How Graduate Enrollment Teams Are Adapting

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0:00:11.6 Beth Donaldson: Hello, and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. Today, our guests explore findings from EAB’s latest benchmarking survey of nearly 350 graduate enrollment professionals. The survey highlights a significant disconnect, between the graduate enrollment goals being set by university leaders, and the market realities confronting the frontline workers who have to meet those goals. Our experts offer advice to those frontline workers on how to apply the limited resources available to maximum effect. So give these folks a listen, and enjoy.

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0:00:50.7 Beth Donaldson: So hello, and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Beth Donaldson, and I’m the Managing Director of Adult Learner Consulting Services, and working as part of our EAB’s Adult Learner Recruitment Team. So today, I’d really love to be able to dig into the findings of a new benchmark survey that we were able to conduct, with more than 300 university leaders. We really wanted to learn about their enrollment goals, and the resources at their disposal to reach those goals. And with me today, is one of my favorite colleagues, Val, who’s going to help talk about the survey and the key findings that we were really able to ascertain from this survey.

0:01:37.9 Beth Donaldson: Val?

0:01:38.5 Val Fox: Hi, Beth. Thanks for having me. You know, I love joining you on these podcasts. It’s great to be here. Like Beth, I work in the Adult Learner Recruitment space, which means that I work with dozens and meet with dozens of campus leaders every month to talk about the challenges they’re facing, recruiting adults into degree completion programs and traditional on-ground and online graduate programs. And we partner with just over 200 university leaders in this space. And so these conversations are always very engaging because no two schools are alike. Their portfolios are all different. They’re trying to reach different kinds of students in different geographical regions. And so, I love being part of these conversations. And you’re right, Beth. I think we’ve got a great lineup today, based on the findings from the benchmarking survey.

0:02:36.4 Beth Donaldson: Wonderful. Val, you’re exactly right. Institutions are so different. Their goals are so different. But as I was looking at the survey, and correct me if I’m wrong on this, but I almost can’t remember a time when university leaders weren’t setting ambitious growth goals for their academic programs, and their total graduate enrollment, and they hadn’t always aligned their goals with the necessary resources to get the job done. Would you call that a fair characterization that you’re also seeing?

0:03:11.0 Val Fox: Yeah, I wish I was surprised by some of the results out of the benchmarking, but I wasn’t. And I’d say, this is the first time. So we have a lot of conversations. And so, lots of data points that tell us that schools have been categorically underinvesting in graduate enrollment management, as an operation relative to undergraduate. Okay? But this is the first time we’ve actually benchmarked graduate goals and associated budgets and headcounts, and then bumped those up against the EAB’s benchmarks for undergraduate budgets. And that’s what’s making this a particularly stark contrast at this point in time. Now, just a brief aside, I can tell you, and we’ve both been in higher ed, and I should have shared this earlier in my introduction, but I joined higher ed in 2012 as a chief marketing officer coming from industry. And I remember, it was very clear that the staff, the operation in marketing and communications was very oriented, to undergraduate.

0:04:21.6 Val Fox: And graduate was kind of something that just happened organically, and didn’t need a lot of resources and support until it did. But I think that’s very true for a lot of campuses. They’ve grown up around an undergraduate operation and organization, and now they’re finding themselves wanting to grow graduate because a few programs have done well. How do we invest in those? And so, this data out of the benchmarking, I’ll say, is really a reality check, confirms what we’ve known and suspected because we’ve had many, many conversations. But I’d say that, at this point in time, we’re really at an inflection point where graduate tuition revenue that’s generated at institutions across the U.S is nearly on par with undergraduate tuition revenue. But what we’re seeing, is this huge divide in terms of it’s really the operating structure for graduate enrollment is in it’s infancy compared to the well-oiled operation that is undergraduate enrollment. Do you think that’s fair Beth?

