Enrollment Management Archives - Page 3 of 58 - Ruffalo Noel Levitz Blog: Higher Education Enrollment, Student Retention, and Student Success

Increasing access for Latino college students

March 19, 2018 by Dr. Raquel Bermejo, Associate Vice President for Market Research, RNL Leave a Comment

What can institutions do to increase access of Latino college students to higher education? As the Latino population increases in the United States, more and more Latino students will be matriculating to college in the coming years. This is an exciting opportunity for the students and the institutions they will attend, but this student population also has unique characteristics that colleges need to consider when recruiting them.

I spoke about this important issue with one of the most passionate advocates I know for increasing access to higher education for Latino college students—Luis Narvaez. He has served as the program director at Chicago Public Schools since 2015. Under his leadership, his office has overseen the implementation of the “State Seal of Biliteracy” across the entire district, awarding more than 5,000 K-12 students for their biliteracy skills in English and nearly a dozen world languages!

Luis and his team have also increased teacher participation in ESL/Bilingual Endorsement teacher cohorts by managing the application process of more than 500 K-12 district employees and has maintained fundraising efforts for the Chicago Public Schools DREAM Fund Scholarship (which provides assistance to dozens of undocumented immigrant students in their pursuit of college and career success).

Strategies for institutions recruiting Latino college students

Luis’s recommendations for any campus that wants to increase the presence of Latino college students are easy and clear:

Get the word out early—Don’t wait to recruit Latino students until they are seniors in high school. Visit middle and high schools and get the word out with simple information about the advantages of earning a bachelor’s degree.
Get the word out in Spanish—Yes, the students are bilingual (some of them don’t really even speak Spanish) but their parents are not native speakers of English, and some may not even be proficient.
Invite them to visit—Many Latino parents are not college graduates, so the entire college planning process is very foreign to them. That does not mean they don’t support their children going to college, it just means they don’t know that “visiting” is part of the process. Invite them, make them feel welcome, and host special events for them.
Connect them with Latino parents of current students—Parents of your current Latino students may be your best ambassador with parents of Latino prospects. They speak the same language (literally and figuratively). Parents of your current students will be able to speak to prospective parents’ fears and same questions.

Recommendations for high school counselors working with Latino high school students

Based on his many years of experience in the Chicago Public Schools, Luis has recommendations for high school counselors working with college-bound Latino students.

Don’t assume anything about Latino parents—In many cases their lack of involvement does not equal a lack of support for their kids’ education, it means they both don’t know what to do to help or may not think their help is needed.
Be proactive and communicate with them—For written communications, use both English and Spanish. Don’t forget the telephone is key with Latino parents! If you don’t speak Spanish, check if you have colleagues who are fluent and could have those conversations. Call Latino students and their parents to invite them to college planning events.
Make parents feel welcome and valued—Latino parents may have feelings of inadequacy because of their lack of experience with postsecondary education. Help them feel relaxed and valued.
Connect them with parents of your alumni who already went through the college planning process—Those alumni can share a lot and they will be able to walk in the shoes of Latino parents in ways nobody else can. Personal connections are crucial in Latino cultures, use that to create understanding and momentum for students to attend college.

If you want to learn more about the Chicago Public Schools DREAM Fund Scholarship and the amazing job Luis and his team are doing, visit their page. We applaud their efforts in making a postsecondary dream come true for many students.

Explore more strategies for recruiting and retaining Latino college students at our Symposium

I also invite you to join us at the 2018 Symposium on the Recruitment and Retention of Diverse Populations in New Orleans.

My RNL colleagues and I, along with many other campus professionals and experts, will be presenting sessions on Latino enrollment, first-generation students, nontraditional students, and other key student populations. Register by March 26 to receive an early registration rate.

And if increasing the presence of Latino students in your campus is one of your objectives you may also want to learn about RNL can help you, please email me.

Luis speaks passionately of education, it is clear that this is not just a job for him. His enthusiasm is clear and contagious. Many thanks to Luis and his team who work to advance the access to higher education for hundreds of Latino high school students!

