January 4, 2007
High Schoolers Clamor for Higher-Tech College Recruitment
If colleges really want to win the affection of prospective students, they ought to rip a page from the playbook used by Facebook and MySpace, says a new report.
The study, "Engaging the Social Networking Generation," found that 43 percent of 1,000 collegebound juniors have created Facebook-esque personal profiles on college Web sites. And of the students who hadn't done so, nearly half said they wished they could.
The report was sponsored by the National Research Center for College and University Admissions, along with Noel-Levitz, a consulting firm, and James Tower, a marketing company. According to Diverse, the survey respondents seem excited about nearly any college recruitment scheme, as long as it is high-tech. Fifty-four percent of the students said they would gladly download college podcasts, 63 percent said they would read a blog written by a professor, and 82 percent said they would consider responding to an instant message from a college admissions officer.
Taking advantage of all those online tools is certainly easier said than done for many high schoolers, but the apparent enthusiasm about high-tech recruitment should encourage colleges that are already beefing up their Web sites with an eye on wooing Millennials. --Brock Read
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New year, old news?
The report was published more than 2 months ago… and has already generated some interesting feedback from higher ed web and marketing pros.
— Karine Joly - collegewebeditor.com Jan 4, 09:12 PM #
As a graduate student who is not that much older than high school seniors, I would just like to add that I think the use of MySpace and other related tools is not simply indicative of students who want to play with or professionally utilize technology.
In fact, I think they/we are interested in “social networking, but I think that underpinning this interest is something deeper: a set of beliefs and values or a general culture that appreciates social capital, brute honesty, transparency, an appreciation of the professional nature of personal experiences and reflection upon those experiences, and a recognition of the importance of the so-called “soft skills.”
If Universities want to be successful at not only recruiting these folks, but perhaps more importantly – retaining them – the Universities need to think not only about how to “recruit” these students but also how to continually and innovatively create an organizational-institutional culture that will foster and encourage these changing values. These young people are trying to re-define what constitutes “professionalism,” and the use of these spaces is I think a consequence of these changing values and norms that institutions would do well to be privy to.
— Tara Petrie Jan 5, 02:42 PM #