Earn and Learn Again Vs Churn and Burn

There have been an increasing number of calls and emails from schools seeking training for their admissions’ departments the past six months. As a consulting group, we are pleased to help out. But I am amazed when we tell the schools they can save money and increase profits by focusing on retention.

“Retention! No, we can solve all our problems if we enroll more students”.

But they can’t enroll more students. That’s why they call us. But then they don’t listen. They still focus on a churn and burn approach. Enroll them. Bring them in. Greet them at the front door and wave bye to them and your revenue as they flee out the back. As a result, schools continue to have problems meeting revenue and mission goals.

Let’s look at the realities. If an admissions department enrolls 50 students on Monday but only 25 show for the first day of classes, how many students were enrolled? 25. Yet you paid to have all 50 recruited and processed at an average cost of $5,640 each. That means an immediate loss of $141,000. This loss is partially from inappropriate sales technique but mainly from not focusing on retention from day one.

The fuller loss can be easily calculated by multiplying the 25 students times your annualized tuition as discussed in my new book Customer Service Factors and the Cost of Attrition. If the school’s annualized tuition is $12,000, that means an additional $300,000 lost. Just for one start. If there are six starts, total attrition losses could be $2.646,000. For most schools recapturing some on that $2M-plus would be good. That is why we are so busy helping schools on retention.

When I was the Chancellor of a proprietary career college the truth was that we seldom hit our admission goals. Competition was increasing. The available market was starting to shrink due to competition and costs. Tuition went up every year and we were about to hit a price point at which the ROI would be questioned more and more by potential students and their families/buying committees. We would soon hit that point at which we were pricing ourselves beyond our target market. Yet admission goals were raised by corporate for every single start. The goals were raised even though the school did not hit its earlier goals. A guaranteed way to assure failure financial if we focused on new enrollment alone. But we didn’t.

I realized the most important number was not new students but total population. Money was made if we kept population. So we began to focus on retention.

Sure we kept working at improving our admission approaches and tried to change the sales methods to adapt to the actual mindset of potential students rather than that of the admissions rep. For example, they seemed to think they should keep talking and dumping more and more information on the potential student’s head as if they were an educational landfill. Sooner or later, the student would agree to fill out an application just to shut them up I think. Applications could be up but real enrollments, those who showed for classes and paid tuition, not so much.

We brought in the top sales coach in the world, Stephan Schiffman and used his excellent books that lead to sales success. We also tried re-aligning staff to focus on strengths such as setting appointments and closing sales. But a hallmark of churn and burn is the comfort in failing; to keep doing the same thing that isn’t working. So the admission’s team went back to its losing ways each and every time with the blessings of regional admission’s directors who only cared about admissions of course.

But I hate failing so we hired a student retention group. But to illustrate the inability of churn and burn-oriented groups to change to succeed, I was told by I could not use the title “Vice President for Retention Services”. That would take away from admissions and make a negative statement. So I hired a VP of Student Services who focused on retention. We also hired intervention counselors whose job was to contact every student at least every other week and any student at risk at least twice a week to see what we could do that was legal, ethical and in the students’ best interests to help out. We did all we could to meet their needs and especially their return on investment concerns and goals.

We also put in place a Rapid Response Retention approach that sought out problems that caused students problems each day and then solved them ASAP so the solution could be implemented the next day. The only rule was to determine if the solution was legal, within rules and regulations; ethical and to the benefit of students.

Bottom line – The college did not hit admission numbers but did return a quite solid profit every year based on a retaining students so they could graduate (Oh, for not-for profit schools just slip the term surplus or the phrase fund balance in here. They are the same as profit within a fund accounting system not-for-profit college or university). Students hit there goals and we hit ours. Would anyone refuse that?

By the way, since we offered two and four year degrees, we increased our ability to upsell associate degree students into the BA programs since they were also happier with the school. Again, a win-win for everyone.

So the message here? Admissions is good and necessary but retention really makes the revenue grow.

Move away from failing churn and burn approaches that assure fiscal failure. Focus much more on retention and embrace what we call Learn and Earn that we teach schools and is discussed in the upcoming book The Power of Retention: More Cutomer Service in Higher Education. Simply put, there are ways to keep students learning so they graduate and get to their goals while you keep earning.

We are quickly filling up our dates for school opening convocations and workshops in August and September as well as customer service week (Oct6-10). We would like to be able to help you too so please contact us ASAP for a date. info@GreatServiceMatters.com

AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services.www.GreatServiceMatters.com 413.219.6939 info@GreatServiceMatters.com

Increasing Enrollment by Stitches

A quick apology for not posting recently. It has been a very hectic and busy time. I completed the rewrite of new book The Power of Retention which will be out in July through The Administrators Bookshelf. I have also been traveling all over the US and Canada giving workshops, training and presentations on customer service for colleges, universities, career colleges and educationally-related corporations. But the postings are back and here is one now.

