These seven steps are explained in detail in a recorded webinar as well.

7 Ways to Increase Community College Enrollment

1. Develop a Prospecting Mindset —

Start by adding an inquiry form. Sadly, most community colleges start their student journey with an application. This is a huge mistake. Putting an inquiry form on your home page and allowing prospects to request more information by completing a couple of simple steps is a much better start to the new student journey. Not sure how this works? Visit GCU.edu and note the prominent position occupied by “Request Info.” And yes, its highlighted here on and on their home page to draw attention and drive traffic. It’s one of the things their enrollment management team obsesses over.

2. Nurture Your Prospects –

To do this you will have to have a prospect pool. But if you embrace point one above, you will soon be creating a robust prospective student database. That means you now need a communication plan. This plan should include texts, calls and emails. And you should actively invite your prospects to campus events, encourage them to apply, serve up meaningful video content, and more. Remember that many of your prospects will inquire 9 months or a year in advance. So, your communication plan can’t be a one and done. You need to engage your prospects again and again over time.

3. Respond to Your Inquiries and Applicants –

Your private college competition responds immediately to information requests! This could be the most difficult part of an effective enrollment management strategy for a community college to address and you may need to work with an out-sourced contact center to accomplish this step, but it’s worth it. Your private college competition is responding with a personal phone call within minutes when an application or information request is received.

4. Reduce Friction in the Student Journey —

Map your student journey. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to enroll in college. Especially for first generation students. There is a myriad of steps to complete, and these may vary for different types of students (full time first time; one class only; transfer students). We know this BTW from doing mystery shopping for community colleges. Each step in this journey can be a decision point. If the process is too complicated your applicants may just give up. And each step is often a hand-off. With each hand-off “ownership” of new student enrollment can be diluted. Mapping the student journey and quantifying the pain points can draw attention to areas that need streamlining or additional staffing.

5. Understand Your Competition —

You may be dropping that ball while your competition is flourishing. A competitive shop will tell the story and help impact cultural change. Just look at the redacted results below:

6. Help Your Applicants Get Over Barriers to Become a Student –

Don’t neglect students who miss steps in the process. You are probably sitting on a gold mine of hot prospects and applicants who need a nudge. Think about these groups – and create a plan to call them to offer help and encouragement:

• FASFA senders who never applied
• Online applicants who didn’t complete the application
• Financial aid awardees who never accepted their package
• Applicants who didn’t attend orientation
• Orientation attendees who haven’t registered for classes

7. Rework the Dropouts and Stop Outs –

Whenever we are engaged to do an enrollment intervention project this is the first pool I dive into. Each semester you have hundreds of students who don’t continue. Embracing “re-admissions” is one of the easiest and fastest ways to increase enrollment.

A complimentary webinar explaining these steps in detail is available for your review. You may request a copy here

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“The annual NACUBO Tuition Discounting Study, reveals that the estimated average tuition-discount rate for first-time undergraduates at private colleges was 54.5 percent in the 2021-22 academic year. For all undergraduates, the average tuition-discount rate was 49 percent.”

So how would you begin to unpack the inequities that inherently exist with tuition discounting?

For my friends in enrollment management. You know how the discount game works. And you can stop reading. For the general public, I’d like to explain tuition discounting and financial aid leveraging. This topic doesn’t get enough scrutiny in the rising college tuition conversation.

So, What is Tuition Discounting?

College athletics is a great starting point. For the NAIA schools, and the NCAA DII and DIII institutions, student athletes comprise a large percentage of their enrollment. All schools can use their allotted athletic scholarship funds as they please within their appropriate divisional guidelines. Although the athletic division will determine the number of full-ride scholarships by sport, the individual school can decide on an award strategy. This may mean giving less $$ to more students, giving just a few full rides, no full rides, etc.

If you eliminated student athletes, many tier 3 colleges would lose 30% of their enrollment.

So, if you want to use a broad brush, it’s safe to assume that almost every student athlete is getting at least a small scholarship. Translation: Discounted tuition.

