How can colleges tackle the enrolment crisis?

The ‘pandemic-era enrolment crisis’ has come to an end. Lecture halls are bursting with hungry young minds, college admissions teams around the country are rejoicing. Well… not quite. The pandemic may be over, but the ‘post-pandemic enrolment’ crisis looms.

It is true that pandemic-driven enrollment declines have started to level off – overall undergraduate enrollment dropped just 0.2% YOY in spring 2023. However, freshman enrollment is still 6 percent below 2019 levels. Graduate-level enrollment is also down 2.2% since spring 2022 and total postsecondary enrollment remains well below pre-pandemic numbers, 1.09 million students fewer overall compared to spring 2020. We have a new set of challenges in front of us – challenges that can only be confronted by true strategic innovation in enrollment marketing.

What is the post-pandemic enrollment crisis?

Many factors continue to affect enrollment. It has been widely reported that the country is experiencing a college-age population contraction – we’re now feeling the effects of decreasing birth rates that started during the 2007-2009 recession. Nationwide, the number of 18-year-olds is set to decline by over 15% from 2025 onwards and to continue for several years after.

But most importantly, it’s not the shrinking pool that is most worrying for American higher ed institutions, it’s the dramatic shift in attitude towards ‘going away to college’ that is the sector’s greatest challenge. Covid-19 has prompted a re-evaluation of the role of higher education in modern society. What is its value? Are we doing it right? How does it align with the needs of our planet, industries and communities? Crucially, it is employers that are asking these questions as well as students and parents. Six states have recently eliminated college degree requirements for government jobs. A succession of major corporations have done the same — IBM, Accenture, Dell and Google, to name a few, have publicly dropped degree requirements in what is being dubbed a ‘skill-based sea change in the job market.’ Mix these changing attitudes with low unemployment rates and rising cost of living and it’s suddenly harder to convince people to pursue expensive, traditional higher ed pathways.

That said, college-age students in 2023 America aren’t disinterested in postsecondary learning altogether. Recent data from ECMC Group shows that Gen Z are far more enthusiastic about postsecondary education than they were at the outset of the pandemic. What has changed since 2019, is four-year college is no longer a consideration for 50% of Gen Z. Many are convinced they can achieve success through cheaper, shorter and more practical options. For high schoolers, postsecondary education is a means to a job. With the democratization and diversification of non-degree learning options and industries offering more robust training and apprenticeship schemes, higher ed is competing more fiercely than ever with credible alternative pathways to a career.

How colleges can tackle the enrollment crisis

So, how do institutions outmaneuver this set of challenges and increase best-fit student enrollment in the coming years?

Invest in audience research – tell the right stories

In order to connect with your audiences and drive them to take action, you need to understand exactly what they want and how they behave. The researchers at Hybrid CoLab, Hybrid Media’s research function, know just how important custom student surveys, workshops, focus groups, social listening and A/B testing are to the success of university marketing strategies. As CoLab lead Jacqueline Raposo puts it, ‘By placing data at the heart of your marketing output, you’ll be able to respond to the unique requirements of different audience groups.’ Intentional research is the first step towards making meaningful connections, shifting the post-covid narrative and convincing young people of the value of an education at your college.

Modernize your targeting strategy

In 2023, targeting a handful of population centers doesn’t deliver a strong return on investment. With heightened competition for fewer students, colleges need to ensure they’re capitalizing on their geographical areas of opportunity.

Predictive data modeling is changing the way institutions conduct their audience mapping. Colleges are adopting innovative new data modeling tools, such as Cohort Explorer, capable of collating and analyzing student, household, geographic, demographic and college application data and turning it into actionable targeting recommendations. Cohort Explorer develops statistical methodologies to forward extrapolate trends on a granular geographical level. Institutions need to harness the power of data modeling if they want to pinpoint their ‘high-yield’ audiences, expand into new territories and access untapped geographies.

Access online and ‘mature’ audiences

If the current enrollment crisis is partly defined by a lack of 18-year-olds, then every college should be bolstering efforts to connect with older audiences. Adults over the age of 25 represent 40% of higher ed students in America. With the proliferation of online learning, flexible study and accredited, career-specific short courses, the higher ed market is catering to mature students in ways that it didn’t before the pandemic. The explosion of fully online programs in particular has completely opened up the playing field, doing away with geographical recruitment limitations. Institutions need to be developing distinct marketing campaigns that locate, engage and convert mature and online audiences.

Personalize your content

It takes more than a powerful brand to convert student prospects. Personalization – tailoring ads and web content by user location, age, interests, program-focus – is the key to setting your marketing campaigns apart. Through data-driven attribution modeling, custom UTM tagging and tools such as VWO and Student Match AI, colleges can serve prospective students bespoke digital content based on whether they are in-state, out-of-state, mature, a community college transfer, interested in a particular competitor or interested in your college’s disc golf team. This method of hyper-targeting ensures every dollar of spend is making more impact with the right people in the right ways.

Intelligence and insights is the name of the game for higher ed marketing in 2023/24. Discover how Hybrid can help you achieve your enrollment marketing goals.