Higher Ed Branding in a Financial Crisis: Insights from Ben Kennedy

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Yeah, just for quick context.
I put the questions in the chathere.
Yeah, I saw them.
You can direct me to a greatscript at any point, like what
is a higher education brand andwhat sort of differentiates it

(00:24):
from other industries and why isit unique?
I think your firm has done sucha good job of like tackling
that and doing it from both thatsort of like high level
perspective, of like here's youroverarching sort of brand
strategy.
But then you get really deep ontactics.
So can you just likeconceptualize like and maybe
sort of center us around likehow you think about higher

(00:45):
education brand and some of thesort of like intersecting
components of that.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, you know, I think the the way that schools
have to think about their brandand reputation.
It's incredibly important andit's also really diverse across
all of these different types ofschools, the way that a
community college is thinkingabout it, a liberal arts
institution, uh, a big R one, uh, a mid tier, regional,

(01:10):
comprehensive they're.
They're all different.
Um, for me, I I like tosometimes sub in the word or the
idea of sort of the valueproposition of the school.
Um, in, in, in lieu of brand,because, in lieu of brand.
Because when we're doingenrollment strategy, when we're
doing financial sustainability,I think if we're thinking about

(01:31):
what is our unique or somewhatunique value proposition to
prospective students for tothink about the right strategy
for helping a program and you'vebeen doing it for a hundred
years at a beautiful campus whenyou're thinking, then, about

(02:15):
what is my value proposition,you have to maintain that and a
lot of maintaining that iswhatever you do in terms of
financial sustainability.
You're doing it around inpartnership with your faculty.
That is to say, if you do it insuch a way where the faculty
come away and say, wow, thisschool is going off the deep end

(02:35):
, I don't want to be a part ofthis, or faculty are such a
different conundrum in higher ed.
I mean that in the bestpossible way, because you don't
see it in other industries,where you have this shared
governance and you have thefolks that are part and parcel
of your value propositionraising their hand very publicly
and saying we should be doingthings different than what I'm

(02:58):
seeing you know president orprovost do, which is all to say.
If you're going to think aboutfinancial sustainability for
your school, you have to thinkabout the value proposition, and
your faculty and your staff arepart and parcel with it in a
way.
That isn't true, I think, inother institutions, and it means
that if you're facing this bigstructural deficit and you're

(03:19):
trying to figure out how do I dothis, I don't think you can go
about bringing an operatingdeficit down in one year or two
just by hacking away programs,and especially not by hacking
away tenure track faculty, and Icould say all faculty, but I
think the thing that reallybecomes important there is that

(03:39):
when you are declaring exigencyor something like exigency,
which is the language in some ofthe codes, you're sort of
breaking a promise to faculty indoing that.
There are other alternatives,though, and I think it's not
easy, but I think there are waysto bring faculty along, to
bring provosts along in a spiritof academic innovation and say

(04:02):
look, if we are going to evolveas a school, if we're going to
get through to the other side ofthis, where we are very much
financially sustainable, we'regoing to have to do this
together and we're going to haveto do it in a way that
preserves the brand andreputation for the school.
Because at the point where youcan no longer ask parents and
prospective students to pay Xamount and you're discounting it

(04:26):
70, 75% which, as I have saidbefore, is in my mind, it's not
the magic number, but it's thecliff it's the point at which
our phone starts to ring andschools say, hey, we think we've
got a structural problem hereand we need to sort this out.
At that point, thinking aboutyour value proposition and how

(04:48):
you can maintain that valueproposition through academic
innovation, through thinkingabout what are the programs of
the future.
They are adjacent andcomplementary and include all
the things you're offering now,but you've got to be able to
speak to it in the parlance ofyour prospective students.
And if you don't do that, thenyou might have a great value
proposition, but you're notcommunicating it well.

(05:10):
And if you're not communicatingit well, you can't then go out
there and say we're raisingtuition by two or 3% and our
scholarships are going to getdown to a more reasonable level.
If you don't do that, I thinkyou can end up with what I will
say candidly to clients is adeath spiral.
You cut programs, you hinderreputation, you hurt your brand,

(05:31):
and then you can't get thosestudents to come the next year
because they've seen it in theheadlines, they've seen it in
Inside Higher Ed or theChronicle or the local paper, or
they see it on Google, which iswhere they're going to get
their information first andforemost, and then they say, wow
, that doesn't seem like aschool where I want to go and
spend X amount of money for fouryears for a credential that I

(05:52):
think is damaged.
So I think that idea of brandhas to be at the middle of
whatever you're doing, whateverinitiative you're doing to try
to get an institution back ontrack.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
I couldn't agree more .
You mentioned a fewintersecting components there
and this is just such a.
I appreciate how youconceptualize that, because this
is just such a complicatedbeast, right, there's so many
intersecting pieces.
I think it's unique from otherindustries for a lot of the
dynamics that you mentioned.
Two really interesting sort oflike components that you brought
up were faculty and boards, andone thing like I think there's

