Plus, some slides from Morning Consult. Plus, some advice about marketing and branding for the demographic cliff.
Issue 2
Yield Rates Continue to Drop
According to this really insightful data reporting, it’s not just you. Everyone’s yield rates are falling.
Most interesting, it covers a concept called “draw rate,” and says:
Draw rate is intended to show fake, artificially deflated admit rates. I’ve written about this a lot, but essentially if you try to look more selective than you are by pumping up soft applications, you’ll take a hit on yield. I like Draw rate because it really helps sort out institutions at the top of the pecking order by looking beyond admit rates: The average industry draw is 0.37. Meanwhile, Harvard is 25; Stanford is 22; Penn is 10; Northwestern is 7.6.
Over time, the national draw rate has fallen, from 0.66 to 0.37. At the Big 13, it’s gone from 3.0 to 14. The race is over, folks.
The site’s interactive graphs are quite good too.
Quality Survey Data from Morning Consult
In case you missed the American Marketing Association Symposium on Marketing of Higher Education in Chicago last month — or missed the great presentation by data firm Morning Consult — their slides are online.
I went, and it was deeply insightful. So much so that I plan to write about the partisan trust divide in Forbes.
But if you’re in higher education enrollment, or marketing, you should absolutely look at slides 6, 8 and 13. One shows, for example, that prospective college students trust online and social media influencers more than teachers and counselors.
Social Media Strategy and the Demographic Cliff
Over at the Social Media Strategies Summit, there’s a very nice article on how branding and social media can help schools prepare for and navigate the demographic cliff.
The article is based on a presentation given by Dr. Carrie Phillips:
the Chief Communications and Marketing Officer of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
For her dissertation, Dr. Phillips researched marketing strategies that universities can use to mitigate the looming cliff.
It’s good because it’s not just a review of facts. It has some very specific recommendations for recruitment and enrollment leaders as well as marketing and communications teams. It’s well worth checking out.
