Time to Recalibrate

A record number of college and university presidents, chief admission officers, marketing officers, and chief financial officers gathered together for our annual Summer Seminar, sponsored by The Lawlor Group and Hardwick~Day. The invigorating conversation and exchange of ideas was led by a dynamic group of thought leaders, and our first speaker, Amanda Lenhart from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, used a phrase that became a refrain for the subsequent presenters as well: "It's time to recalibrate." Here are but three reasons why college and university leaders must pause and take stock of their situations.

To adjust to the stealth marketplace—Prospective students who decline to opt in to your normal communication flow and who first come to your attention when they apply ("stealth applicants") are becoming "the new normal," according to Lenhart. Because teenagers are constantly being warned to protect their online privacy, they often avoid registering. Instead of choosing to have information "pushed" to them, they "pull" it—which means your web site is key to meeting their needs. As Bill Rice, president of the Web Marketing Association, noted, "People come to web sites for information, and if they can't find it, they will go elsewhere to get it." Lenhart added that teenagers want information both from and around you, so even when you do provide the information they're seeking on your web site, they'll want to have it confirmed by other voices, such as those of current students at your institution. Therefore, "message control is a thing of the past," Lenhart said, and your best course is to contribute your own voice in an effort to add to the conversation, instead of attempting to subtract voices that are off message. "Embrace the stealth," recommended John A. Lawlor, online strategist and CEO of Nexus New Media. "It's your reality, and you can't fight it, so enable your audience." Stealth applications are simply confirmation that you're doing your job right, suggested Lenhart.

To adjust to public perceptions—Sarah Flanagan, vice president for government relations and policy at NAICU, warned that colleges and universities are in danger of losing their "white hat." Rising tuition costs, student loan and study abroad scandals, endowment spending level controversy, private loan reliance, and other issues are causing increasing resentment among the general public, as well as a push by government officials for accountability. As Jon McGee, vice president for enrollment, planning, and public affairs at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University, put it, "What we say to defend ourselves is resonating with no one. In the court of public opinion, the bloom may be off the rose." Chris Farrell, economics editor for American Public Media's "Marketplace Money," explained that the cost of a college education has reached a tipping point, causing it to seem like a bigger financial impediment than it was before, thanks to the credit crisis. "We'll see some behavior changes now that fewer people will be able to turn to home equity loans to finance college tuition," he predicted. McGee saw Harvard's "middle income initiative" as an admission that the middle class can't afford college tuition, and Nathan Mueller, principal at Hardwick~Day, argued that Harvard demonstrated you can use a family's income as a rationing measure for awarding financial aid and it will work just as well as using federal need assessment as your rationing device. Mueller also credited Harvard with increasing transparency in pricing, something that Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson, co-chairs of the Rethinking Student Aid Study group, cited as a foundational goal of their current effort to generate creative thinking about federal financial aid reform. "The system has to be simple and clear enough that people can understand it and take advantage of it," said Baum. "What federal aid they'll get should be predictable as well as sufficient."

To adjust to the necessities for survival—Chief financial officers Carol Campbell of Arizona State University and Harold Hewitt of Chapman University feared that we may be entering a "winner take all" period in higher education, as wealthy institutions go beyond other colleges' and universities' reaches in terms of price discounts. "We're making our way toward negative tuitions," predicted Dan Sullivan, president of St. Lawrence University, who speculated that undergraduate institutions might soon offer stipends in the same manner that graduate programs do. Campbell and Hewitt cited the struggling economy and limited access to capital markets as factors that will drive more students toward public institutions and away from private colleges and universities. Presidents Jim Collins of Loras College and Wendy Libby of Stephens College pointed out that in this climate, institutions that rely primarily upon tuition revenue for their operating expenses must start focusing more heavily on fund raising, auxiliary enterprises, and partnerships with local businesses and governments.

In the News

The importance of demonstrating the outcomes of a college education to prospective students was the topic of a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "In Tight Employment Market, Career Services Gain Clout" (subscription required). "Is college about getting an education or a job?" it asks, then provides the answer: "Now more than ever, students and their families say both." The article also reports, "Economic conditions, public expectations, and a heightened emphasis on student success have pushed many colleges to ramp up their career services." Examining outcomes from a different perspective, The Washington Post Magazine profiles "The Amazing Adventures of Supergrad" and argues that employers "are courting what may be the best-credentialed graduates ever produced by American colleges. Raised in the age of high-speed Internet, deregulated airline prices, ubiquitous study abroad programs and wildly competitive college admissions, today's juniors and seniors are computer-literate, well-traveled, hyper-groomed and accustomed to competing for what they want."

Also in the news: Our own John Lawlor was cited in a "Tech Therapy" podcast on The Chronicle of Higher Education web site, in a discussion of the role college web sites play in recruiting students.

Did You Know

Our Summer Seminar presenters were fairly evenly split in their opinions of whether "e-mail is dead." While that may be so for the members of Generation Y who are tapped into social networking web sites, only 22 percent of U.S. Internet users age 40 and over use them, according to eMarketer. And in fact, a recent study found that two-thirds of adult Internet users in North America said they preferred e-mail for communicating with businesses. For all audiences, however, opt-in is still key.