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Why “aggressive enrollment” may be the future

Increased pressure on higher-ed admissions teams could be driving aggressive enrollment practices

enrollment-practices [1]When it comes to communicating with prospective students, nonprofit higher education institutions outperform for-profits on key inquiry response benchmarks, according to “Comparing Inquiry Response Strategies at Nonprofit and For-Profit Higher Education Institutions,” a two-part secret shopper study on responsiveness to student inquiries.

However, both nonprofit and for-profit schools underperformed on other important factors, frustrating prospective students and limiting their enrollment potential.

The study was conducted by Velocify, a cloud-based intelligent enrollment management software, and Enrollment Resources, which helps institutions improve enrollment management practices.

“With enrollment down across the board, attracting enough qualified applicants is a key admissions issue for most colleges and universities, whether proprietary or nonprofit,” said Martin Lind, director of the education vertical at Velocify. “Though the nonprofit schools surveyed were, overall, much more responsive than the stereotype would dictate, there is a substantial opportunity to improve performance across most of the benchmarks, especially speed-to-call, persistence and inbound call user-experience.”

(Next page: How nonprofit and for-profit institutions differ on enrollment practices–and how they’re the same)

Part one of the study evaluated the admissions practices at 10 for-profit and 10 nonprofit schools. A total of 100 website inquires (five inquiries per school) were submitted during the school’s business hours. Velocify evaluated each school on four key performance indictors: speed-to-first-call, speed-to-first-email, number of call attempts, and number of emails sent. Each school was evaluated against established best practices.

The study revealed a number of key findings:

Part two of the study looked at the prevalence of productive communications best practices during the enrollment process, evaluating the same 10 for-profit and 10 nonprofit schools. A productive, personalized discovery conversation with a prospective student supports their decision process and builds excitement and enthusiasm for a school’s programs.

The researchers examined whether the admissions advisor who answered the phone requested key contact information, asked questions that invited a prospective student to begin the career clarification process, and whether they asked to advance the enrollment process for inquiries that seemed like a good fit.

The study found a variety of response strategies, many less than stellar were employed:

“When it comes to phone contact, many schools underperformed against both their peers and best practices, which limits the effectiveness of their enrollment management efforts,” said Greg Meiklejohn, Enrollment Resources’ co-founder and CEO. “Well-qualified inquiries are being lost through lack of contact strategy precision, benign neglect and transactional–instead of personalized–communications.”

A complimentary copy of the complete study can be downloaded directly from Velocify’s website [2].