0:05:30.6 Beth Donaldson: I do. And Val, as a former Vice President of Enrollment Management, you’re kind of hitting to definitely, hitting a soft spot for me because you’re right. I spent, I would probably say, 80% of my time and my staff’s resources on growing undergraduate, and not putting as much time with graduate student enrollment. So that’s so very accurate and true. So we’ve kept the folks waiting long enough, and I want to be able for us to cover a lot. So let’s dive into the survey. Would love to start with providing just context for our listeners, but just a quick overview of how we conducted that survey. So in December, our adult learner research and recruitment teams were able to survey 343 university leaders. And these leaders were responsible for graduate enrollment, and they included provosts, Vice President of Enrollment Management, and deans at the institutions. In this particular survey, we were able to ask them 27 questions, and we really designed the survey to uncover both the trends about their organizational structure, resource allocation, and also their priorities for enrollment. And so, that was really our focus, and I think you’re gonna kind of give a little bit of tidbits of other things we were actually able to ascertain as well.

0:07:01.7 Beth Donaldson: And then I think, one significant takeaway that really stood out for myself and our other colleagues, is really that graduate enrollment teams are being asked to outperform the market. And you’re gonna get into what the enrollment trends that we’ve seen, Val, but this is really something that was eye-opening for us, because what we found is that those teams don’t have the resources in terms of their staffing, or the operating budget that they may need to see these outsized results. So Val, I’ll turn it over to you to go into more detail, to really talk about the tension and maybe even the conflict of enrollment teams being asked to meet these goals, with the current resources that they have.

0:07:50.8 Val Fox: I love the dramatic setup, Beth. Yes, the conflict indeed. Okay, here’s what the data bore out. Two-thirds of graduate enrollment leaders that we surveyed told us, they are tasked with growing graduate enrollment by more than 3% in the next three years, more than 3%. Meanwhile, according to the National Student Clearinghouse’s latest research, national graduate enrollment is expected to grow at 1.3% annually from now until 2032. So the majority of our respondents, these are folks leading and responsible for graduate enrollment, the majority told us, they have to outperform the market by almost 3X. And so, we then you’d think, okay well, are those the same folks that have an outsized budget?

0:08:42.8 Val Fox: Well, so let’s take a look there. We surveyed these respondents about their budgets, we learned the average budget for managing overall graduate and online enrollment is $912,000 a year. That represents about 21% of the average undergraduate budget for that function, which the average is $4.37 million a year. And so, to put a finer point on this stark difference, let’s remember again that at many institutions across the U.S, graduate tuition revenue is almost on par with undergraduate. Yet the budget’s about 21%.

0:09:25.7 Val Fox: Now, I know that we can say, well, we don’t, the level of financial aid and resources isn’t the same at the graduate level. Sure. But, I think that’s one of two points that really puts graduate at a disadvantage, graduate enrollment leaders at a disadvantage. The other one is staffing. So there’s budget. Yes, we can say that some of the undergraduate number is allocated to financial aid, but let’s just look at staffing as another, I think very clear, bright line. And here’s where I was also frankly, I was pretty dismayed. And as a former CMO, I really wanted to pay attention to, these are institutions who are being charged with growing a pipeline of students, prospective students. And so, that kind of work really sits with enrollment marketing. We asked our survey respondents, on average, how many number, what’s the staff in terms of FTE supporting that function, graduate enrollment marketing? And on average, they responded that they had 4.4 FTEs supporting all the marketing efforts involved in building that lead pipeline and then nurturing those leads, and inquiries to enrollment. And so, the survey showed that enrollment marketing staff must be generalists.