(06:27):
this like I haven't been able tofully wrap my mind around is
like how different boardpsychology will look at
different institutions, um, ohyeah, similar institutions with
sort of similar things.
So, for instance, one of myclients recently has had a
growing structural deficit.
Um, and without giving hardnumbers, I would say in the two
years that I've been sort ofknown them a little bit and

(06:50):
worked with them a touch, it'sdoubled and it's significant is
what I would say.
The board is not worried aboutit at all.
I think they see this as sortof this infrastructure sort of
investment.
There's a few sort of people onit that I think are bringing up
appropriate concerns, butincluding the finance committee

(07:10):
is just like, well, we need tosort of weather the storm.
And then On the flip side ofthat, right before we hit record
, we had this really interestingconversation around some of the
sort of 401s and really wealthyliberal arts colleges that are
well positioned in Dallas andcash flow and all those pieces
that are really freaking outabout some of the sort of 401s
and really wealthy liberal artscolleges that are well
positioned in downloads andcashflow and all those pieces
that are really freaking outabout some of the sort of
potential implications of like.

(07:31):
So can you talk a little bitabout the sort of intersecting
variables that you have withfaculty and board and like the
impact on brand and what thatmeans for sort of value
proposition for target market?

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, it's really interesting If we're working
with a private institution.
What we are seeing more andmore are board members.
They're deeply devoted to theinstitution, but you will of
course have one or two or morethat when you see two and then

(08:03):
three and then four years ofstructural deficits, those folks
raise their hand.
It's the guy that runs the PEfirm or the investment shop that
does numbers for a living andsays this is not the way that we
should go.
And what I have found, and whatwe found over a good handful of
these types of initiatives inthe last year, year and a half,

(08:26):
is that bringing that boardtogether is bringing them
together around a plan that isrealistic and pragmatic and you
have to, in a lot of those cases, prove it.
What we are encounteringsometimes is those boards are
seeing the projections and theforecast change.

(08:47):
So it's been a couple of yearsthere were rosy forecasts that
didn't take into account all thethings that we know are
happening.
It's the demographic cliff,it's the SAI change, it's
whatever.
It's the competition, it's thebig state schools, you know,
sucking students away from, youknow, liberal arts colleges here
and there, whatever it might be.

(09:07):
But getting to a point whereall of the trustees over here,
all the trustees over here, theadministration, the leadership,
the VP for enrollment, the CFOand the budget person, can all
look at one set of numbers andsay, I agree, that is a plan
that works, that becomes boththe challenge and the
opportunity, I think, in workingwith those particular boards.

(09:30):
But you have to get to thepoint where you're able to open
up that financial model, if youwill, and have in some cases
really hard discussions withfolks whether it's a VP for
enrollment over here orsometimes it's a provost
thinking about where do you takethe academic enterprise?
There are huge levers to bepulled.

(09:50):
That is, there are all sorts ofplaces, both on the revenue and
expense side, where any ofthese institutions need to be
looking.
But when you get to a pointwhere you can say, look, I want
to pull these seven levers butnot this one, these enrollment
forecasts feel right, theseforecasts around tuition
discounting are actuallyachievable.
We think we can do this interms of a top-end tuition price

(10:14):
increase and we're willing tospend X amount more dollars of
you can think of it as one-timemoney to get through past this
deficit and, as you were saying,get to the other side, where we
are back into the black and weare growing and we feel good
about our sort of perspectives,for whether it's growth or just

(10:37):
sustainability, it's there, butit comes down to that plan that
everybody can agree on.
If there's distrust about theforecasts that have come before
and there's not a clear sense ofhow to proceed forward, that's
where I think boards andleadership get crosswise,
especially in that private sense.
Now you move to the publicsphere.

(10:57):
The next question I'm going toask you is what state are you in
?
And what I've seen in the lastdecade is the nature of
appointees to a lot of stateinstitutions have really changed
.
It's changed the nature of ourwork whereby, for better or
worse, the presentations we'remaking to gubernatorially

(11:21):
appointed board members invarious states have to be really
thoughtful.
There are places of greatagreement.
If you are talking about growthand workforce development and
you're talking aboutaffordability and you're
thinking about even academicinnovation, to the point where
you are going to help aninstitution meet the labor needs

(11:44):
for a state in the future,you're in a great spot.
And there's a really a lot ofgreat opportunity of coming
together of boards that arebipartisan they're purple boards
or whatever you want to callthem.
That becomes more important inthose conversations sometimes

