February 5, 2008

Marketing Expert Warns College Leaders of Coming 'Perfect Storm'

Washington — Adapt, or else.

That’s the message Robert A. Sevier delivered today at the annual meeting here of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

Mr. Sevier, senior vice president for strategy at Stamats Inc., a higher-education marketing firm, described a “perfect storm” that would affect future recruiting strategies. The three components: changing demographics, rising costs of attending college, and increased competition for applicants.

Colleges that serve only full-time undergraduates will struggle to survive unless they have a large endowment or widespread name recognition, Mr. Sevier said. After all, an abundance of traditional students seems unlikely to last.

Mr. Sevier cited data from the National Center for Education Statistics, which projects the number of high-school graduates will reach an all-time high in 2009, but then begin to decline steadily the following year. While some states, such as California, Florida, and Texas, will see big increases in traditional-age students over the next 10 years, others — including Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — will face a drop in high-school graduates.

To adapt, Mr. Sevier said, colleges must look to six growth areas: minority students, adults (including senior citizens), commuter students, part-timers, international students, and women of all ages.

The key to survival in an increasingly competitive field? Mr. Sevier insisted that though some colleges might hesitate to accentuate their differences, marketing campaigns that emphasize distinctiveness resonate with students more strongly than do broader, generic messages.

“You’ve got to be different,” he said, “in ways that they care about.” —Eric Hoover

Comments

1. Bob Sevier is right. The 1600 four-year private colleges need to be much more creative in offering an education that meets the needs of new markets.

   — Bob    Feb 5, 03:35 PM    #

2. I’m surprised that addressing the disappearance of young men is not mentioned as part of the (lack of) growth problem.

   — R. W.    Feb 5, 03:37 PM    #

3. And where is the mention of distance education in the list of alternatives? Perhaps it was just a method as opposed to a target group. But it should be right at the top of the list…and at the top of the list for changes in tenure and promotion policies.

   — Al    Feb 5, 03:37 PM    #

4. All of the reports of late that I have seen have said there are more women enrolled in college than men. So why is “women of all ages” a target demographic?

   Seems a little to PC for me.

   — DW    Feb 5, 03:55 PM    #

5. I would not be so quick to rush into any kind of panic mode on this. Many of us recall the 1970’s and early 80’s when, it was abundantly clear, the impending, and truly severe, decline in the 18-22 year-old market would soon quite literally be the death of many schools. I recall hearing either Bob Zemsky (I believe, with Penny O’Dell and their work “The Structure of College Choice”) or George Keller, talk seriously about how “we could lose an Ivy.” This was really frightening demographics. FAR, far beyond anything we’re seeing from 2009 onward now. And so, what happened? The years of demographic decline turned out to be good years, and truly golden ones for many, of the colleges that served traditional-age students. This talk of “perfect storm” has all the ear-marks of the impending disaster for higher ed, plunging enrollments, loss of traditional age students, etc. I’ll venture a bet – calamity is NOT in the wings and waiting to pounce. Come 2015, enrollments and admissions will be as healthy as they are today, if not more so. If the huge decline in the demography that did, of course, occur, exactly as forecast, from 1978 through 1994 did not do anything like the damage it was expected to do, why believe that the relatively small, to tiny, declines we see coming now are going to be anything of consequence? Although, one consequence that the so-called “Baby-Bust” demography definitely DID have: it made millionaires out of a large number of admissions and marketing consulting firms, and people working in them, like Stamats. The potential for economic downturn, to disaster, to affect colleges really IS present. But not the demography.

   — Seen It All Before    Feb 5, 03:56 PM    #

6. None of this is news, and higher education will survive nicely as it has for centuries. Though higher education may be slow to adapt, it does adapt. More than that, it seems to thrive in adverse circumstances. In California, we have been “adapting” to this reality for years now, even with increased enrollments of traditional students. At my institution (a CSU) we have addressed every one of those “growth areas,” and more. I hope someone didn’t pay this guy a lot of money for this speech. I also hope that university leaders would have figured this out on their own long ago.

   — J.R.    Feb 5, 04:04 PM    #

7. Two responses.

   First, women are a target demographic precisely because they are increasingly enrolling in higher education. Men aren’t because they don’t (and, when they do enroll, they persist at lower rates). It’s the data, not PC. I’d like to see many more men enrolled, but if I have limited funds for marketing, I’m going to go after the demographics (like women) who are more likely to enroll and persist.

   Second, this is not the 70s. Increasing rates of college attendance offset declines in the number of high school graduates. Here in Pennsylvania, the college participation rate for recent high school grads doubled between 1965 and 2000. Now at 75%, the rate has levelled off and it is unclear how much higher it could realistically go. In much of central and western Pennsylvania, high school graduates will decline 20% in the next decade. My university is taking this trend very seriously.

