March 2009 Lawlor Focus

The New "Spring Break"?

It’s that time of year, when newspapers and other media outlets from coast to coast report that college admission officers are facing “unprecedented uncertainty” regarding fall enrollments (“Colleges Share Applicants’ Anxiety” in the Los Angeles Times) and that “this year, with the economy turning parents and students into bargain hunters,” admission officers “have little faith” in their statistical models (“In Shifting Era of Admissions, Colleges Sweat” in The New York Times). Add reports that “the unraveling economy is making less expensive state colleges more appealing” and that “many of the nation’s distance-learning programs are experiencing unprecedented growth,” and it’s easy to see why private colleges and universities, in particular, are suffering some anxiety over whether enough students will accept their offers of admission. Or will these admitted students give new meaning to the phrase “spring break” and decide to simply break from their communication with a college, not sending in a deposit or replying by May 1?

Even if this year’s circumstances are once again “unprecedented,” the tried-and-true strategies still hold when it comes to encouraging admitted students to enroll. Here are a few ways colleges and universities are deploying new tactics for implementing these strategies.

Engage your admitted students—Many colleges are harnessing the power of social networking technologies to maintain meaningful contact with admitted students, either by monitoring affinity groups that admitted students have themselves formed on sites like Facebook or by dedicating space on their own web sites for admitted student forums. Connecticut College has leveraged the referral value of some of its first-year students by featuring them in video Q&A segments answering the top questions of admitted students. And Davidson College is using Twitter as an engagement tool by pulling 140 characters of text from student applications into tweets and marking those students’ hometowns on a Google Map “to show you just how far-reaching these student perspectives actually are.”

Focus on your value proposition—As college-bound students and their families contemplate the price tag for higher education, you must reinforce why a degree from your college is an investment worth making. Liberal arts colleges, in particular, are facing greater pressure to directly correlate their learning outcomes with the skills employers seek (see “In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth” ). Even small private colleges that have not claimed the “liberal arts” label are finding the need to more strongly link specific educational experiences to desired outcomes: Champlain College is doing this by touting a three-dimensional education that integrates “relevant, professionally focused studies with a rigorous Core curriculum and practical Life Skills program.”

Demonstrate goodwill—The same economic concerns that are plaguing prospective students are causing consternation among returning students. Therefore, any measures a college takes to assuage the financial anxieties of its current students also communicate value and affordability to its admitted students (and maintains the referral value of those current students). For example, several private colleges and universities are slowing their tuition increases to preserve enrollment and create goodwill, and many are increasing their financial aid funding.

Lawlor Recommends

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In the news

USAToday has created an interactive graphic to accompany its article highlighting the findings of the latest American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), noting "so many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists." Among the charts at the ARIS web site are the age composition of each religious tradition and the percentage of college graduates by religious tradition.

Did you know?

Social networks and blogs are now a more popular online activity (at 66.8%) than e-mail (at 65.1%) among people in the United States and other leading digital countries worldwide.

Source: Nielsen Online (.pdf)