At the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, along the scenic Charles River overlooking Boston, a few dozen college presidents and provosts gathered in early May for a day focused on achieving campus harmony. Called the Campus Climate Summit: Getting from Contention to Consensus, the event was sponsored by Thoughtexchange, a provider of stakeholder engagement solutions for leaders […]
No doubt you have received a wall or desk calendar from your alma mater. Such calendars often feature campus scenes that trigger memories of student days. Recently, my wife, a second-grade teacher, received a desk calendar unlike any I had seen before, from a nonprofit education group she supports. What caught my attention was that […]
The traditional, nail-biting wait for an admission offer has, at some colleges, given way to a process offering immediate gratification for prospective students: the instant decision day. This admission recruitment strategy—involving applicants getting an on-the-spot admission decision during a scheduled event—has gained a lot of traction, particularly as a way for colleges that aren't Ivies […]
Lyon College President W. Joseph King and former university president Brian C. Mitchell have written a practical guide for new and veteran leaders. How to Run a College (2018, Johns Hopkins) examines how colleges operate and how they can build on their fundamental strengths. More importantly, it corrects a number of commonly held misperceptions about […]
Stephen Wilson, director of annual giving at Virginia State University, identifies donor prospects at no cost on LinkedIn. Using keyword searches based on profile information such as college, industry and job title, he finds potential matches and requests the connections. About half will respond and show interest in happenings at the university. "With 20,000 alumni […]
If your marketing teams are not taking advantage of the multitude of ways to personalize digital content to increase lead capture, enrollment and retention, you may be seeing the impact in your acceptance and yield figures. In this piece, we open up the new playbook for finding the right student prospects. Who's calling the shots? […]
IT leaders at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recognized that unbundling, analyzing and sharing learning management system data could produce results, particularly in driving online students' success. So they partnered with the College of Education to make it happen. Student behaviors such as ignoring the syllabus or not opening assignments will get […]
Launching new athletic programs—a go-to strategy for driving enrollment and boosting campus enthusiasm—usually comes with some major costs. But some institutions have added a rapidly growing, co-ed sport that doesn't require an expensive new athletic complex or a big travel budget. Competitive, online video-gaming, also known as e-sports, checks several inclusive and low-cost boxes, and […]
In what ways do you see colleges falling short in utilizing data to make better admissions recruitment and acceptance decisions? What kinds of data should they be using more of or better? "Many colleges are not viewing their admissions decisions through the lens of retention and degree completion. Institutions should understand the profile of their […]
College admissions teams now go beyond zip codes and SAT scores to micromatch students who are most likely to apply to, enroll in and succeed at their institutions. In this new era, administrators consider everything from a student's interests and non-school activities to what they like on Facebook and how long they spent on the […]
