Cayla Woten thought about postponing college this fall, due to the high cost of higher education and the scary headlines about the pandemic. But Purdue University’s ambitious recruitment strategy — including a freeze in tuition as well as room and board that has enabled 60% of students to graduate debt-free, along with an emphasis on strict safety measures around COVID-19 — helped persuade her to take the plunge.
Part of the impetus was Protect Purdue, a sprawling $50 million initiative at the West Lafayette, Indiana, university, which includes a website packed with information and resources about COVID (it’s earned half a million unique visitors), social media, outdoor ads and YouTube videos. Purdue developed the initiative with marketing firm Ologie of Columbus, Ohio, whose clients also include the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers.
Woten says she and her dad were also surprised to learn from its marketing that Purdue, even though it’s out-of-state — Woten is from Hebron, Kentucky — was more affordable than colleges closer to home. “Purdue really cares about its students,” she says.
The pandemic has forced Purdue and many other colleges and universities to work overtime to serve current students and market to prospective students as enrollment slumps because of factors such as the pandemic and stratospheric tuition costs. Schools are taking a fresh look at their marketing outreach as they confront these bleak times.
And it’s about time, says Joe Lapin, VP of marketing at San Diego-based Circa Interactive. “There’s this great sea of sameness out there,” when it comes to college marketing, says Lapin, whose company works with more than 50 higher ed clients, including the University of San Diego School of Business and Tulane University.
To stand out in the sameness, schools are trying everything from reduced tuition, fast-track admissions and free health service, along with upping their digital game using slick mobile apps, virtual campus tours and celebrity pitchmen and women (in the case of Georgetown University, men’s basketball coach and National Basketball Association legend Patrick Ewing). They are also rethinking their targets, in some cases going after students closer to home, as the pandemic rages.
Falling enrollment and rising tuition
There’s a lot at stake: Undergraduate enrollment fell 4% nationally this fall, while graduate schools attracted 2.7% fewer students, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Community colleges were hit particularly hard, with enrollment plummeting nearly 10%. Meanwhile, the pandemic and current enrollment trends threaten to hasten the demise of a number of smaller private schools already struggling before this year. University of Pennsylvania professor of education Robert Zemsky, co-author of the book “The College Stress Test,” estimated that some 20% of colleges and universities are in serious financial distress at the moment.
Amid the pandemic, some colleges have converted to fully online instruction, while others continue to hold classes in person and still others offer hybrid studies. In every case, marketing has proved an essential tool for communicating with current students and prospective ones, given how COVID has exacerbated other issues plaguing higher education. Over the past decade, the cost of undergraduate tuition, room and board and other expenses at public institutions soared 31% and 23% at private schools, per Department of Education statistics. Even though a number of institutions have frozen or reduced tuition, it hasn’t been enough to keep many would-be students from asking whether college is worth the expense. Sen. Bernie Sanders has famously championed easing the burden for students.
“There’s no one silver bullet” for college marketing, as Brien Lewis, president of the private liberal arts school Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, put it. So colleges are bringing a fuller marketing arsenal to bear.