Career Education Corporation may not have always done everything perfectly well but it did create a brilliant process that successfully stitches students into the fabric of each college. Their process of getting a student from the initial application to the show, actually coming to school, is one worth emulating for every college or university, for-profit or not.

Think of an enrollment as a quilt with many pieces that all have to be put in place properly to make it attractive and strong and you have some idea of what the stitch-in process does.

The “stitch-in process” begins with the smile at the reception desk through the fully executed orientation for all students at all schools. If done correctly, students are never allowed to believe that they are not the most important aspect of the college once they apply for entry. The admissions reps must call the students and follow-up on any aspect of the enrollment process that may still need to be completed as well as to just say “hello. How are you doing? Any information I can give today?”

When students accept enrollment, a real person will contact them personally. That person, the stitch-in director, becomes their constant reference point from that moment and after they show up for classes. The initial contact must be made within 24 hours of acceptance. Time is not allowed to elapse between the initial interest and the call. The contact is a person who not only must love students but be absolutely proficient and a true believer in customer service. There is no issue too small or big for him or her to immediately tackle. There is no such thing as an impossible task. Every call must be completed. Every concern answered and removed. The contact person assumes the role of the collegiate mother for the student and will fight for every one of them as the student was his or her own child.

The contact at the college not only learns the student’s name, the student learns the stitch-in director’s name as well. This generates a unique bond between student and college. It provides something most colleges do not provide; a personal contact, a real human being of flesh and blood with a name. That is the most important primary part of the link actually.

In Cheers, Sam did not have to know everyone else’s name because they all knew his. They could call him by his first name and that always created a very special bond. They could walk in the bar and call out “hi Sam” and even if he did not know their name, a wave back or a “Oh yuh, hi” could make it seems as if her did know and the bonding to the bar was felt. Of course, Sam did know most people by name and that is certainly key. In the same way, most enrollment managers at CEC schools do remember most every student’s name and their profile. If they didn’t the student had a precious thing, the first name of someone who will be there in the large impersonal college just for them. That name Get a name Give a name exchange and first person contacts stitch students in like nothing else.

Every time a positive contact is made, each issue solved, every anxiety removed, another stitch is put into the quilt that is the college-student relationship. And these stitches are what will strongly help keep students in the college.

Quick pitch: We are quickly filling up our dates for school pre-opening convocations and workshops as well as customer service week (Oct6-10). We would like to be able to help you too so please contact us ASAP for a date. info@GreatServiceMatters.com

AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services.www.GreatServiceMatters.com 413.219.6939 info@GreatServiceMatters.com

A Professor and a Student Walked into a Bar........

There is a core concept behind much of positive customer service in college or for that matter anywhere. Smiling.

Not only is it great for increasing customer service and retention, it has wonderfully salutary and powerfully positive effects for you too. Smiling creates huge returns on a very small investment. And according to a study completed by the British Dental Health Foundation, smiling can save you weight too!

The British Dental Health Foundation, co–ordinators of National Smile Week (May 15–21) — the biggest oral health event in the UK calendar — spoke after scientists revealed that a smile gives the same level of stimulation as eating 2,000 chocolate bars or receiving £16,000 in cash.

The clinical tests, carried out on volunteers in Scotland, measured brain and heart activity as participants were shown pictures of people smiling and given money and chocolate.

The results were analysed by psychologist Dr David Lewis, the author of The Secret Language of Success, who said that seeing a smile creates what is termed as a 'halo' effect, helping us to remember other happy events more vividly, feel more optimistic, more positive and more motivated.

Dr Nigel Carter, chief executive of the Foundation, commented: "We have long been drawing attention to the fact that smiling increases happiness both in yourself and those around you, so it is good to receive the backing of this scientific research.

2000 bars of chocolate! And the halo effect. When you smile, it causes other to do so too. During a workshop at the University of New Brunswick, Canada, I proved the strength of smiling by putting a smile on my face and going up to members of the audience. Eevery one of them responded with a smile. Now, whether it was because they felt the power of a smile or because they were thinking I had gone mad and best smile back to keep me from some odd behavior focused on them, I can not say for sure. What I can say for sure is they all smiled back, even one who had done her best to tell through a rigid frown and body language to state to me she was not going to buy anything I would say. In fact, after I got her to smile just by grinning at her while talking about smiling, she lost the frown and relaxed the rigidity in her body for the rest of the workshop.

If we smile, we release endorphins and serotonin which some obtain though marijuana use. So, smiling can save you more money, loss of job if caught and no lingering pot smell on your clothes to make your colleagues wonder if they need to create an intervention for you.