(12:05):
than kind of thinking about howa school is going to proceed,
because I will say, with thosetypes of schools we're not
having the financialsustainability conversations
quite as much, in part becauseso much of the way that they are
bringing in revenues is on thestate appropriation side and
that is an absolutely politicalprocess, you know, knock on wood

(12:28):
.
For most of our clients, stateappropriations have been really
solid and growing for almostnine years now, a few stragglers
aside.
That is going to change in afew states I think I was reading
about Florida just yesterdaygoing to change in a few states
I think I was reading aboutFlorida just yesterday and that

(12:51):
will change the way that both weare working with public school
boards and the way that thoseinstitutions are working with
their boards as well.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, you'd maybe pivot back to something you said
earlier around the sort ofdeath spiral, which is something
just very, very real.
I love the way you encapsulatedit.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
We don't usually put that in the slides because it
tends to scare people, but it'sa concept that you learn about
in your management accountingclass that is pervasive across
all sorts of industries.
I don't know that higher edreally knows that language, but
they know exactly what it lookslike Essentially the idea of

(13:25):
cutting yourself to death.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, you know, and we we see it pretty regularly
and it's it's really unfortunatewhen you sort of catch it like
18 months, when somebody's atthat critical period where it's
like you know, if they do X andthey do Y and they do these
things really sort ofthoughtfully, they can weather
this storm.
You know like maybe have one totwo years of sort of like
really sort of like tightmargins et cetera, but then

(13:47):
really sort of come out in theblack but you don't see them
sort of execute or sort of makethe right moves at the right
time To you.
If somebody's sort of in thatmaybe let's do a pre and post
right, like what are thepreventative measures, what are
the levers that you're pullingwhen they're at that cliff and
need to make some criticaldecisions, and then God forbid,
they're on the other side ofthat.
Like what's?

(14:08):
What's the sort of tacticalstrategies that you all are sort
of unrolling?

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, yeah, the pre side is a lot better to work on.
Um, you're, you're, you're insituations where, um, you know,
you've just talked to the CFOBetween cash on hand and sort of
liquid or near liquid type ofreserves, endowments that are

(14:35):
unrestricted, and evenrestricted endowments that you
think you could get to if youreally had to, if you add all
those things up, you can say,look, I've got 12 years of
running this deficit, that'syour runway.
And if you're in that situation, if you've got 10 years, you've
got eight years.
All of these things, I think,are very accomplishable.

(14:55):
At five years you start to getreally nervous.
At two years you're post, whichrhymes with toast, it's kind of
funny.
But at two years you are doingthe things that I think make
you're going to have adefinitive change in the way
that you operate, becausethere's no other way about it.
But when you're pre, then Ithink you I would point any of

(15:16):
those institutions to the ideaof academic innovation, that is,
rationalizing which degrees youoffer and where and how many
faculty you have.
It's not a fun thing becauseyou're talking about tenure
track jobs, but you have toembrace the idea that you should

(15:38):
and can have time on your side,which is all to say and I come
from a family of Englishprofessors that were all tenured
and that sort of thing.
You've got to understand whatyou can afford to do and teach
at what level.
What's your faculty-studentratio for all the classes that

(16:00):
are part of your gen ed andwhatever it might be?
If you don't have to thinkabout that great, that means
that your brand is up here, yourreputation's up here and you
can do all these things.
We're at the point, though,where we have said okay, we're
running a structural deficit.
We've got eight years or 10years.
The great part about eightyears or 10 years is that, if

(16:22):
you just look at retirements,natural attrition and gradual
evolution in all of thesedifferent disciplines and
curriculums, you can get there,and if you bring the faculty on
board, it can be an okay process.
I'm never going to promiseit'll be a great one, but it
needs to be an okay process.
This is your number one thing,because this is 60% of the costs

(16:48):
in the institution, and whenthat gets out of whack, when you
can't find the faculty, youneed to teach the courses where
the demand has shifted and youhave too many faculty for the
courses where there's not anydemand, faculty for the courses
where there's not any demand,but you've got contracts, you've

(17:08):
got tenure with these folks.
What you really need, then, istime to get yourself out of that
situation in the best way andto really innovate to where the
students want to go, where thelabor markets want to go, where
your board might want you to go,and that should be true.
I remember reading this book,jefferson's Education.
It was mostly about ThomasJefferson and William and Mary
and then UVA, but what struck meis what the first six faculty

(17:33):
were at UVA back in 1819 or 1824, whatever year it was when they
actually started hiring andbringing in these folks from
Europe, and they had six faculty.
And if UVA just still had thesix faculty, I don't think they
would be doing as well.
Academic innovation has beenwith us for 200-some years.
I'm sitting here inCharlottesville, virginia, so