Now let’s talk about stacking awards. Here’s an example. Coach Smith has a soccer star she wants badly to recruit. Her scholarship dollars only go so far, and she has decided that she wants to award more athletes and spread her money around. But she really wants Jane Doe and knows she needs to sweeten her deal. So she stops into the admissions office (pretty sure this happened to Dr. Jean Norris when she was VP of Enrollment Management at an NAIA college). The coach pleads her case and grovels for admissions to give Jane a “leadership

award.” It’s a nebulous category and completely discretionary. The admissions director is on the fence and questions the ethics. But then the coach reminds her that she’s always at the open houses and willingly jumps in to help admissions whenever they need a faculty speaker, etc. So the admissions director caves in and now the student athlete has 2 scholarships. Her original athletic award and her new leadership award. That’s stacking.

What about shaping your class? Many colleges put a lot of effort into having the proper mix of students. And have goals around diversity, gender, academic ability, financial need, in-state/out-of-state, and domestic versus international. It’s not unusual to have a sophisticated matrix to guide the awards. Here’s what that might look like:

First generation, non-Caucasian, high academic achievement, female engineering student = $$$$

Caucasian, male, average academic ability, business student = $

International student, no financial need, medium academic ability = 0 (they can pay cash!)

Depending on the complexity of the matrix, you may have 20 or 30 cells. That means 20 or 30 scholarship strategies and awards. This is primarily institutional money and not federal financial aid. I don’t think anyone has ever questioned if it’s an endowed scholarship – which means those monies are on deposit in the college foundation and the college is allowed to
spend the interest.

But what if it’s a reduction in tuition? If you are a student or parent, you really don’t care what the source is. If the college offers to reduce your cost of attendance you are going to say yes.

The Real Problem with Discounting

So cut to the chase: If the average discount rate is 49% then some students are paying full freight, while others are paying nothing. Is it fair? Is it right? Can you even use ethical and higher education in the same sentence?

Not sure how I feel about this whole situation. Students with the ability to pay, and relatively low academic ability will pay full tuition. Students with less ability to pay, and with higher academic ability will be granted some kind of real or manufactured scholarship. As a result, they pay only a portion of published tuition.

Do All Colleges Discount?

No. If the college was accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Career Colleges and Schools (ACCSC) – one of the leading accrediting agencies for vocational schools, they would not be permitted to use a discount strategy at all. Every student would be charged the same. No exceptions.

Here’s a section below of the ACCSC Standards that clearly prohibits the type of discounting in play at traditional college and universities:

As a result, schools like Tulsa Welding School and Lincoln Tech don’t have a discount rate.

The Conclusion

Makes me think the evil for-profits as portrayed by many regulators, legislators (I’m talking to you Dick Durbin) and reporters aren’t so evil after all. In fact, I could argue that for-profit schools are more truthful, transparent, and ethical in their pricing policies than their private, not-for-profit counterparts.

Sources:

https://www.accsc.org/UploadedDocuments/standards%20and%20alerts/ACCSC-Standards-of-Accreditation-and-Bylaws-070122.pdf

https://www.chronicle.com/article/tuition-discount-rates-continued-to-climb-at-private-colleges

The post The Real Story Behind the Rising Cost of College appeared first on Norton Norris.

The result was a thorough interview that evaluators would participate in, record the conversation, and then complete 80+ questions. The individual questionnaires were available immediately to central office leadership and the trends were graphed and highlighted via custom dashboards.

Results Revealed Opportunities for Improvement

After 4 months of shopping and the completion of 57 mystery shops, the Nn team tallied initial results and trends, met with client leadership and then paused shopping shortly to allow client to socialize the results with their franchisee’s. Using the results from the first four months of shopping, their trainers called a “safety stop” of sorts and stressed to their 80+ centers
the extreme importance of building rapport, explaining the steps to enroll, and taking a genuine interest in not only the customer/parent, but also the student/client.

Two months after their leadership chose to heighten awareness of this simple but impactful shift, the Nn team pulled results and crafted the comparison chart below. The results underscore what can be gleaned from mystery shopping and how quickly it can be leveraged to improve performance.