Smiling also has been found to reduce stress, lengthen life expectancy, lower blood pressure and make the smiler appear younger and more attractive. Maybe that explains the attraction Jerry Lewis to the French?

Smiling also makes you appear to the viewer as if you are pleased to see him or her and that produces a halo effect. The other person feels happier as a result and will even like you more. This is true even if your smile is fake. A faked smile will have as much positive effects as a real one for the viewer. Granted a real one may be stronger and thus produce greater effects on the viewer and yourself, but a faked one is a great start.

Moreover, when you smile it is fairly impossible to sound as frustrated, tired or even as angry as you may really feel. Your voice and one will have a more positive, upbeat, perhaps even friendly tone caused by the smiling. The smile-influenced voice will carry out to anyone hearing it and affect their mood too. Even if a person cannot see your smile, he or she will hear it such as when talking on the telephone. That makes the listener feel better and even welcomed.

So, SMILE

Quick pitch: We are quickly filling up our dates for school pre-opening convocations and workshops as well as customer service week (Oct6-10). We would like to be able to help you too so please contact us ASAP for a date. info@GreatServiceMatters.com

AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services.www.GreatServiceMatters.com 413.219.6939 info@GreatServiceMatters.com

Selling Failure for All

Today’s Doonesbury cartoon in the local paper takes us back to the fictional Walden College. In it, a potential student is being given the “money walk” a traditional college tour. The College tour guide Zipper explains that “for the next hour I’ll be walking backwards through the campus of Walden College”. Not fictional. Walking backwards is a required ability for a tour guide. Zipper goes on to add that Walden is the nation’s number one safety school. “In fact,” Zipper states to the potential student “I am authorized to admit anyone who completes this tour.” Again not fictional. For most colleges and universities the goal of admissions is to “make the numbers and pay the bills.”

In fact, I would argue that for most schools nowadays being selective means they select most everyone who applies. There are very few schools that have the luxury of actually being selective. They are the 306, maybe 310 name brand schools which actually get more applications than slots open. And of course, if your school is an open door institution, selectivity is anathema to its mission. But for most schools, even open door institutions, admissions is a numbers game especially now that budgets are not matching expenditures.

Schools will sell a spot in an in-coming class to most anyone who shows interest. And it is selling no matter what euphemistic academic label we may give it. Maybe it is not selling a used car but it is not really that distant from it when one looks at the tactics, approaches and pressures to hit the numbers that an admission’s officer – salesperson faces. The major difference is that a car salesman gets a commission and can earn more money while we in academia settle for the belief that we are engaged in a more humane sales job and work longer hours for less pay. And a car salesman does not have to travel as much to attend those oh so glorious and wonderful Admission Fairs. Wahooooo!

One of the earlier versions of the Principles of Good Academic Customer Service used to have a statement that there must be a match between the school and the student. In other words, don’t sell a student a college or university he or she can not succeed in or will be unhappy attending. If you do, you can also count on losing that student. When you do, all the costs of recruiting, admitting, enrolling, entering, orienting, and processing that student will be lost. This is not an inconsiderable sum either. We have figured it at an average of $5460 per student. So every student you lose costs you not just tuition but the acquisition costs.

This is not just good customer service advice; it is very important and solid retention law. But it is a law that butts up against the divided priorities and accountabilities within an academic institution. Admissions goals are not necessarily equal to those of enrollment management or academics for example. If you are one of the very few schools to have a person whose title indicates a responsibility for retention, then you are acutely aware of the conflict. But not to worry, so very few schools have yet realized that retention is important that they have not put anyone in this untenable role of worrying about keeping the students the school worked so hard and spent so much money to acquire. I mean why worry about keeping students when there is an unending supply of new potential students out there and so little competition for them. Besides, what ethical responsibility to the students we accepted?

Ethics?

We are a college. Students have to study that in a required course perhaps but we know that is a requirement for them. We already got through that course many years ago. We don’t need to worry about ethical responsibilities to students. We have faculty to worry about and my increasingly large salary. Ethics? Philosophy department which is all adjunct anyway so it can’t really be all that important and they can’t complain anyhow of we replace them.

Just because we accept them and in so doing tell them either directly or by implication that they should be able to succeed here and that means learn and graduate does not mean we have to coddle them with attention and tutoring in areas they may be having difficulty in. They are college students after all. They should be able to do the work we present to them even though we know they are weak and not up to our standards. They simply aren’t of real college quality but that does not mean I have to spend extra time to help them learn and grow. They are in college for g-d’s sake and should be able to do what we know they could not do when we accepted them.

