The TLG staff is committed, professional and responsive. TLG intimately understands the concept of branding and brings that knowledge to the table through its expert designers and skilled writers in a manner that results in a finished product that accurately and creatively portrays a college’s essence.

— David Anderson
Senior Associate Director of Admission
Kalamazoo College
Kalamazoo, Michigan

The Smarketplace

Infographic: Paying off student loans has become more difficult

Posted July 6th, 2011, by Amy

Among the two-thirds of bachelor’s degree recipients who will graduate in 2011 with student loans, the average amount of debt is projected to be $27,204, an increase of 31% since 2006. In fact, a full one-third of college students are graduating with more than $20,000 in student loan debt. As our infographic shows, this rising debt load has coincided with rising interest rates, default rates, and unemployment rates.

Infographic: College choice and prudent consumers

Posted June 7th, 2011, by John L.

Earlier this year, The Lawlor Group identified “Prudent Consumers” as one of our 2011 trends and observations. Now, we’re pleased to present an infographic of the most recent statistics, shedding more light on how the frugal and pragmatic behaviors of these prudent prospective students and families continue to be a dominant driver of college choice.

Refreshing the annual fund: What’s working for you?

Posted May 26th, 2011, by Susan

As the end of the fiscal year approaches, annual fund directors are nervously eyeing the numbers. Have investments in direct mail, phonathons, social media, peer-to-peer solicitation, and alumni engagement paid off?

Alumni engagement: Making the case for reconnection

Posted April 14th, 2011, by Susan

In plotting strategies and tactics for alumni engagement, don’t spend all your time on questions of how. More important to your graduates, and to your success, is the question of why.

Alumni Engagement: Targeting the Ties that Bind

Posted March 29th, 2011, by Susan

Colleges are taking a number of approaches to reversing the trend in alumni participation and engagement. But no single strategy is sufficient—in a multi-channel marketing environment, schools need to reach out to alumni in multiple ways.

Transfer Students—Factoring Multiplicity into Enrollment Management

Posted February 17th, 2011, by Carole

Transfer students are becoming an increasingly critical market segment in higher education, often helping to boost enrollment numbers and fill spots left open from attrition, as well as helping to generate much needed revenue, many times at a lower discount rate than first-year, first-time students. And for the students themselves, transferring has increasingly become part of a long-term plan to affordable degree completion.

Campaign priorities: Relevance and reality

Posted February 4th, 2011, by Susan

Twice as many Americans believe the economy will be better rather than worse in 2011—and development officers seem to agree.

Higher education and enrollment management fluency

Posted January 20th, 2011, by John L.

A chief enrollment officer at a private college recently shared with me that college presidents are becoming more fluent in enrollment management. I couldn’t agree more.

Connecting the dots between education and employability

Posted January 17th, 2011, by Carole

Higher education institutions simply must do a better job of demonstrating how the experiences they provide translate into successful outcomes and employability. The need for this is critical, given a national unemployment rate of nearly 10%, the tough and often drawn out job search for recent college graduates, and the mounting debt grads are accumulating.

The new face of philanthropy

Posted January 3rd, 2011, by Susan

When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg signed on last month to the Giving Pledge—joining Warren Buffet, Bill and Melinda Gates, and scores of other uber-wealthy individuals who’ve promised to give most of their fortunes to charity—Zuckerberg was making a powerful statement about the value of philanthropy.