This time around, I am deviating from the topic of athletics and writing about another topic I know a little about – marketing, pricing, financial aid, and student success in higher education. In my current position, I oversee an enrollment shop that incorporates admission, financial aid, student success, and the communication of institutional value proposition. I have held this role at two institutions and have successfully led shops that surpassed new student enrollment targets and efforts that led to institutional highs in first-year retention and six-year graduation rates.
In communicating the value proposition and marketing an institution, I have often heard institutional leaders articulate statements like, “why couldn’t we be more like” institution x? Or, “how did” institution x “become successful”? What I have found is that the articulation of an authentic value proposition is critical via a variety of media. This comes from internal institutional research that draws out the true character and nature of an institution. Trying to be like institution x, from my perspective, is a fool’s errand as it not only attempts to copy-cat a value proposition but fails to capture the true essence of what makes an institution unique.
Next, pricing and awarding financial aid at an institution is dependent upon the value proposition. Some institutions have attempted to cut their tuition or price. While an interesting idea given the escalating cost of higher education, it is often nothing more than a marketing gimmick to stimulate demand in the short term. It is not a sustainable pricing strategy. The question becomes, what do you do in year two and three after a price cut? Also, if a portion of the student body currently pays full tuition, cutting the price essentially gives the full paying population an unnecessary discount thus reducing overall tuition revenue. The more strategic approach is to award financial aid in a way that truly assesses a family’s financial need and awards both merit and need-based aid in a way that provides opportunities for students to enroll from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds.
Last is what I consider to be the golden calf of higher education – student success. I have written on this topic before in discussing chasing US News rankings versus addressing student success from a mission perspective. Addressing or taking on student success results in increased tuition revenue and meets to achieve institutional mission objectives. Addressing student success begins with ensuring a formal exit interview is in place to begin to understand the causes of student attrition. Academic, financial, student oriented? Many times, there are a confluence of factors but without a formal exit interview, the institution is left guessing or hypothesizing about causes. Next, the work involves data analysis. Having student information systems in place that track academic progress, financial need, and student involvement or engagement is critical to understanding persistence. With this data, models can be developed to track and identify attrition causes as well as at-risk for attrition students. This can lead to intervention efforts that address the attrition causes. Last, institutional leadership of the student success effort is needed. It can be a committee of collaborative areas, but it ought to still have a point person who guides the effort. Short of this, there is no accountability or focused charge to steer the ship.
While this month’s topic only scratches the surface of these initiatives, it provides some meaningful insight to guide institutional leaders on where to begin and how to take these topics on for the long-term sustainability of their institutions. Hopefully, the thoughts I shared here provide the incentive to begin addressing how to ensure institutional sustainability.
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