(17:55):
that's part of the reason Ithink about UVA sometimes, but
innovation and change in what weoffer and how we offer it is
part and parcel of every singlediscipline that a school offers.
Now, the way they taughtEnglish in 1850 is drastically
different than the way theytaught English in 2000 and the
way that they're probably goingto be teaching English in 2050,

(18:17):
if I had to guess, and I thinkeverybody would generally agree
with that.
So the pre-part, the firstthing, is big change, but
hopefully very virtuous academicinnovation, planning and trying
to figure out what am I goingto offer and to how many
students in five or 10 years,and then working backwards from

(18:37):
that to figure out okay, how doI teach that and how do I
deliver a world-class educationaround that.
The next thing I think you'rethinking about, for most of
these schools that are actuallyasking this question, is
enrollments and tuitiondiscounting, and they go hand in
hand.
Now, if they've already gonedown the road of what I
sometimes refer to asalternative revenues meaning

(18:57):
you've launched new gradprograms, you've launched
non-degree, you've gone out andgotten big in workforce
development, whatever it mightbe tuition discounting is
sometimes in those, but not asoften.
But for many of the schoolsthat are calling us, this is a
question of how did I let mytuition discounting for the

(19:18):
majority of these students getto where it is now, which is
where it's 60%, 65%, 70%, andhow do I recover from this?
And you probably know this, butI think a lot of people outside
of higher ed don't realize thatthe average freshman walking

(19:38):
into at least the group ofprivate institutions that fills
out the NACUBO survey each yearis now getting 55% off the
sticker price.
And again, that's the averageof that group.
I think it's the median of thatgroup.
If I'm recalling it goes uplike clockwork a percent to a
percent and a half almost everyyear.

(20:00):
I've done that webinar with KenRedd at Nacubo a couple of times
and I remember coming backthree years later and said, yes,
I'm really using the sameslides as I did three years ago
because nothing changed.
We all are marching forward inthis sort of zero-sum game of
pricing and discounting whereall these liberal arts colleges

(20:20):
have not figured out a way.
They're using the exact sametype of matrix from one of the
two or three really big tuitiondiscounting providers and they
are eating themselves alive andthey haven't figured out a way
out.
So when I was talking a littleearlier about getting everybody
in the room and saying, is thisrealistic?
What we find sometimes is thehardest conversation there is

(20:40):
with a VP for enrollment thatsays there is no way I can bring
in a class like this and bringtuition discounting down.
And maybe sometimes they areright, but most of the time they
are practicing what I callpretty clumsy tuition
discounting.
It is the exact same across allof these different vendors and

(21:05):
full disclosure.
We do tuition discounting forabout a dozen schools a year,
not 120.
But it's part and parcel ofdoing financial sustainability.
Now, that is the hardestconversation, not the faculty
side, not the provost side, butfor a VP for enrollment or a
head of admissions that thinksthere's no way out of 70%

(21:28):
discounting, that's the hardestconversation, because the next
line in that conversation withthe president, the provost and
everybody else in the room isthere's no way out if you can't
stop it from going forward.
It sounds glib, but I've saidit in lots of president's
cabinet meetings there is norevenue at 100% discounting, and

(21:53):
I say it kind of to get a laugh, but it's also true.
We've got a real sort of frog inthe frying pan problem.
It was 35% 25 or 30 years ago.
It was in the mid 40s when Istarted doing the webinar with
Kevin Redd, like back in 2016.
And now it's at 55%, whichmeans that the high end of that

(22:15):
distribution are schools at 75%,who do not know their way out
of that.
And now only now is it clear.
They have to find their way outof that and the question is to
where you started here, mike.
Are they pre or post?
Do they have eight years ofrunway?
Because if they do, then getout of it.
If they don't have eight yearsof runway or six years of runway
, their hands are really tiedthere because what they have to

(22:38):
do and switching over to thepost side is, if they don't have
runway, if they don't haveenough sort of liquid reserves
in one way shape or form, thenyou are drastically shrinking
the size of what you offer inprograms, your ratios and how
you teach, and all these thingshas to get essentially really

(23:00):
cheap, really fast.
You're cutting away all theother sort of perks and
amenities of being a student.
Anything that's fringe, that'snice to have, is gone and you're
just trying to survive.
But of course, in doing all ofthat you make the headlines and
people say, wow, this school isabout to go under.

(23:20):
And that's where the brand andreputation goes in, because at
the point where somebody, aprospective student, a
17-year-old it could be a23-year-old thinking of a grad
program, at the point whereyou're not sure if that
credential that might hang onyour wall someday is going to be
around.
That's a really toughinvestment decision to make.

