Ideas, insights and inspirations.

This blog post about how to recruit and enroll adult students was partly inspired by our work with forward thinking clients like Kathy Groves and Emily Horstman at William Woods University, Jacqui Spicer and DaRon Hairston at Baker College, Mollie Cecere at Carlow University, Brad Sims and Dianne O’Neill at Capitol Technology University, and Karen Nichols when she was at Limestone University. In increasing and significantly growing enrollment for adult programs for the past 25 years for over 25 colleges and universities, we have learned two things: First, students can’t buy your programs or buy-into your college unless they can find you; Second, you can’t bore students into enrolling in your college. Adult students are a very special breed of people. Life changed course and they couldn’t complete college, or they now see the realities of working life their younger selves couldn’t see before. Thus begins a new internal battle. PLAN: BEFORE YOU START OFFERING ADULT EDUCATION PROGRAMS 1. Acknowledge … Continue reading

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Clients with limited budgets often ask me, “Which programs should we focus our enrollment marketing efforts on?” The answer, I tell them, lies in the four Ps. People are at the core of any successful graduate and adult program. Engaged students require an engaged faculty. All successful programs have dynamic faculty and always have a program champion. The best program champions carry the torch on all academic and enrollment marketing efforts. Products are the items that satisfy a student’s needs or wants. You must determine how your product – your degree offerings, for example – is unique to the market and who is most likely to want what you’re offering. A great example of this is one of our clients, Concordia University in Irvine, CA, which was the first to market eight years ago with a master’s degree in Coaching and Athletic Administration. Today the program enrolls over 500 students online across the nation. Performance is based on the outcomes … Continue reading

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