Uncovering campuswide opportunities with an outside perspective

March 16, 2018 by Dr. Linda Hoopes, Director of Campus Relations, RNL Leave a Comment

Years ago, when I led enrollment at a mid-size private institution in the Midwest, a colleague wisely quoted Albert Einstein: If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got. This comment came as the university made plans to conduct an enrollment opportunities analysis with Ruffalo Noel Levitz to help us reach our goals.

The pending analysis was of interest not because the university was facing enrollment challenges at the time, and not because it yet faced the extremely competitive environment in which colleges and universities find themselves today. Instead, senior leaders were drawn to the assessment because they wanted to ensure that the most effective strategies were in place to move the institution forward. Added to this was a critical impetus to be distinctly proactive if demographic trends held true to predictions.

My colleagues and I looked forward to having an expert on campus to confidently unearth opportunities to recruit even more students who could be retained and graduate. The experience was eye-opening! Within a day and a half, the senior RNL leader offered several significant recommendations that we could implement easily—and immediately. We were also provided with well-grounded suggestions for longer-term growth.

After implementing several of the recommendations, the university saw significant improvements in both enrollment and student retention, as well as a more unified faculty and staff better positioned to meet well-communicated goals.

Four benefits to getting an outside perspective on your campuswide opportunities

Now seated on the other side of the desk, as I have been with Ruffalo Noel Levitz for nearly a decade, I continue to see the benefits of campuswide opportunities analysis, albeit through a slightly different lens.

Objectivity: It’s often said that one can’t see the forest for the trees. All too frequently, campus leaders are too busy with day-to-day activities to consider overall strategy. A fresh set of eyes is what’s needed most.

Experience: With a broad base of knowledge, RNL senior leaders have virtually seen it all. Each has a career history of more than 500 campus evaluations; a breadth of experience that can’t be rivaled.

Focus: The primary goal of this opportunity analysis is just that–to find unseen prospects for success. Sometimes these opportunities are hidden gems; other times, they may have been discussed previously.

Proactivity: Being preemptive. Looking ahead. Planning for tomorrow. Too often, critical issues are pushed aside when times are good. But as John F. Kennedy warned, The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining. In this highly challenging and competitive environment, colleges and universities can never be too prepared for the changing tides.

See the benefit of bringing an outside perspective to your campus

My colleagues at RNL have traveled to campuses of every size, type, location, and mission to bring this valuable outside perspective. They cover a whole range of topics: marketing, recruitment, retention, financial aid, strategic enrollment planning, and many other key issues related to enrollment and student success.

I invite you to learn more about our campuswide opportunity analysis, and to have the benefit that I and my campus colleagues had when we got a fresh perspective on our challenges and used what we learned to achieve historic results. Find out more at RuffaloNL.com, and if you have any questions, please feel free to email me directly.

Request an RNL Campus Opportunity Analysis

When it comes to filling your academic programs, it’s not about doing more. It’s about doing what’s relevant to students.

February 22, 2018 by Ashley Spain, Associate Vice President for Enrollment Marketing, RNL Leave a Comment

To be more competitive when recruiting students for specific academic programs, you need to create an academic journey to nurture their exploration.

“Why should I study at your campus?”

It’s a simple question, but it is the cornerstone of student search. Academics plays a pivotal role—do you have my major? is one of the first questions students have when they start their search. But students today also require more than seeing if you have the major they want or reading descriptions of your academic programs. They want to know if they are a good fit for your programs, and if your academic programs and your institution will meet their needs.

In addition, the competition for students in their search for the right college and the right academic programs has grown more fierce in recent years. Students now can find information on institutions across the country and the world with a simple search. According to our E-Expectations research, 60 percent of college-bound juniors and half of college-bound seniors search for the school name and program name when searching for colleges online. Nearly half of those juniors and about 40 percent of fall seniors search for program names. At the same time, your competitors are getting increasingly creative in how they recruit students for the programs they want to fill. How do you stand out from the competition and engage the students who will make your academic programs shine?