(23:41):
Should I pay $80,000, $100,000,$200,000 for a diploma where 10
years from now, somebody'sgoing to say I've never heard of
that school and your responseis that's because they're not
around anymore?
You are thinking about it.
The only way out of that is asort of a complete model change
where you go to being a reallylow cost institution and that is

(24:08):
exactly where you're going andyou're going to all the places
where you can do that.
But a lot of institutions Iwould say most institutions are
not capable of that change.
If you were built as a BMW oreven just a really nice Honda,
you are not ready to be the Fordfit of higher ed institutions.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Your marketing is going to look so different, like
your value proposition and likewho your clients are.
Like you're just not reallysort of built.
The conversations that you needsort of be a little bit more
vocational.
Like all those pieces are justlike very, very different.
Yeah, you mentioned such likesuch a sort of interesting sort
of factor around the discountingLike what's the relationship
that you see between, like netstudent revenue Because this is

(24:54):
like a real challenge that I seelike an abundance of heads
between like you've got your VPof admissions, you've got your
board and your president andthey're having this sort of
discount conversation aroundthis sort of like this net
student revenue, and the boardis like say, say, hey, we're
discounting too high.
The person is just like exactlywhat you said, you know, um,

(25:18):
like what, what's, what's thatrelationship and dynamic looking
?
And like what's theintersecting piece with brand
there?

Speaker 2 (25:24):
um, because, I feel like that's an interesting thing
that sees out.
Yeah, I think and where we'veseen this be successful is you
have to get to a place wherethat entire room of board
members, president's cabinet, vpfor enrollment understand just
how challenging both theenrollment market is and tuition

(25:47):
discounting is to get right.
And they have to get beyond thebasics, I would argue, to
understand why we got here.
Because what you're asking inthat moment, if you think
there's no return on tuitiondiscounting meaning if you think
I know we're at 70% but wecan't go to 75%, we cease to

(26:10):
exist at 75%.
It puts an inordinate amount ofpressure on the VP for
enrollment and if they soldierthat pressure by themselves,
they don't want that job andit's kind of impossible.
So I've looked severalpresidents straight in the eye
and say you have to own this.
It is a giant risk.

(26:30):
It would seem to say we'regoing to enroll the same number
or more students or maybe just alittle bit less, but we are
going to essentially raiseprices or raise net prices in
the way that we do discounting,because there's not another way
out of it and that has to be onthe president and then it has to

(26:51):
be supported by the board andagain you have to see the math
in one plan that everybody canagree on.
And if you don't have that, youdon't have a resolution to this
.
Because absent that convictionand absent that agreement from
the board, and the president andthe provost and CFO, a VP for

(27:13):
enrollment and everybody that'son their team are going to do
the things that are the leastrisky.
The least risky thing to do isto bring in the right number of
students.
Okay, if the president says Ineed 400 students or the board
says we got to have 400 studentsthen and there are no

(27:34):
parameters and no caveats, thenthat VP for enrollment is going
to say great, no matter what,I'm going to bring in 400
students.
But that's a short-term play.
That is not a long-term pricingintegrity play.
But if that's the number onething, I'm going to discount the
heck out of the students at theend of that funnel.
And as that funnel and thattail of students gets thinner

(27:57):
and thinner, the discounts go upand up.
The last few students that youget to make the class are in the
90s or their full ride.
Because it's better toapologize for a rising tuition
discount rate than missing yourclass by 10% or 15%.
Because, look, the campus looksempty.
It's not great, and so for alot of these schools you have to

(28:20):
bring everybody together andsay look, enrollment is not just
the domain of this VP forenrollment.
Facilities has a role.
That building that's rightacross from admissions has to
look beautiful.
The million-dollar walk has tobe a million-dollar walk.
Faculty have a role to play.
If the feedback loop isn't thatthis is a phenomenal place to

(28:42):
learn and the faculty care, ifthe faculty are going into the
classroom angry about the stateof affairs at the institution,
that's probably not a qualitylearning experience.
All the oars have to be movingin the same direction at the
same time If you're going toachieve that trifecta of great
things, which is I want morestudents and I want lower

(29:05):
discounting and I want to do itall with my brand and reputation
intact and you can look atother ways around it and part of
that brand and reputation a lotof times.
The third part of the trifectais student quality.
We don't want to just let ineveryone, but I would argue that
if you're going to do one ofthose things, you need to start

(29:28):
letting in students that youmight have not otherwise, and
that, by and large, for theclients that we're seeing in
this sort of financialsustainability in that type of
project.
That ship has sailed, they arealready coming down.
You know, they wouldn't havesniffed the 1200 SAT 10 years
ago.
And now that's, you know,fantastic, here's 50% off.
Fantastic, here's 50 off.