0:11:02.5 Val Fox: They’re managing multiple functions because for most of these functions, there’s fewer than one FTE that owns functions like digital marketing, paid search, or paid social search engine optimization, which is how the majority of students even learn about programs today, is through conducting a Google search, and increasingly AI-driven search. And so, less than one person is ensuring that your programs and program pages are optimized for search. We also have less than one person supporting copywriting that’s so critical for all sorts of digital content on your website and in your emails. So that signals to us that our teams are stretched. Our team members are wearing multiple hats, so it’s gonna be challenging for them to stay ahead and adopt emerging technology like AI and data analytics that’s really informing, and kind of creating more of a gap between laggards and leaders in this space. And so, one of the earliest pieces of content I reflect back, to something I created two years ago, shortly after joining EAB, and it was the Higher Ed CMO Staffing Playbook. And it came out of my observations of higher ed and how enrollment marketing has been chronically underfunded. When compared to more traditional marketing functions, like I think of communications, PR, and just branding.

0:12:30.3 Val Fox: Traditional marketing and communications functions, I should clarify. And one of the recommendations out of that playbook, was that CMOs should really be outsourcing functions that need scale and specialized skills. And so, here’s where the search engine optimization and the digital marketing and media, I think that really does fall into a category where leaders need to think about outsourcing that work when they are staffing it at the levels that need to be today. I think the last thing I’ll say about the survey in relation to staffing levels is that, we filtered, when we filtered the survey responses by those who met their graduate enrollment goals, the teams that met their goals disproportionately work with an external partner to support functions like recruitment marketing and SEO. So I thought that was encouraging. So Beth, there was a lot in there, but as a former Vice President of Enrollment Management, what’s your reaction to the survey responses when you think about staffing and budgets and resources and how low, frankly they are? What’s your take on all this?

0:13:48.5 Beth Donaldson: So what I found when I was looking at the survey, interesting enough, is that, I don’t think that this is necessarily something new in that enrollment and marketing teams are being asked to do more with less. But it definitely feels as though institutions are really being tasked with outsized results, with not only a leaner team, but a less tenured team members. And so, with such a smaller budget, and such a smaller team, who may not have the institutional knowledge or the skill set that we’ve seen in the past, it makes it even harder to reach these very aggressive goals in enrollment. And we talked a lot about specifically enrollment goals, but in the survey, we asked them about their other enrollment objectives. And one was increasing net tuition revenue. They wanted a higher net tuition revenue. And so, we’re not only trying to get more students, but get more students that can afford it and willing to pay. And that, was such a smaller team and not necessarily the budget to talk about the marketing of our programs, like our skill development or our outcomes and all of those things really important for success. So I think it’s definitely something that Vice President of Enrollment Managers are thinking about, and especially those that we surveyed for this particular marketing, enrollment goals and objectives. So yeah.

0:15:27.0 Val Fox: Well, I hear you on it’s not necessarily net new. I think that the contrast you pointed out, the tenure, their teams are doing more with less tenured and fewer staffers.

0:15:43.1 Beth Donaldson: Yes.

0:15:45.0 Val Fox: And, one of the things we also wanted to understand is, so if they are placing bets, where are they placing those bets with the limited operating budgets they have to allocate to, let’s say, lead sources? A lot of institutions are focused on growing that top of funnel pipeline for leads and inquiries. And so, when we looked at which lead sources institutional leaders are using and how they viewed the efficacy of those, we heard that digital media topped the list. 77% of survey responses said they’re using digital media, and they gave it the highest efficacy rating. Following that, we saw, and this was a surprise to me, so you go from digital, which is hyper, you can be hyper-targeted, you can be very, very clear. There’s a bright line between placement and impact. You click on a link, you come to a webpage, and you actually, hopefully you’re completing the intended action, but it’s a measurable goal. So digital media was number one. Next up in terms of adoption is outdoor and transit media. That was kind of a surprise to me, I’ll be honest, because that is very hard to measure, and felt very much more like a branding effort.

0:17:04.8 Val Fox: So outdoor media was next with 44% of leaders using that. And then there were pay-per-lead services, which are services like our own Appily, for example. Buying test taker list was number four. And then the number five of these lead sources was broadcast media. And I would also put broadcast media in the same camp as outdoor and transit media. Great for branding, very hard to measure as a lead source for a whole host of reasons. And we do great content on lead generation, and we can talk about, we’ve talked about these sources in particular and the pros and cons of each, but that was fairly surprising to me.

