EdTek Services, Inc.

When we begin the marketing part of our Operations Assessment one of our first questions is “What is your value proposition” this question sometimes illicits more blank faces than answers. If you think your institution has a value proposition, try the following test. If you ask this same question in your next staff meeting, you will find as many unique and different answers as there are people in the room. To make sure you get the best answers ask your team to write their answers down and collect them when completed.

When beginning a branding development process you should prepare for resistance. Resistance will likely occur where the cross roads meet between “What Your Audience Values” and “Your Strengths” as these two items are sometimes different. Your staff will also have different opinions about the strenghts offered by your institution and your students may value a similar but different range of items. The mere suggestion of a branding development process will make some employees uncomfortable as even the most mild potential for change can be threatening to some.

What Your Audience Values

This gets to the heart of education itself. Why do students enroll at your institution, and what do they hope to get out of the experience? An institution that begins with these questions and makes a concerted effort to get to the real answers will be on their way to identifying their brand and value proposition. The shared governance structure in non-profit education should be very successful at managing the process to get these answers but they are not always successful in doing so. Likewise, the situational leadership and “top-down” management style in corporately owned for-profit institutions typically have a keen awareness of their brand identity; one weakness is they may not factor in the opinions of students well enough.

Your Strengths

Getting faculty, administration and staff members together to identify departmental then institutional strengths can be an insightful and fun time for all involved. Finding where the key stakeholders’ identified strengths meet what the audience thinks is important is where an institution will find its brand promise and resulting value proposition.

Problems

• If students do not value the institutions' strengths, then perhaps the institutions needs to focus on developing additional strengths

• Students may not identify an institutional strength; this may be an indicator of success, but this does not mean we stop this process as brand management is a continual effort

Shared Governance – sometimes the appearance of shared governance is just that, an appearance. While too much ‘shared governance’ leads to a failure to make decisions, a balance is required. In terms of Situational Leadership and the “top-down” approach to management in for-profit institutions, a leader may spend too much time telling and directing and not enough time listening. Again, balance is required for successfully managing your Brand Identity – perhaps the most critical element of your public image.

Finally, we believe if conducted more frequently than a strategic planning process, a continuous analysis of what students want, what an institution is delivering on and how each aligns with the institutional mission can be a very healthy undertaking for an education provider.

Labels: accreditation admissions admissions consulting blackboard college board education consultants higher education Online learning marketing vice president for enrollment management

1/19/2010
Dominick Miciotta
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Ten Things Higher Education Leaders Must Consider

1.A national accreditation review may be just as rigorous as a regional accreditation review as participating schools are subject to increasing outcomes based accountability.

2.The demographics that make up your student body are changing rapidly and this has implications for your admissions/marketing efforts, specifically by the year 2018/2019 white high school graduates will become the minority.

3.Educational outcomes among racial and ethnic groups in the United States are significantly lower than white groups and for our nation to remain competitive, we must work to close the racial achievement gap

4.Parent education and family income continue to be two primary factors that can predict and influence educational attainment and academic achievement.

5.Racial Identity Development is a real process people go through no matter what their race is part of preparing your graduates to compete in a more diverse world may include incorporating theories on this subject into your first year experience or other curricular areas.

6.A best practice for online program/degree delivery is to integrate academics with on-ground campus operations but separate operational student service areas.

7.Your institutions operational budget should be on a Proforma model especially when entering into a strategic planning phase. Understanding revenue and expenses based on program, enrollment, retention and other variables, over the course of 2-4 years, will assist leaders with making granular level decisions that are critical to achieving strategic objectives.

8.Every employee should have key performance metrics.

9.A graduation rate of 55% within 6 years of entering a four-year program is a BAD THING.

10.Admitting students to your institution simply because they met the enrollment criteria has a direct impact on student success and retention.

Labels: accreditation admissions beverly daniel tatum college board education consultants education consulting elearning software higher education

1/13/2010
Dominick Miciotta
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Literacy, Teaching, Technology and the Impact on Women and Children

What is the role of Women's Literacy on their children's health and education attainment? How can technology specifically eLearning software impact the racial achievement gap? How can technology influence pedagogy and ultimately customize education for individuals on a global scale?

Labels: accreditation accreditation consulting beverly daniel tatum blackboard college board ecollege Education elearning software its learning women's literacy

5/11/2009
Dominick Miciotta
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No Way out of Debt for US Colleges???? -Phooey!

In an October 2007 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education a venture capitalist was asked if the trend of VC's or "for-profit" organizations purchasing non-profit institutions would continue. To paraphrase, the reply was essentially "no."

The Problem with the Tides

That was then. Maybe our VC's answer had to do with an honest opinion or perhaps it was motivated by a wish to undercut interest in this potentially lucrative investment opportunity. The motivation doesn't matter as what may be true one day may change completely a short time later, as reliable as the changing tides.

In recent weeks we have learned of the purchase of Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire by Indianapolis based ITT/ESI, Inc. as well as the purchase of Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa to the for-profit Columbia Southern University in Orange Beach, Alabama. The College of Santa Fe in New Mexico was recently saved when a group of local investors purchased the institution and made a deal with the for-profit Laureate Education to manage academic programs.

Virtually every institution is impacted in one way or another by the recession and its economic impact. The ability of institution and academic leaders to morph into change agents within their organizations has never been more critical. Failure to make this change may have some potentially sobering effects. In the best case, they will merge with bigger schools; sell themselves to for-profit organizations or offer vocational training that elite colleges eschew, says Sandy Baum, a senior policy analyst at the College Board.