(29:56):
Um, but everybody in that, uh,in that board meeting, in that
cabinet meeting, has to be onthe same page.
Because, again, if it's notclear that that has to happen as
part of the plan, then the onlything left in the plan to do is
really draconian costreductions and then I think
you're hitting brand andreputation in a way that you
likely cannot sustain.
If you're built in a certainway as an institution,

(30:16):
completely um.
Again, if you've been abeautiful honda accord or a bmw
for many years, I don't thinkyou're becoming, um, you know,
the lowest cost chinese ev onthe market, uh, that sort of
thing completely well and that'sI think that's a great segue
into like how do you like?

Speaker 1 (30:33):
one bias that I have of somebody that sort of part
lays and touches marketing in anumber of different industries
is that it's seemingly like somany places are seeing the exact
same thing, offering.
Like they don't see it ascommoditized, because when you
sort of talk to them and you saywhat's unique about you, you

(30:58):
get the same four answers Likeoh, we have individualized, you
know education, we have acommunity, we have like these
kinds of pieces, but like sothat that nuance is just really
sort of not there and nobody'sreally owning a category.
Or like creating this likesuper niche part of the play and
signaling to the right kind ofpeople in the right kind of way
Like this is who we are Like yes, how do you all do that with
some of the sort of intersectingvariables?

(31:18):
Because like it's complicated,right, like faculty students,
alums, trustees, everyone has avery different idea about what
this place is and what they'redoing.
And like how do you square thecircle?

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, I was.
I had this great conversation.
It was the whole of thepresident's cabinet, or this
awesome client, awesome schoolin Pennsylvania, and they had
aspects of this issue.
And the president saidsomething along the lines of we
have got to bring the message ofwhat makes us special and

(31:56):
unique and what our valueproposition is, and we have to
do it in a really big way.
And you're right, elements thatyou just mentioned are
sprinkled in lots of these sortof mission statements, value
statements.
A lot of them are true, andthen what I think the really

(32:16):
innovative schools do well thatare in this particular situation
is they say what's the themearound this?
What else in there is reallyunique?
So you take individualizedlearning, maybe a new way of
delivering it, maybe a differentcombination or a different set
of sets of expertise in thecurriculum, so saying we have a

(32:38):
program like nobody else has andit is so germane to this
particular industry that it willmake sense for certain students
that as you find your niche, Ithink that is there for a lot of
schools and I think a lot ofschools probably get 70 or 80%
of the way there when they'reundertaking this, but then they

(32:59):
don't stick the landing, and thelanding is this.
The landing is you can't keepthat a secret and you can't keep
doing the admissions part theway that you've done for the
last five years.
So I think the schools thathave done this well are already
spending a lot of money on brandand reputation, and it is where

(33:20):
their students and some of theparents are.
It is in Google Ads, it is infinding their way into all the
places that parents and studentsget information about these
schools.
And then the interesting thingso there's like the I've told

(33:42):
this to some clients.
I think the right approach rightnow in getting this message out
is a little bit of new schooland a little bit of old school.
New school is everything I justsaid.
It's do you have a really greatad campaign in all of the
digital areas where you thinkyou can make hay?
Are you spending your moneywisely and are you getting this

(34:06):
message out here?
Not only that you are thisinstitution in this niche, but
you're finding that niche in adigital world.
So you're finding that highschool student that really wants
to learn about robotics butalso study ethics too, because
that's what they're going toGoogle when they're trying to

(34:27):
figure out.
Well, I don't know, mom.
Well, I don't know where I wantto go to school.
Can you win that piece of realestate in Google that is so
specific to you and your brandand your value proposition?
Then the old school way, whichis also dropped off, is when
your admissions counselors andyour faculty and your leadership
are out in the world, are theybringing that same message, are

(34:49):
they one script in a very goodway.
I don't want people to soundlike robots, but and are you
actually doing the work?
And I say that last partbecause what we have found at a
lot of schools where admissionshas fallen off.
The visits are down and they getcanceled.
A lot Counselors aren't doingit and that's the old school way
.
But that is one of the fewplaces now where you can

(35:12):
actually have a conversationwith a prospective student and
win them to your side.
And the interesting feedbackloop here is from the guidance
counselors admissions counselorsat the high schools that say we
don't see this school anymoreBecause what happened over the
last 20 years, in addition tothe sort of the siren song of
tuition discounting, is that wespent our money on name buying

(35:35):
like never before and we had newofferings in that market and we
got really.
It's easy, right?
I just write this big old checkto somebody and I pay X number
of cents per lead and sometimesmore, and 15 years ago that
worked.
But these students now areapplying if they are part of the

(35:55):
student that you might getthrough name buying they're
applying to 12 or 15 schools insome of these cases.
So your a priori odds ofenrolling them, your yield
expected for one of those, hasfallen.
It's not 15% anymore.
It used to be 15% for some ofthese schools.
It's like less than a percentthat you're going to get on
those.
You are literally tossing moneydown the drain if that is your