Want to Learn More and Speak with Nn’s Client Partner? We can Facilitate a Quick Call.

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Top of the Funnel

For schools, colleges and universities that are enrollment driven, the journey begins with an information request. Some folks call it an RFI (request for information) or IRF (information request form). Funny side note: I had a friend in the lead generation business 20 years ago who bought a new luxury auto and had a personalized license plate with “IRF.”

This RFI or IRF is prominently featured on landing pages and on the college home page. Sadly, most CC’s don’t embrace landing pages and that topic will consume another page of dialogue. Maybe we’ll tackle that topic next month! Ok back to the RFI. This simple form allows the prospective student to raise their hand and say “Hey, I’m interested in your school. Here’s my name, email, and phone.” It’s this simple form that triggers action from the receiving institution. Action in an understatement.

Upon receipt of that little form, the college or university will probably:

• Send an auto-email acknowledging the RFI
• Make a phone call to the prospect
• Load them into the prospective student database for on-going email communication – some may even collect an address and begin a snail-mail stream
• Thoughtful communication and messaging are then employed from this point forward to encourage the prospect to “take the next step”
• Visit the campus
• Attend an event
• Complete an application

In summary, this short, simple form is easy and fast for the prospective student to complete, but it initiates a very large effort to serve the student and guide them through the enrollment process.

Enrollment Managers call this “an inquiry” and they are hell-bent on filling the top of their funnel with inquiries.

Need an Example?

Let’s look at Lake Michigan College, the local community college that I support by paying my property taxes. The “promise” of Free Tuition is almost above the fold. But how do you learn more? You can navigate to the admissions page and choose the option to apply. But what if you aren’t ready to apply yet? There’s no other way to start your student journey. And if you do scroll down to the bottom of the home page and select “contact us” you land on a generic form that is designed to serve everyone. There is no option to select a program of interest on this generic contact form, and you are informed that your inquiry will be answered in “two business days.” Sadly, this is not an RFI or IRF.

Now let’s look at a small private non-profit college that offers an accredited medical assistant program in the same city, Ross College. When you visit their site, the first thing you are prompted to do is submit your email address so the College can communicate with you and get you additional information. There is no searching for a form to fill out and no need to navigate to another page of the web site. Now that’s an RFI!

At first glance this may seem relatively insignificant. Wrong. It’s HUGE. Without an active process to collect inquiries, this community college has no prospective student database. No email list of prospects to invite to campus events. No group of student wannabes to nudge along the enrollment path.

Without a prospect database, how do you increase applications? You don’t.

If you don’t increase applications, how do you increase enrollments? You don’t.

Conclusion

Free tuition won’t increase community college enrollment without a plan to build a prospective student database.

The post Community College: Free Doesn’t Work With a Broken Funnel appeared first on Norton Norris.

In many ways products and services are very similar these days, and at least in my opinion I don’t see a lot of “break-through” differences. So, in the crowded field of look-a-likes improving the customer journey may be a great way to differentiate.

One way to observe the competition is with competitive mystery shopping. I’d recommend a blind experience where the shopper does not know who the client is. It would also be smart to include the client in the data set.

We’re doing much more competitive shopping these days. And surprisingly, its for public institutions. Whether you are delivering local in-person classes or offering on-line instruction across the country you may be surprised what you’ll glean. Here’s a few nuggets from a couple of recent competitive studies.

Make Sure your Online Application is Working.

Sounds basic, but in one study we conducted 33% of the applications we submitted resulted in error messages. I’ve written before about reducing friction in the admissions process and this is a great example – 3 Reasons Why Community College Enrollment is Declining. If your applicants become frustrated with your form, they may just click over and start the process with your competitor.

Rethink the Value of Soft Skills and Creating a Connection.

One unlikely competitor emerged as impressing our evaluators over all other universities in the data set based solely on the student experience. The product was comparable, the price was similar, the delivery model was the same. The difference was the interest the enrollment advisor took in the prospect. And it was notable.

