"For the most part, students tend to enroll in schools within a hundred miles of their homes. Basically, students are drawing a circle on the map with a hundred mile radius with their home at the epicenter, and the majority do not attend institutions outside of that area. "

J.T. Allen

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J.T. Allen

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PEOPLE WITH IMPACT INTERVIEW - J.T. Allen - President of myFootpath LLC

J.T. Allen is President of myFootpath, a company devoted to providing students ages 15-25 with thoughts, advice, and experience on how best to find their ‘footpath,’ and navigate all the twists and turns of life after high school. Much of myFootpath’s guidance pertains to college and career planning, giving Mr. Allen a unique perspective on forging successful connections with the millennial student and engaging them throughout the college search process. He shares those insights with the EDUInsight audience in the following interview.

Q: Knowing that audience preferences and expectations of prospective students are constantly changing, what are the most important and stable preferences for universities to consider when recruiting high school students?
J.T. Allen: Geographic preference and proximity are still paramount considerations for most college-bound students. For the most part, students tend to enroll in schools within a hundred miles of their homes. Basically, students are drawing a circle on the map with a hundred mile radius with their home at the epicenter, and the majority do not attend institutions outside of that area. This is particularly true of the student looking at a for-profit or career college or an open admission institution. For the student looking to attend a school with a competitive admission process, the radius widens.

On the school side, effective recruiting strategies and considerations differ from institution to institution based on their target student population. Competitive universities often look to boost their U.S. News rankings, and these schools target a “smarter” student with higher GPAs and standardized test scores. For these schools, there are few geographic boundaries. For-profit schools, who generally care more about bringing in the largest class possible as opposed to the smartest class, typically focus on the geography near a campus until its lead volume has been “maximized” for an area. Then, they widen the net beyond that geo if they can get leads at the right cost and still convert them. Of course, most for-profit schools predominantly focus on variables in preferences regarding time, convenience and accessibility – all of which can be heavily dependent on the how far you need to drive to go to class.

Q: What emerging tactics should universities utilize to market to and engage the millennial generation?
J.T. Allen: Most universities, especially the traditional four-year, liberal arts schools, continue to utilize direct mail as their main marketing strategy. Not only is direct mail expensive, but it is also difficult to track lead generation. There are now so many proven methods to generate inquiries—students that raise their hands and expresses interest in the school—via the web. Marketing budget allocations for direct mail should really be cut and the budget for online lead generation tactics should be increased. Many of today’s prospective students are on the Internet for over three hours a day, and universities are truly missing the boat when it comes to targeting students and marketing to them in their preferred medium.

Q: If you were tasked with assembling a recruiting plan for a medium-sized, traditional four-year on-campus university, what three aspects would you first address?
J.T. Allen: In order, the primary considerations should be quantity, cost and quality of leads. The first of these top three priorities—quantity—involves looking at the number of inquiries and asking whether or not they are getting enough people saying “I’m interested in the school, talk to me and provide me with more information” and pushing students through to the application and enrollment stages. Basically, universities need to inventory whether or not they have enough prospective students partaking in each stage of the process, and really try to understand where they are losing people. For the most part, the majority of colleges and universities find their quantity of inquiries sufficient, but the next recruiting aspect to address is cost—what are they paying to get that desirable level of inquiries. There are many cost-effective ways other than direct mail to go after the target audience and generate inquiries. Gone are the days where schools just mailed a college view book weighing a pound and half (at $10 a piece) to each student that expressed interest in the institution, and then hoped for 1% to pick up the phone and call. This type of direct mail campaign gets very costly, especially when you can get a more qualified inquiry for a fraction of the cost. Once a school looks at quantity of inquiries discerns where people are falling out of the prospecting cycle as well as the cost of the recruitment tactics, they need to consider a third aspect, which is how to go after new marketing channels to cultivate the desired quantity of quality leads at a reasonable cost. After all, if you take out all the waste in the direct mail model by getting your leads from more cost effective sources, most colleges will have a substantial amount of money left over – which they can use to increase the quality of the conversion process.

Q: How would such a recruitment plan differ for a for-profit institution?
J.T. Allen: For-profit institutions are typically in growth mode, and they aren’t capped by limited enrollment at the end of the day. With traditional non-profit schools, if there are only 4, 000 beds in the dorm, there can be a maximum of 4,000 students on campus for the incoming class. The for-profit mentality is different—they will take as many students as they can, and they are looking to recruit from every source imaginable. From online lead generation to direct mail to television to radio to print, for-profit institutions are attempting to blend their media to acquire more students while spending less on the back end. The priority is tremendously different, and from their perspective it is really about maximizing different prospecting channels. That said, for-profits should first look at the quantity of lead generation and ask themselves whether they are getting a desired level of volume. Next, they should scrutinize their internal follow-up processes. This is the stage in which most for-profits tend to drop the ball. They’ll get a lead for their target cost, but their call center won’t call for a day and the lead will get lost, or the admissions department will fail to maintain contact after the initial outreach. This follow up area is where I think for-profits can improve. The third critical piece of a for-profit recruitment plan is the enrollment to graduation factor—for-profits are notorious for not graduating the students they enroll. I think if they work to improve their graduation rates, they can tell that story prospective students, and they will in turn be able to attract more students.

Q: How can schools help students find their footpath? Specifically, what services and programs should be in place to address the needs of the modern student to help them answer that all important question, “What am I supposed to do with my life?”
J.T. Allen: Most institutions fail to provide any kind of meaningful counseling. If you think about the education system, in high school students have a guidance counselor that helps them enroll in the right classes, to be eligible to participate in the next level of education, and ultimately graduate. These people help students find that next step and are a source for personalized information. There is no guidance counselor equivalent in higher education—if there is a person at all, they likely don’t know the student and their goals, have time to see them or they don’t have the right information. Colleges are attempting to improve this shortcoming with the utilization of technology. Certain programs can allow students to figure out what classes are needed, and while it may not be a human, such resources allow students to figure out what classed they need to take to graduate. Colleges really need to improve in the area of student guidance to facilitate the graduation of their enrolled students, and if they cannot implement a helpful resource, they should send students to our site, www.myfootpath.com. It is designed to address the uncertainties of life after high school, and give students the tools to figure out that next step. When students, both high school and college, are assigned subpar counselors with little time to spend mapping out a future for the student, we provide answers and resources with meaningful information from experts in the field to help them chart their course.

James T. Allen, President and Co-Founder, myFootpath, LLC

J.T. Allen is an innovator in strategic design, development and implementation. He is a former consultant with Ernst & Young/Chicago and has worked with a variety of multi-national corporations. His prior experience includes the development of a leadership program for expanding entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. Mr. Allen graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan Business School. To learn more about myFootpath, visit www.myfootpath.com.

See an index of all the "People with Impact" Interviews

Additional sections of this journal address student recruiting and student retention. We have also placed all articles with a common theme of online education and distance education programs in a separate portal. New articles will be posted each Monday, please check back by bookmarking this site or placing a link to this Innovative Practices in Communicating with Students portal.