The key is to create a targeted, personalized journey for prospective students, one that engages them the first time they learn about your institution and the academic programs you offer. This generation of students has grown up in the era of personalization and content tailored just for them. These students expect the same kind of customized experience during their college searches that they encounter when shopping online, browsing websites, and using social media. That personalization—the feeling that your institution not only has the major a student wants but is the place for them to pursue their academic dreams—is how you will outmaneuver your competitors and shape enrollment in your programs.

It goes way beyond filling seats

Beyond meeting the enrollment targets for your academic programs, ensuring prospective students are well-informed about—and find themselves a good fit for—specific majors means they will make more informed enrollment decisions. Those decisions are about more than where they go; what they choose to do is just as important. With a carefully created, personalized plan building early awareness, you can do better in connecting students early to the right major—and then in exceeding their expectations as they pursue their opportunities at your institution.

Successfully shaping enrollment for your academic programs means letting go of your old plan

We have written previously about why the traditional college communication plan is broken. But it is especially critical, in an era of increased competition for students and greater expectations for personalization, to engage on an individual level when recruiting for your academic programs. Your outreach needs to feel relevant and customized for them. This cannot be done effectively through linear or static communication streams that highlight aspects of the majors you are targeting.

Instead, students are looking for an academic journey for choosing the right academic programs. They want to be empowered and drive the experience, finding information and making decisions at their own pace and in the order they prefer. They find their way to their enrollment decision and want to access the information they want when they need it.

Think of it in the context of a conversation with a prospective student. Rather than providing a flow of information at planned stages—which may not meet a student’s expectations or needs for their college search—each exchange and each piece of information or interest the student shares will tailor that conversation and increase their engagement. The benefit is, in giving students more freedom to shape their exploration of your institution’s academic programs, you increase your opportunities to steer them toward a decision to apply.

Ideally, you create an academic journey that creates that experience for them. This journey should have three key aspects that engage the right students for your academic programs and nurture them toward enrollment.

Invite students to engage by tapping into their academic interests on a personal level (for instance, by using an interactive “fit quiz).
Empower and educate students as they research your institution, letting them find the information they want in any order they desire, rather than along a present timeline of communications.
Engage students until they enroll by connecting them with relevant information—career possibilities, financial aid information, faculty profiles—and reaching out to their parents to make them advocates for your institution.

Read how to create this academic journey in our white paper

Download our white paper, Majors Matter More Than Ever: Creating an Academic Journey for Prospective Students. You’ll read more details about how student expectations have driven the need for an academic journey approach to filling your academic programs.

Get your copy now.

When any college student debt is too much

February 6, 2018 by Bill Berg, Executive Consultant - Ruffalo Noel Levitz Leave a Comment

Increasing levels of college student loan debt don’t appear to be having a significant effect on enrollments. But higher debt is affecting the economy as a whole and it is having a disproportionate impact on low-income borrowers and students who attended for-profit colleges.

Thank you to Mary Piccioli for her assistance with this piece. An abbreviated version of this post originally appeared in University Business.

A story in Forbes reported on a new poll by LendUSA/WhatsGoodly where millennials said that student loan debt was a bigger threat than North Korea. Financial analyst Suze Orman wrote several years ago that student loans were the single most dangerous threat to our economy. Just how much of a threat is increasing student debt—to higher education, to the housing market, to recent college graduates’ prosperity?

There’s no question that recent graduates are leaving college with more student loan debt. More students are taking out loans and they’re borrowing larger amounts. Total college student loan debt was $1.3 trillion at the end of 2016—an increase of about 170 percent from 10 years earlier, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The average debt is now about $30,000. It has been argued that college student loan debt is influencing job choices, home ownership and even the marriage rate. But apocryphal stories about students owing $100,000 or more coming out of college don’t represent the reality for most borrowers. In 2015, roughly two-thirds of student loan balances were $25,000 or less (see below).

66 percent of college student loan debt is under $25,000

66 percent of student loan borrowers have loan balanced of $25,000 or less (source: Forbes.com). Click to enlarge

Fewer than 5 percent owed more than $100,000 However, this 5 percent of borrowers accounted for 30 percent of total debt, as shown in the following chart.

30 percent of total student debt is owed by fewer than 5 percent of students who have more than $100,000 in loans.