0:17:51.4 Val Fox: So I would encourage leaders who are listening to really think about the ability, if you have a small budget, and you can place fewer bets, I’d certainly be looking at the lead sources where you can target specific populations at even an individual level, which is retargeting. And I would be looking for sources where you have very strong attribution, meaning you can tie back the media buy to visits to your site that results in applications and eventually enrollments. So I think that was an area for me that said, hey, folks can be making their dollars work harder.

0:18:39.1 Val Fox: I also wanted to share that we not only looked and asked respondents to react to lead sources in terms of adoption and efficacy, we also asked them to look at lead sources and share with us their budget ranges for each. And I was concerned to see how many respondents told us they’re spending less than $25,000 per year across these lead sources, when they believe they’re effective and when they’re using them. So they’re placing lots of small bets, which to me signals underinvestment. I would probably wanna go big or go home in the one or two areas instead of trying to spread my money. And because digital media is really effective and our leaders told us they believe it’s effective, I would be plowing more of my budget into that tactic. And it was the one area where we saw that leaders are spending slightly more in the $25-50k year range. So I think those are kind of how I’d characterize seeing those investments, and maybe some ideas for how to make improvements there and make budgets work harder. What’s your take on that?

0:19:55.4 Beth Donaldson: No, that’s really great insight on just recommendations in terms of the spending level. And so, as you think about, that we saw universities are under investing in this marketing work. How can they put together a strong case to really invest more in enrollment marketing? And how can they make their limited resources really work harder, and go further in their efforts to meet their enrollment goals?

0:20:26.7 Val Fox: Okay, thank you. Yeah, I’ll answer that in two parts. I think first to make the case for enrollment marketing, I’d want whoever ultimately owns the graduate enrollment goals to be sitting down and really making sure that they’re engaged with the folks implementing the plan, that pipeline of prospects and applicants, whether that’s done in-house or through a third party partner like ALR or an agency. But look, having those people around the table, ’cause you wannna be able to nail down really two things. First, you need to map out your enrollment funnel, ideally for each graduate or adult degree completion program. You should know how many leads you typically need to generate, to get a certain number of applications based on your admit rate, and based on your yield rates. So it’s a big math equation. And so, from that, you can forecast approximately how many leads you need to generate to hit that enrollment target. And you might have some existing leads that you know you can continue to nurture, but there’s likely going to be a gap in the number of existing leads you have, and the leads you need at the top of the funnel.

0:21:42.2 Val Fox: And it’s the folks at that table, it’s their responsibility to close that gap. And so, those people at the table should know the average cost per lead, and that’s when you can go and make a case, here’s how many new leads we need to close the gap, and the average cost per lead. Having that as an estimate for the marketing budget you’ll need to kind of reach your top of the funnel lead generation goals is really critical. And I think having that is something a lot of schools are flying blind on, frankly. They don’t have a good sense for that. That I will just also share that that’s just considering the top of funnel lead generation. You could always and should always be doing optimization, so that those conversions from leads to applications and applications to admits and yield students, those conversions in the funnel are getting stronger all the time. So continuing to optimize that. So I would say that that, I think when you paint a picture very clearly with data, really should be helping schools make the case for this is what we need by program.

0:23:00.8 Val Fox: And they can then decide where to allocate. If they’re not able to get the funding they need, then again, make sure that their priority programs are getting the funding, but it will make a very, very clear data-driven case for what’s needed.

0:23:18.2 Beth Donaldson: And you said something so important, priority programs, helping to define what those are, understanding that, if those are your highest opportunities for growth. I think that should be the priority in your marketing spend, even though faculty may want us to spend the equal amount for each program, the reality is we don’t necessarily have the dollars to do that. So I think that that’s a really good point. Oh, I love that.

0:23:44.9 Val Fox: Thanks for emphasizing, yeah. Strategy is not spreading your dollars across every program equally. That’s not strategic.

