for Butler University. Mr. Ward is employing some innovative techniques to reach out to potential students, all based on the power of social networking. One of the sites used extensively at Butler is Zinch.
Zinch is a social networking site that is currently used by more than 300,000 students and 475 colleges and universities. The site allows students to create detailed profiles that go beyond the standard test scores and GPA that seem to dominate the college admissions process. By buidling a profile that contains information about their extracurricular activities, passions, talents, and skills, students can show themselves as a unique applicant and not just a set of standardized numbers. Zinch even has a feature called Z-Folio which allows students to upload their artwork, videos, writing, and athletic highlights.
Admissions officers at colleges use Zinch’s Advanced Zeeker search tool to filter and query all of the student profiles stored on the site. They can use this functionality to locate and target students with specific characteristics and interests. Student data can be downloaded and loaded into the college’s communications management system.
All of this allows students and colleges to better target each other and connect in the recruitment process. This is evident from the message displayed on Zinch’s homepage:
Dear student, showcase yourself to your dream college.
Dear admissions officer, showcase your college to your dream student.
At Butler, Mr. Ward is seeing intial success with Zinch and some other innovative social networking techniques (e.g., YouTube video blogs, Facebook fan pages). For example, the “open rate” (percentage of mail messages that are opened by a recipient) seems to be about 3 times higher (i.e., 33% vs. 11%) for messages sent to students on Zinch, than they are for typical e-mail blasts.
While these intial figures are encouraging, Mr. Ward speaks to the real challenge in these efforts in his response to the last interview question:
[Another problem is], in terms of YouTube and sites [like it], there’s not yet a defined metric of what is successful. If we put these videos up on YouTube, was that worth it? There’s nothing to measure this stuff with yet.
That makes it a little tougher when we try and pitch these new sites and new ways to recruit. Hopefully, in the near future, we’ll all start to be able to define what success is and whether it’s worth it to be on Facebook and those kinds of sites.
Mr. Ward has hit the bullseye with this comment. The key to this recruiting effort is figuring out how to define success, measure results, and acheive some measure of ROI. Admissions officers need to get creative. For example, by creating something like a “Student Engagement” metric, colleges could measure and track the responsiveness of students to different types of communication. For example, higher scores could be assigned to students who join social networking groups, post or respond on a blog, or participate in an admissions online chat. When combined with the data from your student information system a full engagement picture emerges. This data can then be used to help forecast and predict enrollment more accurately and helps you target the most engaged students to help ‘evangelize’ on your behalf.
Given the increasing use of social networking tools by high school and college students this is going to become an important part of the recruiting efforts of colleges. While building this strategy, admissions professionals should also think about measuring outcomes.