Map the Student Journey from Multiple Entry Points.

Over the years your institution (like one we shopped) may have developed different paths for different populations. A full time, first year student would interface primarily with admissions, a transfer student would be serviced through the registrar’s office, and a student desiring a single class would have an even different entry point and student journey. This creates confusion for students and sets your institution up to deliver a vastly different student experience.

Search for “Best of” Categories in your Competitive Study.

Which school created the best inquiry experience and why? Which school delivered the best program presentation? What school would the evaluator be most likely to enroll in (and why). And of course, the reverse – which school would the evaluator be least likely to enroll in.

Create a Scoring Rubric that Clearly Shows the Winners and Losers.

Although you’ll probably learn more by digging into the details of individual data points, your executive leadership will benefit more from a chart like the one below.

There’s a lot of actionable data to glean from shopping your competition. Don’t wait for them to steal market share. Learn how to improve your deliverable by benchmarking your competitors.

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So why are community colleges suffering? It certainly isn’t a cost or affordability issue.

Is it demographics? We do know that high school enrollments are declining in some states – but if you align the high school numbers with the CC numbers, you’ll have to abandon that hypothesis as the 2-year college enrollment decline is out-pacing the high school graduate population slide.

Well, what’s the reason? And what can Community Colleges do?

Let’s unpack a few reasons impacting enrollment – and look at some simple solutions. For the last two years I’ve worked closely with several community colleges to research their student journey via mystery shopping. Secret shopping is popular with private sector colleges and is very pervasive in the customer service space. Inspecting the admissions process through the
prospective student eyes has fueled some revealing observations in the 2-year public sector space.

Reason #1: Large National Brands are More Student Centric

One of the challenges of shopping community colleges is speaking to a knowledgeable staff member. This is in stark contrast to the large online schools we shop – and that you see advertising for. Not sure what I’m referring to? Do this:

Submit an inquiry for Large National Brand vs. Local Community College

Reason #2: Large National Brands Have a Recruitment Mindset

Years ago, I would challenge the admissions team at the tuition-driven private, not for profit college where I worked with the
question: “Are you enrolling students or recruiting students?” My question was not always received well – but the point is this…

Recruitment is Active. Enrollment is Passive.

Enrollment officers review applications, screen out the individuals not qualified, and offer admission to a select few. On the flip side recruiters embrace the prospect, are available to answer questions, guide the process and encourage the individual to take the next step.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, the community college admissions teams have morphed into “enrollment officers.” Maybe its organized labor driving a passive approach. Or it could be that leadership worked at selective admissions schools and applied their process to the open-enrollment community college systems. It may be a staffing issue with not enough personnel to offer service. Whatever the underlying reasons are, the result is the same. There’s a glaring difference in mindsets at public 2-year colleges and their big-brother on-line national brands.

Reason #3: Less Friction = More Enrollments

It’s hard to navigate the student journey at a community college. Especially for first-generation college students. The friction is real. Look at what some of our shoppers said in answer to the question, “Based on your experience in the first 30 days after submitting your application, would you recommend this school to a friend?”

“I would not particularly recommend this school because I had a difficult time figuring out the status of my application and what I was supposed to do next. I had to reach out to the school myself to learn that I was missing a prerequisite and needed to take an entrance exam. I applied for the Business program but got accepted to Individual Studies instead, which I also would not have known about if I hadn’t called to speak with an advisor. I wish the school had been more proactive in giving me all this information.”

“Based on my experience with this school in the last few weeks, I would not be likely to recommend it to a friend. The communication from this school was extremely lacking. I was never updated by Admissions as to the status of my application or notified whether or not I had been accepted to the school.”

“I had the most frustrating experience with this school because it was really hard to get in touch with anyone over the phone. I did not receive any concrete response from them regarding my application status, so I reached out to Admissions. During the call, I was told that I needed to wait until the end of the day or the next day to get my application accepted. I tried to contact the school a few more times to get updates, but no one was available in the office.”

The Conclusion – It’s Simply the Service.

It’s clear to me why the large national brands are flourishing compared to their community college colleagues.