   — Jim    Feb 5, 04:25 PM    #

8. The people who made this report, get profits if alarm spreads—they consult to worried execs at higher ed institutions. It pays them to spread panic. Thus, the perfect storm is their perfect profit. We can dismiss everything this man says in both public and private life. He lacks all integrity. But that is what consultants are, right? They are people bendable enough to tell ANY customer what that customer wants to hear or will bear fear-ing.

   Secondly, about more women than men entering higher ed—I welcome it. As a manager in industry I started with a group roughly 50/50 men/women and ended five years later with that group 10/90 men/women. I found men unreliable, monkey-like in basing all their behaviors on hormonal prides, and given to petty status competitions so they ALWAYS forsaked the goal for issues of personal status. Women, while by no means ideal employees, generally kept promisses, they did what they said. A manager can go a long way with just reliability in people; farther than she/he can go with great talent shackled to a testicular pride/territory/status/aggression system. If we had enough wars, we would lose enough men that all this would not be a problem—William James said 100 years ago.

   — Richard Tabor Greene    Feb 5, 04:43 PM    #

9. Mr Greene,
   We are taking your rights as a male away. You have to pee sitting down now…
   The way I see it the adult market is key, and we need to be able to reach out and provide affordable access to more students.
   What do students want? Safety in knowing that their money is well spent in an education program that provides a positive ROI.
   Opportunity costs prevent adults from returning full-time so we need to beef up part -time and distance opportunities.
   My two cents, apologies Mr. G. You can pee standing!

   — Good ol' Bubba    Feb 5, 05:04 PM    #

10. Why is it that when I read numbers like those in “I found men unreliable, monkey-like in basing all their behaviors on hormonal prides, and given to petty status competitions so they ALWAYS forsaked the goal for issues of personal status. “see the universal qualifier “all,” and am faced with the word “ALWAYS” in full caps, I get a little dubious

    — Richard E. Hennessey    Feb 5, 05:22 PM    #

11. Come now, Mr Hennessey! Surely you’re not questioning the methodology of Mr Greene’s carefully-controlled anecdotal study?

    — Gustave    Feb 5, 06:30 PM    #

12. Perhaps Mr. Green is really just breathtakingly bad at screening male candidates during the interviewing process and as a consequence always ends up with awful ones.

    — J. Ward    Feb 5, 06:40 PM    #

13. I would have to agree with comment 5 above—the perfect storm is the end to the US’s two-decade-long investment bubbles. University endowments that are worth more than many countries might survive, but others are in for a world of hurt.

    — Charles Jannuzi    Feb 5, 08:54 PM    #

14. All you have to do is read SURVIVAL KIT FOR INVISIBLE COLLEGES which first appeared in 1973, then revised in 1980. These strategies work!

    — Norbert    Feb 5, 09:50 PM    #

15. Maybe I’m missing something here, but why would one target women as a demographic group when they are already enrolling? That seems counter-intuitive to me. By analogy, why would the US Army sponsor a NASCAR team when most enlistees already watch NASCAR? Target another group, yes?

    — Greg    Feb 5, 10:31 PM    #

16. There is a simple explanation for Mr. Greene’s “study.” He hired males for the attractiveness and females for their qualifications.

    — John    Feb 5, 10:42 PM    #

17. Actually Mr. Greene just irritated some men on this network not used to having something they were born with, challenged. My bias is simple—any human who defends traits from when, where, and how he was raised, including gender, nationality, etc. is uneducated—by definition. Educatedness, as defined to my by a few datasets of people a lot more respectable than me, was 1/64th “leaving home” in the sense of “having” rather than “being” (Kegan, In Over Our Heads, Harvard U Press ten or so years ago) their gender! Sorry I left out the reference, I assumed everyone on this net was thusly “educated”.

    — Richard Tabor Greene    Feb 6, 09:45 AM    #

18. Twaddle, Mr. Greene, even when wrapped in edu-speak, is still twaddle.

    — J. Ward    Feb 6, 12:45 PM    #

19. Mayby there are jus too many colleges than the country really needs, and maybe youth would be better off is they folded rather than allow then to continue to take unqualified students’s money and give
    them nothing but a worthless degree and student loan debt.

    — KCG    Feb 6, 10:36 PM    #

20. Judging from the errors in some of these responses, I think we should also run some people through college a second time.

    — michael    Feb 8, 07:04 AM    #

21. Michael: I agree, although I suggest that they repeat high school.

    — Paul    Feb 11, 11:01 AM    #

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