Borrowers who owe more than $100,000 account for 30 percent of total student loan debt. Click to enlarge.

[Read more…]

Highlights from our enrollment management research: 10 things we learned in 2017

December 12, 2017 by Ruffalo Noel Levitz Leave a Comment

In 2017, Ruffalo Noel Levitz conducted enrollment management research on a variety of fronts: benchmark polls of higher education professionals, field research among active and prospective students, and reviewed data from millions of student records from our campus partners. We turned this enrollment management research into research reports and white papers on college student recruitment, student retention and success, and enrollment strategy.

As we head into 2018, here are 10 insights from that research that can help guide your enrollment management efforts.

Your communication plan doesn’t work for today’s students.

Changes in technology, student demographics, and communication behavior have made traditional, institution-driven marketing plans obsolete. Instead, students want to direct their journey from researching prospective colleges to the point where they apply and enroll. Download our white paper, Why It’s Time to Throw Away Your Communication Plan: Transforming Enrollment Marketing Through Student-Driven Engagement.

New research shows that Generation Z students do things their way, and not always the way colleges expect.

They fill out more applications to more colleges, conduct more research about colleges online, and use a wide variety of channels and resources in their college searches. Download our 2017 National Report on the Perceptions and Communication Preferences of High School Students.

Purchased names, campus visitors, and stealth applicants were the top three sources of enrollees for public and private four-year institutions.

Our enrollment management research also looked at practices for inquiry qualification, financial aid awarding, digital advertising, and many more activities. Download our 2017 Marketing and Student Recruitment Report of Effective Practices.

The average freshman discount rate has continued to rise for our public and private client institutions.

For our private institution clients, transfer student discount rates run lower. Compare discounting levels using new benchmarks, see the trendlines, and examine factors behind the increases, including changes in freshman need levels. Download our 2017 Discounting Report: Benchmarks for First-Year and Transfer Students.

Parents are more engaged than ever, with many completing applications on behalf of students.

Our 2017 E-Expectations study of students and parents shows how involved many parents are, and that it is increasingly important to capture parent information at the inquiry stage and to develop communication flows for them. Download our 2017 E-Expectations Trend Report.

The influence of high school counselors is substantial.

We also learned that counselors’ referrals to colleges are most influenced by program availability, quality, and financial aid. Download our 2017 Report: High School Counselors and Their Role in College Planning.

Just over half of today’s college students are satisfied with their college experience.

A 54 percent overall student satisfaction rate at four-year private institutions, 53 percent rate at four-year public institutions, and 64 percent rate at two-year public institutions coincides with lower-than-desired retention and graduation rates at many institutions. See what’s driving students’ views. Download our 2017 National Student Satisfaction and Priorities Report.

Half to three-quarters of the incoming class brought immediate needs for support in 2016.

At the beginning of their first term, 49 percent of incoming freshmen wanted help with their writing skills, while 70 percent wanted help with selecting an educational plan to get a good job. Does your institution know the needs of its incoming students on day one for retention planning? Download our 2017 National Freshman Motivation to Complete College Report and its Addendum by Race/Ethnicity.

First-year programs, academic support, and one-on-one advising were top-rated strategies for retention and completion.

See two studies of what’s working in retention, including dozens of new benchmarks and ratings for 28 tactics, 30 management practices, and 13 population-specific programs for four-year, two-year, public, and private institutions. Download our 2017 Report: Effective Practices for Student Success, Retention, and Completion and our 2017 Student Retention Indicators: Benchmarks for First-Year, Second-Year, and Transfer Students.

Building a data-informed student success strategy is key to improving student retention and completion rates.

But which data should campuses collect, and how can they develop the action plans that will foster student success? Download our white paper, Achieving Student Success: Building a Framework for First-Year Students.

Find our enrollment management research online

Visit our website for all of our enrollment management research, reports, and white papers on trends, student behavior, and best practices.

Looking for strategic insights for meeting your enrollment and student success goals?

Schedule a free consultation with our enrollment management strategists. We can examine your challenges and discuss your next steps for student search and recruitment, financial aid awarding, student retention and completion, enrollment management planning, and more.
Ask for your free consultation.