Research
Insights and resources to drive change on campus
For over a decade, our goal has been the same: enable education leaders to solve their most pressing issues by leveraging original research that informs and guides strategic decision making.
Our dedicated teams stay ahead of an ever-shifting landscape by conducting original best practice research. Rather than simply reporting unfiltered findings, our deliverables—such as diagnostic tools, on-campus presentations, and whitepapers—provide clear, actionable recommendations and advice.
Explore our diverse offering of research forums that focus on critical priorities across terrains:
Serves: Provosts and academic affairs leaders
Areas of Focus: Curricular and program innovation, student success, faculty development, academic resource allocation
Serves: Chief advancement officers and their teams
Areas of Focus: Major gifts and pipeline development, annual giving, alumni engagement
Serves: Vice presidents of finance and administration
Areas of Focus: Budget models, financial and management dashboards, efficiency and effectiveness
Serves: Community college presidents and their teams
Areas of Focus: Student outcomes, future enrollments, and a financially sustainable enterprise
Serves: Superintendents and other district leaders
Areas of Focus: Student mental health, college access, teacher recruitment
Serves: Vice presidents of enrollment management, recruiting and admissions
Areas of Focus: Enrollment trends and forecasting, pricing and aid strategy, marketing and recruiting
Serves: Senior facilities executives
Areas of Focus: Space management, campus planning, energy initiatives
Serves: Presidents, boards, cabinets, and chiefs of staff
Areas of Focus: Setting future strategy, organizational design, campus innovations and agility
Serves: Heads of schools and independent school leadership
Areas of Focus: Financial sustainability, fundraising and alumni engagement, student wellness, faculty recruitment
Serves: Chief information officers and IT directors
Areas of Focus: Data governance, digital strategy, IT strategy planning
Serves: Heads of online, professional and continuing education
Areas of Focus: Market intelligence, grad program design, employer partnerships, organizing a high-performing unit
Serves: University leaders in the United Kingdom and Ireland
Areas of Focus: Financial sustainability, student experience, digital transformation
Serves: Vice presidents of student affairs
Areas of Focus: Student mental health and wellness, free speech and campus activism
Serves: Chief research officers
Areas of Focus: Grant challenges, research funding, campus and community communication
With our Global Research Partnership, schools receive access to all of our resources. By combining all of our subject-matter expertise into one, unified partnership, we drive progress on all of your institutional priorities.
Services
Data-driven, modern multichannel marketing
Fueled by education’s largest data asset—built from 1.5+ billion student interactions—we combine consumer marketing innovations and prescriptive analytics to create impactful enrollment and advancement campaigns for your school.
We deliver unparalleled results to our partners through comprehensive strategy and campaign management, on-going communication, and a practice of continuous optimization.
Explore our services and how they can help you reach your enrollment goals:
In an ever-changing enrollment landscape with shifting student demographics, yielding your next class has never been more difficult.
Our data-enabled recruiting solutions help you:
- Create a targeting strategy that maximizes existing markets and strategically sources new ones
- Execute marketing campaigns with data-driven, creative content designed to resonate with Gen Z
- Secure enrollments by leveraging aid and yield data to uncover prospective student intent
While graduate and online programs are growing, student growth is plateauing. With more competition, it’s important to find your right-fit adult students.
Our strategic enrollment solution helps you fuel adult learner growth by:
- Learning about your institution’s goals, conducting competitor analyses, program audits, and researching market demand to help you identify new and existing high-potential programs
- Helping you define your markets and optimize search parameters to ensure that you maximize reach among high-potential prospects
- Building and deploying personalized, multichannel campaigns to engage your prospects where they are
With alumni support in a 25+ year decline, it’s important to retain current donors and inspire new ones.
Our Advancement Marketing services help you increase donors, dollars, and pipeline via:
- Strategy development based on best practices for an annual plan that aligns with institutional goals
- Campaign execution with high-impact messaging across channels
- Performance monitoring and frequent optimization to reach goals
Students not only cite the college website as their top information source but also have high expectations when it comes to your digital presence.
We can help you elevate your digital presence and inspire students to act through a variety of services:
- Website strategy, design, and development
- Engaging and interactive content creation
- Search engine optimization (SEO) and user experience (UX) website audits
Systemic problems with giving too much—or giving too little—can take a toll on enrollment, revenue, and ultimately, market position.
Financial Aid Optimization replaces guesswork with a customized econometric model that helps you grow enrollment and revenue by:
- Designing policy strategy based on data analyses of your admissions and financial information
- Constructing aid models that are customized, exclusive, transparent, and revisable
- Monitoring award activity throughout the entire enrollment cycle to flag problems and suggest adjustments
With 31% of four-year students transferring schools at some point in their college journey, it’s important to reduce friction in the enrollment process.
Our two-part transfer student solution helps you improve transfer student yield via:
- Onsite consulting to make your institution transfer-ready and set the stage for a successful technology implementation
- University-branded, web-based technology that integrates course equivalency data to provide a seamless transfer experience
Our enrollment partners see a 7:1 average ROI and a 7% average annual net tuition revenue increase in the first year of partnership.
Technology
Optimize student retention and institutional efficiency
As schools face growing pressure to provide a return on education despite limited resources, we’ve developed technology solutions that help you leverage data to better understand your students and operations.
Our partners benefit from customized change management and strategy support, ongoing consulting and staff training, and access to a library of best practice research. We believe that combining research, technology, and consulting drives the most meaningful change.
Explore our technology solutions and how they can optimize your current efforts:
Every dollar matters in this era of shrinking public funding, projected enrollment declines, and growing skepticism about the value of higher education.
Academic Performance Solutions (APS) helps college and department leaders use data for smarter decisions by:
- Aligning resources and needs by analyzing course capacity, specialization, and class size
- Increasing efficiency and identifying opportunities for program growth
- Using peer benchmarks to compare organizational performance on an apples-to-apples basis
As the technology ecosystem on college campuses continues to expand, siloed systems are creating barriers to activating the full potential of data.
Education Data Hub (EDH) is a central data management platform that accelerates strategic initiatives by:
- Integrating new and existing technologies more quickly and streamlining data processes
- Reporting with consistent and validated data, aggregated from cross-campus sources
- Innovating with next-generation analytics powered by machine learning and AI
Our data shows that even a modest 3% decline in student retention can impact net tuition revenue by millions of dollars annually.
Our Student Success Management System (SSMS), Navigate, help schools proactively manage student success and retention by:
- Monitoring key success metrics to optimize student success investments
- Identifying and taking action with at-risk and off-path students, providing more proactive and meaningful advising
- Coordinating student support across all units and analyzing the effectiveness of various interventions to continuously improve
With fewer students physically visiting before applying, institutions need a virtual tour that can convey culture and tell their unique story.
Virtual Tours deliver unparalleled engagement while providing meaningful data with:
- Immersive 360 photos that give prospective students an immersive content experience that allows them to explore
- Layered, clickable elements that encourage participation and support visual learning
- Inquiry forms and call-to-action that move students to the next step in your recruitment process
Our student success partners see retention and graduation rate improvements from 2%-15%.
