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 […]
Why is digital marketing—so easily measurable—not measured in higher education at the level it is in other industries? I introduced the Higher Ed Digital Marketing Analytics Roadmap (HEDMAR), a year-long research project on digital measurement practices in my March 2017 UB column. This project was set to change the status quo in our industry by […]
The ongoing wave of school violence has forced higher ed to enhance emergency-response training in teacher education programs. Arming teachers, increasing school entrance security and assigning armed guards are a few solutions being debated. Some colleges now train future teachers to spot and assist troubled students before violent intentions become violent actions. Along with crisis […]
How you go to college matters more than where you go to college, says Bentley University President Gloria Cordes Larson. In her book Prepared U (2017 Jossey-Bass), Larson says institutions that focus on professional studies do a fine job preparing students for a job after college. But they often fall short on building “lifelong learning […]
Contrary to popular misconception, our student-athletes in higher education are persisting and completing their programs of study on time. According to Gallup and collegiate athletic association reports, student-athletes actually outperform their non-athlete classmates in persistence and graduation in a wide and varied range of program majors. Increasingly, student-athletes have chosen to study the diversified fields […]
If there's one thing small college purchasing managers know for sure, it's that they have to be smart about a lot of things. "At larger schools, people in purchasing have more specialization—they only do IT or facilities or science. Those of us at small colleges have to be able to do everything," says Allison Canada, […]
As higher ed futurists, we are asked about craven competition, niche branding, and distinctive marketing opportunities for a wide range of schools, colleges, and universities. One emergent strategic option for Engineering Institutes is to burnish their unique engineering, science, and technology niche, yet leverage the attributes and competitive advantages that come with attaining University Status. […]
If you are tasked with driving enrollment for undergrad or grad programs, but your marketing teams are not taking advantage of the myriad 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 […]
Editor's Note: This is part 2 of a 3-part series on b-school survival. Read Part 1. Applications to full-time, two-year MBA programs in the U.S. have been down since 2014, and this past fall, 64 percent of programs reported declines, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council's "Application Trends Survey Report 2017." To counter that, […]
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 […]