(36:19):
number one way of bringing instudents, and when you do that,
you don't really get thattargeted approach of bringing
your brand and reputation tothat prospective student and so
you're just setting money onfire in some of those cases.
I'm not saying it's wrong in allcases, but if you can't be

(36:46):
targeted, geofenced, specificand nuanced in the way you're
thinking about marketing this,the next thing you are going to
want to do is be thatinstitution that is driven by
really great data aboutprospective students and their
behavior and engagement with you, and that means that you really
have your CRM game down, thatyou can handle an inquiry, a

(37:09):
lead, an application, whateverit is, you can nurture it and
these are all the new terms.
I mean they're 10 years old nowwhatever it is.
But if your institution isn'toperating that way within
enrollment on all of theprograms that you have, you're
missing out right now on all thedata about those students and

(37:29):
about the way they interact withyou prior to admission.
That is the thing that you'regoing to want to use to get even
better at yielding students.
So that's the very long storyof saying how do you bring that
brand and reputation to them.
A lot of schools, I think, arethere with the message, but the
delivery they miss.

(37:51):
And even if they do deliver itright, you then have to know how
to listen, the right way forthe feedback from those students
to saying this is working.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah, there's so much there to respond to.
It's just doing a little bit ofthe sort of digital adscape in
general.
It's amazing to me how manyplaces don't really have a
nuanced digital strategy orcan't really sort of speak to
exactly like what, what keywordsare you buying?
What's your geofencing thing?
What's your instagram strategy?
Like, how are you leveragingdata and insights from your

(38:20):
retention and who's retaining?
Like there's so many supertargeted things you can do sort
of around interest and what yourstudent profile looks like and
who's like who's succeedingthere.
Like you can grab all of thisdata, input it and you can
target so specifically as andthen sort of comprehensively
like map that to your on theground strategies, your boots on

(38:41):
the ground, your visits, likeall those pieces.
But it's incredible to me, likehow many places are just
missing little pieces of it,little pieces of it.
And the unfortunate thing is, ifyou have 70 to 80% of the thing
dialed in, you're probably onlygoing to get like 30 to 40% of

(39:02):
the apps of the place that has100, right Like you're just
going to lose in so many ways.
So I love the point you madethere.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's an interesting new dynamic.
It's not that new, but for someschools that are struggling it
has to be the new dynamic.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, how do you think about the retention side
of it and recruiting andsignaling to the right students,
knowing that enrollment is justso clutch and so key to what
you're doing?

Speaker 2 (39:34):
enrollment is just like so clutch and so key to
what you're doing.
Yeah, I think that becomes sortof the next domino for a lot of
these schools.
You're thinking about this bigplan that everybody can buy into
that brings you back tofinancial sustainability.
Or you've just told your VP forenrollment that you have maybe
a bit of a paradigm shift or abig paradigm shift in the way
that you want them to doadmissions operations and

(39:55):
recruiting and things like that.
Because enrollments areslipping, discounting is going
up, whatever it might be, andthen you realize, exacerbated by
lots of different things, thatthe students that you're losing
are also going up.
That you're losing are alsogoing up.

(40:16):
And we've worked with a coupleof schools this year where, in a
single year, retention wentfrom 82 to 73%, and we don't
quite know why, or the schooldoesn't quite know why, until
you get in there and startpulling it apart.
I mean, some of it is and thisis very common for liberal arts
colleges, private colleges 30 or40 percent of their student

(40:36):
population sometimes areathletes, and athletes
especially in a good number ofsports.
I mean we've worked withschools that have 30, 35
different sports.
They're transferring everywherebecause the NCAA has changed
the rules.
Now that's not the whole story.
In retention there are stillthe very classic narratives, I
think, around students that comein and leave for reasons of

(41:00):
sort of academics or finances,or academics multiplied by
finances.
There's always going to be apart of the population you lose
because of the sort of personaldynamics you know they're too
far away from home, things likethat.
But there have been otherthings exacerbating retention
for a lot of these schools.
What I think is reallyinteresting is that technology

(41:27):
has given us a lot of new tools,or at least new data, to tell
us the biggest and best ways tothink about whether a student's
likely to stay and if you knowthat, you can start to mitigate
this.
But I am not convinced that themajority of schools are thinking
about that data in the rightway.
So let me give you an example.
I don't think that as manyschools as should are using

(41:52):
student location and studentattendance data to try to be
their number one tracker ofwhether or not a student's about
to leave.
If a student stops going toclass, you are getting ghosted
and you've got to figure out away to identify that and get you
know.
Your early warning system goingNow.
You could spend easily aquarter million dollars a year