Without a recruitment mindset, and lacking a student-centric approach, community college prospects and applicants must manage their own enrollment journey. For a first-time college student that journey can be confusing. And without encouragement and guidance the friction may be overwhelming.

Which means the prospective student and applicant will abandon their journey and look for solutions elsewhere.

If community colleges want to thrive and increase enrollment, they will need to borrow several pages from their private college competition’s playbook. This means developing a contact strategy to communicate personally and in multiple modalities with prospects and applicants. It also necessitates mapping the student journey and eliminating as much friction as possible.

Free college or affordable tuition will never increase enrollment if the student can’t figure out how to enroll, what program is best for them, and what classes to take.

It’s not the cost. It’s the service.

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The one constant in life is change. It may be an old and somewhat overused cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

And in a world where marketing and marketing-related initiatives are being shaped by digital technology at a pace that couldn’t have been imagined even a decade ago, it’s more important than ever to understand what’s on that digital marketing horizon.

It’s no surprise that for institutions of higher education, marketing budgets remain tight. At the same time, it’s crucial to milk as many inquiries, applications, acceptances, deposits, and enrollments as possible out of every marketing dollar spent.

So as the end of 2017 nears and budget planning for 2018 moves ahead, here are some things to think about in terms of digital marketing trends and tactics that could impact your bottom line.

Talk to Us

We’ve all seen them. The quizzes, polls, and puzzles on Facebook and other social media platforms that will tell you which celebrity you were in a former life, or what European city is the best fit for you, or whether you’re in the top 1 percent of all humans who are able to see a particular shape in a picture first. It’s called interactive content, and it’s a great way of actively engaging readers or visitors to your website. Think about ways to incorporate interactive content into your digital marketing efforts, such as a personality quiz to determine the best healthcare career for you, or a survey about campus technology.

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

There’s no denying it—the use of mobile technology continues to rise and it’s not going to change anytime soon. Couple that with the fact that everything is trending toward video, and it becomes clear that mobile video will continue to rise in popularity. In fact, many reports indicate that while video consumption on computers and laptops has started to decline, video views on phones and tablets will rise by 25 percent. So whether it’s a video about a particular academic program, learning facilities, student outcomes, or whatever, make sure it’s properly rendering on mobile devices. And if you’re not taking a “mobile first” approach to your digital content strategy, it’s time to start.

Stream It

As video continues its powerful presence across most social media platforms, expect more and more users to want, and in fact expect, live video content. Not only did video streaming constitute a solid majority of all internet traffic in 2017, studies show that viewers will watch live streams three times longer than pre-recorded video content. Look for events and activities around campus that would make for good live streams, like athletic events, social gatherings, extracurricular activities, visiting speakers, etc.

How Can We Help You?

Forging an immediate, personal connection with viewers and visitors to your website and social media channels should be a high priority in anyone’s strategic marketing plan. One way of doing just that is through artificial intelligence (AI) tools and chatbots. And all indications point to the use of this type of technology gaining steam. Chatbots are ways for a school or business to interact with visitors in real time, helping to personalize the experience of its interface, and direct them to information that’s most relevant to their needs right then and there. This technology is being used by schools currently; look for it to become even more present and to offer expanded capabilities.

If You Hack It, They Will Come

There’s a good chance your institution has already engaged in growth hacking, a digital marketing tactic that will continue to help organizations shape their online presence. One of the more common forms of growth hacking is search engine optimization (SEO), which is all about increasing the odds that someone who’s already expressed interest in your offerings will find his or her way to your digital interface. Other examples of growth hacking include offering incentives for someone to spread the word on your organization. Creativity is the name of the game in growth hacking, and that game is about increasing your brand awareness across a broader audience.

Get to the Point

This one isn’t necessarily limited to digital marketing, but it’s too important to ignore. There’s power in brevity, especially when it comes to your audiences and the amount of time they’re willing to devote to your messaging. When it comes to your mobile content—whether that’s website copy, photo captions, or videos—it’s crucial to keep it short.

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