TLG was extremely responsive to our goals, limited resources and aggressive timeline, and their flexibility and understanding of all of our needs proved invaluable. I often had the feeling CTCL was their only client!

—Virginia Buege
Project Director
Colleges That Change Lives
www.ctcl.com

April 2007 Lawlor Focus

Tracking Trends to Better Understand Today's Students

UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute has released an overview of trends identified during its 40 years of administering the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey, which allows entering college students to self-report their values, attitudes and backgrounds. The finding that was most prominently highlighted by the mainstream media cited evidence that today's first-year students are financially better off than ever before—their families' median income is 60 percent above the national average, and that gap is growing. The study also found the incomes of families sending students to public institutions are rising faster than those of families with students attending private colleges.

The most recent CIRP data also confirm the findings of a survey from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press that charted the views of "Generation Next," those currently in the 18- to 25-year-old range. The majority of respondents in both studies selected "getting rich" or "being very well off financially" as among their top life goals (81 percent in the Pew study, and 73 percent in the CIRP study). The Pew study further finds that respondents most frequently cited "money/finances/debt" (at 30 percent) as their most important problem.

Trends emerged in other areas, as well:

  • Spiritual life—The findings of the two surveys correlate on the question of religious affiliation, with approximately 20 percent claiming none at all. Pew reports this is double the proportion of young adults who claimed no religious affiliation during the late 1980s.
  • Relationship with parents—The Pew data show that roughly 80 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds have communicated with their parents in the past day, which tops the results of a recent survey of College Parents of America (.pdf) members. Of those respondents, 73 percent reported communicating with their college children at least two or three times per week.
  • Use of technology—Just over half of the Pew survey respondents reported sending or receiving a phone text message in the past day, and a majority have used social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Lawlor Recommends

The mainstream media's tendency to seize mostly on the financial trends coming out of the CIRP data is significant at a time when national attention is being focused on the extent to which colleges and universities (and the government) are making higher education accessible and affordable for all Americans. Just last week, Columbia University (New York, New York) hosted a gathering of college presidents, professors, foundation officials and others, where the discussion included whether top colleges are sufficiently open to low-income students: Are colleges a vehicle toward upward social mobility, or are they only enlarging the gap between societal haves and have-nots? In light of this national debate, it is important for college administrators to track not only the wider trends, but also the composite characteristics among their own student bodies that reflect issues of access and may impact public perceptions.

The survey results are also valuable to college administrators as snapshots of the marketplace. With more and more students bypassing the traditional inquiry process and investigating colleges via the web as "stealth" consumers, insights about their lives become especially valuable in targeting messages, in terms of both the content and the delivery mechanism. The sources of demographic and psychographic data are abundant, so the key is locating them efficiently. The Lawlor Group is presenting an opportunity for you to do just that on June 13-15 in Minneapolis, as we co-sponsor the Summer Seminar and host a workshop, featuring nationally known trend watchers and thought leaders like Andre Bell of The College Board; Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Internet & American Life Project; George Kuh of the National Survey of Student Engagement; Timothy Malefyt, anthropologist at BBDO Worldwide; and Lloyd Thacker of The Education Conservancy. Details are posted at www.thesummerseminar.com .

In the News: Federal Regulations on Reporting of Outcomes Draw Nearer

The Christian Science Monitor has urged colleges and universities to "welcome a federal role in judging their success" in a recent editorial praising the efforts of the U.S. Department of Education to impose "federal rules that would open up the schools to regular public scrutiny on the quality of their teaching and learning." Noting that accreditors "largely act in secret" in collecting and comparing schools' information about learning outcomes, the editorial endorses efforts to put these assessments on web sites for the public to evaluate.

Did You Know?

Data show that 43 percent of visitors who land on a web site go immediately to the search function.

Source: Marketing Sherpa

Is your school crafting messages that will resonate with today's prospective students? To find out more about current trends, or to have The Lawlor Group conduct an audit of your institution's communications plan, please contact us by e-mailing tlg@thelawlorgroup.com or calling 1.800.972.4345.

Add your comments:

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.