More Enrollees Are Just a Phone Call Away

There could be tens of thousands of potential community-college students out there who haven’t enrolled yet, apparently because they never got around to completing the paperwork. A simple phone call could reel them in.

According to Education Dive, a recent presentation at the American Association of Community Colleges Annual Meeting described how several colleges decided to conduct a call campaign to reach two groups of prospective students: those who had applied but didn’t finish forms for financial aid and those who had submitted financial-aid papers but hadn’t enrolled in classes.

The results of the calls were pretty amazing. Hillsborough Community College in Florida, for example, increased enrollment by 745 students compared to the previous year, amounting to more than $3 million in revenue. San Juan College in New Mexico got 17% of the individuals called in the first semester to enroll; the percentage went up to 46% in the second semester. Like Hillsborough, San Juan enjoyed a nice bump in revenue, helping to keep the institution afloat as state support declines.

Schools that called students who had taken courses but not re-enrolled also saw similar results.

The effectiveness of the phone calls suggests that many students may need that extra point of contact to stay on track. Some may struggle with complicated forms and don’t know where to get assistance, some may have missed a deadline and weren’t sure how to proceed, while others may simply require a little more encouragement.

Gen Z Looking at Info on Majors/Minors

Generation Z is often described as pragmatic and cost-conscious. A 2017 study showed just how pragmatic those students are.

EAB Enrollment Services’ The New College Freshman Survey found that 70% of the 4,800 college freshmen surveyed said they visited college websites to find information about majors and minors, up 4% over the results of the 2015 poll. College costs came in a distant second (45%), followed by information on scholarships (25%), financial aid (24%), and general information about the school (21%).

The report also noted that students checking out college ads on social media sites are still very interested in information relating to majors and minors offered at the institutions. Just over 40% of the students said information on majors and minors was the most useful part of their social media search.

Other studies by EAB have found that Generation Z students select majors and minors that will have a stronger impact on their job prospects. That fits with a rise in the number of engineering and business majors that many colleges and universities are reporting. A study by New York University found that 12% of students switched to another field of study when presented data on what majors actually earn once they enter the workforce.

“One ‘so what’ of this New College Freshman Survey finding, and from the return-on-education phenomenon overall for that matter, is that colleges and universities should be thinking more deeply about the enrollment impact of their program portfolio choices,” Anika Olsen, an EAB consultant, wrote in a blog post. “We find that as many schools review their academic programs and make changes, they too seldom and too narrowly factor in market information from enrollment managers.”

Online Courses Solve Two Hi-Ed Problems

There is still a lot of debate and conflicting research on whether online higher education is as effective academically as in-classroom instruction. For some institutions, however, online courses are filling a two-part void.

A report on Education Dive noted a growing number of colleges are offering more online courses aimed specifically at nontraditional students. Those courses also are available to the colleges’ traditional-aged students, but the pool of new high school graduates has started to dwindle in line with the lower birthrate two decades ago.

The online courses not only help to bolster enrollment numbers (and revenue) for the schools, especially community colleges, they also open up educational opportunities for adults with full-time jobs and family responsibilities. These older students are often unable to fit classroom courses into their schedules.

The nature of online instruction also better enables colleges to adapt coursework to working adults’ needs, such as condensing courses so students can attain an associate degree sooner. For example, Riverland Community College in Minnesota created the FlexPace program to offer accelerated business courses, squeezing a semester’s worth of work into six weeks.

At Indiana Wesleyan University, the 12,000 online students outnumber the 2,700 who go to classes on campus. “What students like most is the flexibility,” said Lorne Oke, IWU’s executive director of the Center for Learning and Innovation. “There’s a significant change in the way students interact with learning and their expectations from a college.”