(42:15):
on any of the really bigtechnologies that do this, and
you might not get to thatbecause they are trying to look
at what I call the middle of theretention problem, which is
finding students that aren'tdoing as well academically
because they're predisposed tonot doing as well academically,
and then you create just arobust early warning system, I

(42:35):
think at the early end of that,at the minimum.
Again, this comes back to yourCRM game.
I think an early warning systemis great and a system to start
gathering data on your studentsand engagement behavior, because
you're going to want it laterto put in an even more robust
system.
But if you're not doing that,if you don't have something on
your campus where it raises aflag and says somebody needs to

(42:56):
walk out and talk to that person, you can do that and you don't
have to spend a quarter of amillion dollars.
If you're already running Slateand you're paying $50,000 a year
for Slate, you can add thatonto Slate.
It's not a Slate specific thing.
It's not a slate-specific thing.
It's actually something we do,I will say.
But you don't have to spend aquarter of a million dollars to
get that basic early warningsystem set up in a lower-cost

(43:19):
CRM.
It's not like a million-dollarSalesforce build and it's not
like a Navigate play whereyou've to go from A to B, which
is just the basics of retentionand early warning.
You don't have to break thebank.
But then the interesting thingis, if you can set that up, you

(43:42):
can own and run your ownretention system.
You can innovate on it, you cando your own data science on it
and, again, you don't have tospend a quarter million, a half
million, a million dollars ayear on technology that's built
for everyone.
You can do your own data scienceon it and, again, you don't
have to spend a quarter million,a half million, a million
dollars a year on technologythat's built for everyone.
You can build your owntechnology on what you already
have installed for a lot less,and I think that's the way that

(44:04):
at least the schools that we'reworking with need to go, because
these are not schools that areready to write a giant check
right now and do it every year.
They don't need another$250,000 or $500,000 expense
item in their budgets.
They are looking for theopposite of that right now.
But if they can say I'm on apathway to not figuring out what

(44:26):
works for me in retention,because I'm starting to get the
data and I'm doing the verybasics of early warning and I'm
doing it in a way that I canunderstand and I can analyze the
data.
You're covering a hugepercentage of the retention
problem just in doing that is mytake and you're doing it
yourself, so you will understandwhat makes retention work at

(44:48):
your school, not a third partyoutsourcing.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Yeah, it's really easy to overcomplicate an early
warning system, a trackingsystem that you have for any of
these pieces, or even what yourretentional model actually looks
like, whereas I think in myexperience, the most part you
could have four or five leversthat you're pushing and easy
sort of tracking mechanisms thatare sort of giving push

(45:12):
notifications or whatever to theright kind of people to reach
out to the student, and that'sactually going to go relatively
far, yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yeah, we're entering an age of data science and sort
of advanced computation wherebyI would say that for most
schools they should be the ownerand the engineer of
understanding the data and thereasons why students leave their

(45:40):
institution.
They shouldn't have tooutsource that real soon.
I was replying on a blogyesterday about predictive
analytics software forenrollments and saying if you're
thinking about using AI, it'sclose, it's not all the way
there yet, but data science byitself, I think, will get you

(46:00):
the rest of the way there.
But it's the right time to lookaround and say in five years,
how do I want to be analyzing mydata around student retention
and how can I do that in themost efficient way possible.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yeah, well said, I know that we're a little over
time here.
Ben, where can people find youand where can they get in touch?

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Sure, the easiest way to kind of see what we do and
where we do is on our website,kennedyandcompanycom.
I know, right there, I think onthe front of the website, is
also all the conferences thatwe're heading to.
It's uh, it's the beginning ofconference season.
If you will, I'm going to uhDenver for a PSEA in a couple of
weeks, uh, along with three orfour other folks.

(46:45):
I know that a bunch of ourfolks are going to the
Salesforce higher ed conference,uh, this week or next week, um,
and I're doing the Slate Summit, of course, in June, I think.
We are at NACUBO this year andwe love conversations with
prospective clients.
There's a lot out there, and wealso try to find ways that

(47:09):
clients can help themselves,because most of our clients are
not behemoths with that $6billion endowment.
Like I started at the beginning, there are schools that are
trying to find their way out ofa tough situation and we want to
be there to help them and do itin a way that's not salesy and
high pressure, and so, if thiswas an interesting conversation

(47:30):
for anybody, we'd love to have afollow-up, not to try to sell
you something, but to see if wecould be helpful, even if it's
you know, because that firstpiece of advice is you know how
can you start solving thisyourself in a period of time
with a lot of uncertainty?

Speaker 1 (47:46):
That's incredibly well said, I think.
A great place to end it.
Ben, thank you, I appreciateyou.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
No, it's my pleasure, Mike.
It's great to talk with you,and.