0:23:54.9 Beth Donaldson: That’s exactly right. So you mentioned earlier, and it kind of just struck me, that a lot of the institutions that we’ve surveyed, or as you’re thinking about kind of the playbook that you’ve provided to institutions that we serve, have been strategic with outsourcing some of the functions of their marketing efforts. But I know that some of our listeners on the line are thinking about how they do all of this work in-house. And so, can you just talk a little bit about kind of as you see as a former CMO, what is needed in terms of staffing levels, to be able to do all of this work internally if you’re not outsourcing some of that?

0:24:41.5 Val Fox: That’s a really good question, Beth. I would not use the benchmarking results as the stake in the ground in terms of staffing models. I think that institutions that we meet with on a regular basis and quite frankly that we looked at the data, the institutions that are succeeding in meeting their graduate enrollment goals, have realized that the few staff they have on hand, are better served in higher order work, which requires a level of familiarity with the school, and often means supporting those students post application. And so, their admission counselors, they have folks that do email marketing, are doing all the heavy lift to yield the applicants and admitted students.

0:25:43.4 Val Fox: And so, that’s really, really critical work, the final mile, if you will, of enrolling that student. But most institutions are going to have a really tough time if the average headcount number is in the four to five range, to really be able to do the work that’s required at scale, to reach the volume of leads in a super sophisticated and very digital data-driven way that successful teams need to be able to adopt today.

0:26:24.4 Beth Donaldson: Wow, that is so helpful in our conversation. And just as we think about kind of recapping for what we really saw as the key takeaways, that’s first and foremost. Really thinking about how we really saw that institutions’ infrastructure and their staffing resources, have really not kept pace with the demanding increase in enrollment goals. And not just enrollment headcount goals, but as we discussed before, higher net tuition revenue. And so, really thinking about how that’s lagged with the institution’s need to grow graduate enrollment, to really support some of those declines and mitigate the declines that we’ve seen on the undergraduate side.

0:27:15.6 Beth Donaldson: And then really being thoughtful about staffing level. The balance between what you can do internally with the expertise and the skill sets that you have on your marketing and enrollment team, and what may be some items within your strategic and marketing plan that you can outsource to a trusted external partner, who can really help you to do this work at scale and be a partner in terms of innovation in the work that you do from enrollment to marketing, I think is really important. And then as we really think about it, institutions as they want to grow graduate, really need to be thoughtful about the spending and the percentage of the graduate budget versus the undergraduate budget, as we really need to move the needle in growing and reaching adult learners.

0:28:08.2 Beth Donaldson: And we know that they can be anywhere. In that early stage of consideration. And so, we need a longer runway to nurture them across the finish line. And something else that you said it was just really important to note, is that data is king. And so, institutions using data such as the context of how fast graduate enrollment is growing, which programs are growing, which programs may not. And then also the data of your marketing spend. The cost per lead, the cost per click, really being important to set those key performance metrics, and really to be able to see what’s working so that we can be informed and making changes to our strategic decisions in the future. Is there anything else Val, that you would add or feel that?

0:29:01.6 Val Fox: I would just, I think you summed it up really, really well. I would just use this as a point for me, if I were hearing this and I was back on a college campus, I would wanna hit pause and just really make sure, I think it’s a good point in time, especially as we close out the academic year where we’re talking right now at that time of year, but to hit pause and really use the time to think how can I best deploy the limited resources I have, and to do a better job making the case for, if you need to grow at a disproportionate rate, your graduate enrollment relative to undergrad, how are you gonna make the case to really advocate for the kind of resources and support you need, and bring as much data as you can to that table.

0:29:55.6 Beth Donaldson: Great. Thanks, Val. It’s always so great to sit down with you, and to just pick your brain. You have such great insight and intel, and so glad that we were able to kind of share the survey results for our listeners today.

0:30:11.4 Val Fox: Same, Beth. Thank you. Great to see you and talk to you again.

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