In the worst case, they will shut down permanently.

Does this describe YOUR institution?

The institutions in greatest danger of shutting down include many small non-profit, tuition driven institutions that without a significant reputation or clear value proposition may be found heaving with debt from a decade of luxury building. Moody's has downgraded or has a number of such institutions on its "watch list" while Fall 2008 to Spring 2009 retention rates took a historic dip and assets were frozen and/or lost significant value. Standard & Poor's predicts bankruptcies will rise from the typical one or two schools that fold each year.

"Small colleges with no reputation could go out of business," said Baum. "They're very tuition driven, so if they can't get tuition revenues, they'll be in really bad shape."

A Change Agents' Top Five Solutions:

1. Program Review: Look at relevance and either update or eliminate your degree programs. What does your pipeline on new program development look like? How do you compare with competitors?

2. Key metric performance: Ask each VP to come up with metrics to manage every staff member in their departments. You may be startled at what they come up with (or don't come up with).

3. Retention: this is the low hanging fruit. They are there already, why can't you keep them? Be honest!

4. Tuition roll-backs: Before you raise tuition, first cut back on underperforming areas and see how that impacts your budget. Take a look at the various "no frills" degree offerings to help off-set and reduce tuition expenses for working students and families.

5. Realigning Budget management: It still shocks me that institutions cut or cap enrollment at programs with high demand because of budget cuts. Does your institution do this? If so, fire your VP of Finance, they don't understand how to manage a modern higher education budget.

A Change Agent's Top Challenge: Speed!

Significant concessions must be made and artful diplomacy with key stake holders must be achieved regardless of union contracts in order for institutions to move through these challenges with the speed and dexterity required to navigate the significant challenges they face. Despite diplomacy and concessions you will still find "hold-outs" who cannot or will not move quicker. These personalities have single handedly caused the closure of a number of institutions around the country. Leadership must develop a strategy to get everyone on board with being a "speedy" change agent or their efforts will be in vain.

The anxiety associated with facing such challenges may seem too much. A group therapy session of sorts may be required before all the players come to acknowledge the reality of their situation. This acknowledgement will be required before any significant action can occur that will put the institution on better ground. Human resource offices may be engaged with the kind of personnel development and culture change management they have not practiced previously.

All areas of the campus community must be integrated into the solution for a solution to work. For more ideas and information about this or related topics, please contact Dominick Miciotta at Dominick@edtekservices.com

Labels: affordability college board Cost of Higher Education Education higher education

4/7/2009
Dominick Miciotta
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Do Flashy Acceptance Letters Result in More, Quality Enrollments?

From text messages to videos, games, and confetti filled game tubes, America’s colleges and universities are increasingly creative when sending out acceptance letters. This trend of creativity with informing prospective students of their acceptance is apparently coming at the expense of denials.

Is this “creative renaissance” on the part of enrollment leaders, an expression of creative freedom, or the sign of true innovation meeting its ceiling? In order to attract college qualified students in a shrinking demographic and a troubled economy does spending money on flashy ways to inform a prospective student of their acceptance really secure the class the institution desires? Or is it a way that allows institutional leaders to feel like they are innovating enrollment when really they are just adding another expense line to their budget.

Here are some ways for non-profit institutions to improve their acceptance to start ratio without paying for games, prizes, videos and customized merchandise:

Focus on your target demographic and employ a communications strategy that speaks directly to them
Personalize communications by having professional admissions personnel interact with them throughout the enrollment process
Avoid delegating communications to your student volunteer “Admissions Ambassadors”
Develop an enrollment process flow and write scripts for your admissions staff on what conversation to have, with whom, and when (in the process)
1. Telling your staff to just make phone calls without providing a written guideline for what should be covered is asking for inefficiency
Establish conversion metrics for each member of your staff and if they cannot make calls in the fall and spring because they are on the college tour circuit… stop participating in the college tour circuit, you will find a tremendous improvement in your conversions by freeing up this valuable time (and it will save you A LOT of money)

For more ideas about how to improve enrollment conversions without adding to your expenses contact: dominick@edtekservices.com .

Labels: accreditation accreditation consulting Admissions criteria college board EdTek education consultants higher education Online learning marketing

3/27/2009
Dominick Miciotta
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A Word About Assessment & SAT Scores

Do students achieve the stated learning objectives? What is the percentage of faculty with terminal degrees? What is the acceptance rate? What College Board http://www.collegeboard.com/ tier groups comprise your new class? We see program assessment, classroom assessment and the noted "general" assessment categories. Each provides a set standard of practices and a schedule for reporting results. When navigating the minefield of assessment with an eye that is focused on what's important, how do we determine what counts?

The answer may be an easy, 'it depends on your perspective' but if we had to select one assessment of the higher education experience, what would (or should) it be?

Those of us who work in higher education are aware of the challenges of pleasing multiple constituencies: administrators, trustees, directors, regulators, accreditation commissions, faculty governance, unions and not to mention students and their parents. We debate assessment regularly. This article discussed the issue of making SAT scores optional during the admissions process http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/26/sat. In this case we are assessing the validity and impact on making SAT scores optional as an admissions requirement. This is an important issue to discuss and the early results of this study appear to reveal what we could have guessed: dropping the SAT as an admissions requirement increases diversity and average GPA's of the incoming class and in public institutions results in higher academic achievement. Great! All public institutions should drop the SAT as a requirement. Since public institutions are usually more affordable and dropping this requirement increases diversity and diverse populations tend to have a greater financial need, from an enrollment marketing perspective, this is a win-win-win situation.