Changing environment creates recruitment challenges

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Madison, Wis.—June 21, 2010—Admissions recruitment is a difficult job, and it is one that has been made that much more difficult by the current economic climate. Rather than continuing to do what has always been done, the college admissions office will be better prepared to handle challenges when armed with data. In a 75-minute June 21 online seminar, Kevin Crockett, president/CEO and principal of

Noel-Levitz

, shared findings from his company's research in four key areas:

College Choice, Communication Preferences, Social Media, and the Institutional Response

Recent data shows the following about student behavior when choosing a college, and what they think about online communication:
• The majority of students (53%) attend college within 100 miles of their home, making college a relatively local enterprise.
• The vast majority of students surveyed plan to earn a master’s degree or higher, meaning that colleges need to aggressively market their graduate school outcomes and any accelerated graduate degrees they have available.
• A majority of students (56%) visit the website of their college or university of choice a few times a week or every day.
• Nearly one quarter visit the web site on a smart phone, but most colleges and universities are not well-equipped to put their best foot forward when their website is viewed in this way.
• Nearly a quarter of students surveyed say they have taken a college off their consideration list because of an experience they had on the web, with this being even more prevalent among minority students.
• However, nearly two-thirds of students say they became interested in a given school because of a web experience.
• The most important online content for students is information on academics, costs, and admissions requirements.
• Over three-quarters of students surveyed expect colleges and universities to have a presence on Facebook, and two-thirds think it is OK for admissions counselors they have been working with to contact them through social media.
• However, it is important that admissions counselors ask before texting; some two-thirds of students say they did not want college reps texting them.

The Economy, College Choice, Persistence, and Financial Aid

• Although the rise in college cost is slowing, colleges are facing a dramatically different marketplace.
• The bottom two quintiles of family income have actually declined between 1998 and 2008 when adjusted for constant dollars.
• Colleges need to explore creative financing solutions for their students, like level tuition programs and three-year degrees.
• Dealing with financial concerns like this requires colleges and universities to stay on top of the data and use it to recapture the “average” student if the university has lost this student.

Enrollment Funnel Benchmarks and the Cost of Recruiting

• While the majority of institutions report gains in deposits/ confirmations, a third report declines, particularly small public institutions and Midwest institutions. Many institutions report deposits coming in slower than usual.
• Two-thirds of institutions anticipate a higher than usual “summer melt” rate, which institutions should be poised to combat.
• Increasingly, students’ first point of contact with an institution is submitting an application.
• Smaller schools spend more to recruit each applicant than do larger schools.
• Private schools use more staff in relation to the number of new students enrolled.

Retention/Completion Trends and Student Satisfaction

• It is important for schools to look not just at traditional measures of retention but at less-considered measures. For example, look not only at year-one to year-two persistence, but look at persistence from term to term or from year one to year three, for example.
• Look at challenges, which are defined as items that are above the midpoint in importance to students but which rank in the bottom quarter of student satisfaction. For example, students at many institution types rank scheduling of classes and ability to register without conflicts as a concern.

If you missed the seminar and would like to purchase it for your institution, you can

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Magna Publications

is a leading publisher of newsletters and other information products in the higher education segment. Magna also manages onsite and online conferences on topics of interest to higher education.

For more information please contact David Burns, Publisher, Magna Publications, Inc., at 608-227-8109, or

dburns@magnapubs.com

.

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