Part 6
Colleges become marketing “gurus”!
As with the rise of international students, the “nationalization” of campuses is no accident. Sandwiched between the Baby Boom and the Echo was a significant dip in the birth rate. These students first arrived on college campuses beginning in the 1980’s. Determined not to compromise either the quantity or quality of the classes they accepted during this era, admissions offices across America made their first real foray into marketing. Outstanding athletes had long been recruited but recruiting other students was an entirely new effort. Colleges developed talent identification, direct mail, road show and advertising campaigns designed to attract a more diverse and attractive pool of applicants. Not accustomed to this new role, the introduction of marketing was initially awkward for many of the nation’s most prestigious schools but within a decade they were sophisticated players in the process. Eventually the efforts reached full maturity and are continued on most campuses today even though the dip in the college age population has now become a surplus! Unfortunately, in a pre-internet world, even the most sophisticated of marketing efforts was expensive, labor intensive, and limited.
The maturing internet changed the rules dramatically. Almost overnight, technology put cost effective and highly sophisticated marketing capability within the reach of even modest college budgets. The affordability of this marketing leveled the playing field among colleges putting even more pressure on the traditionally most popular schools to redouble their recruiting efforts and defend their claim to the nation’s top high school seniors. The internet has assisted colleges in reaching students who were, until recently, far outside of the cast of their recruiting net. Today, potential applicants can easily explore every aspect of a college, including virtual campus tours, on line chat with current students, blogs from the admissions office, pod casts of classes and a host of other opportunities. The web provides a potential applicant with a much richer and more honest exposure to the colleges they are considering than the glossy brochure of the recent past. Given this new format for colleges to reach students and students to explore colleges, it should come as no surprise that schools find more and more applications with addresses well beyond their traditional reach.
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