Besides odds are very good I am either an adjunct or a full time faculty member (duh) so either way, I really do not have time for students. If an adjunct, I need to drive to my next class at another school at a gasoline cost that exceeds my adjunct pay. If I am a full-time faculty member, the rewards for me are not in teaching or spending time with students but in publishing and research to get a promotion or even better something I can patent and make a lot of money from while using my college position as a fall back guaranteed income and health benefits. I mean, my goals are not well aligned with undergraduate teaching or students.

The faculty are right too. I have been looking at the budget and the welfare of the college. We need to cut back on services and some positions if we are to make the budget for the year. Since I know that I must pick my battles wisely, I will avoid doing what may be right and do the least harmful to me. After all, I don’t want to draw fire what with my evaluation and salary increase on the line. Besides, rile the wrong people and I could get a vote of no confidence. Of that I am confident. So where to cut….counselors. They have little power. And tutors, even less. More adjuncts. Library but not research collections if we are to get the grants… And yes, we can not replace admissions people and still up their goals. That’s it bring in more students and provide fewer services for their success. Then we can hit our numbers.

Goals. Good in soccer. Maybe not admissions

Admissions has a simple number to achieve. X number of new students. Now I must and want to say that most admissions people want to do a good job but there are times when doing something as silly as keeping a job does get in the way. If I am an admissions rep at the average school and my given goal is to recruit and get applications from 100 students but I am only at 50 with three weeks to go…. Well, I may become a bit less concerned about their ability to succeed. I will start to take applications from only those we select to go here. We select you if you have the application fee.

Oh but wait. The admissions committee will never accept weak students. Uhuh. Who is the committee at your school? At more and more colleges, the admissions committee have become rubber stampers since they know that if the college does not meet its enrollment numbers, there will be problems and they could come home to roost on them. It is easier to blame admissions for recruiting weak students and “just take the best of what we are given.” No matter if the students accepted are very likely to quit. I wrote fail first but there are so few students who fail because of poor grades that this was not a good choice of words.

This is all part of why the country and its colleges and universities whether they be public, private or for-profit have such horrendously high non-graduation rates. NCHEMS 2006 graduation rates (2006 is the most recent available) show two year students graduation at a rate of 29.1% in three years and four year students graduating nationally at a rate of 56.4% in six years. Oh yes, I am aware that students take longer to graduate and some take as long as 13 years. But c’mon, these rates are embarrassing and indicative of our own failings. Especially failing at recruiting students and then helping them to succeed.

I am 5’5” tall, overweight and getting to feel old some days. If I were sold an entrance to a camp that stated it was to prepare people to get into the NBA, you would quickly see I was sold a false dream. “Boy that camp ripped you off. What an unethical group of @#$%I am 5’5” tall, overweight and getting to feel old some days. If I were sold an entrance to a camp that stated it was to prepare people to get into the NBA, you would quickly see I was sold a false dream. “Boy that camp ripped you off. What an unethical group of @#$%$&s. Or you can rationalize it and say”well, at least the camp would allow him to try and achieve his dream. It gave him the chance.” Or you can rationalize it and say”well, at least the camp would allow him to try and achieve his dream. It gave him the chance.” Or you can blame me for trying to do something that I should have known I was not capable of doing. But I do not think any of us would believe the camp was right in taking my money and accepting me as potential NBA material.

Well, too many of our colleges, universities and career colleges are NBA camps. And that is not what we should be.

Quick pitch: We are quickly filling up our dates for school pre-opening convocations and workshops as well as customer service week (Oct6-10). We would like to be able to help you too so please contact us ASAP for a date. info@GreatServiceMatters.com

AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services.www.GreatServiceMatters.com 413.219.6939 info@GreatServiceMatters.com

NSU Idea of Retention Does Not Add Up

Assistant Professor of Mathematics has left a new comment on your post "Schools Budgets Aren't Flush":

Ummm...what, exactly, is "CSF1 = [(P x A = SL) x T]"? I can tell you one thing for damn sure: it isn't an equation. Hell, it isn't even a well-formed mathematical statement.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics has left a new comment on your post "Schools Budgets Aren't Flush":

By the way, this is also complete gibberish:

CSF1 = 1565 X 52.1% = 815 headcount x $18,190 = $14,824,850

So, you mean to tell me that 52.1% of 1,565 (of anything, apparently...units, please?) amounts to $14,824,850?!

The above comments have given me a great deal of pause the past week. I have been determining what to do with them. Not because they criticize what I wrote because they do not. The explanation of the formula was in the article as well and could be more fully explained in the short, yet valuable book Customer Service Factors and the Cost of Attrition. (Picture included) Besides, I was a college president and was a rather source of pin the typo on the donkey. That is the game we academics play when we cannot find an honest basis for disagreeing with an idea. I was, and am a good source for pin the typo since I am a horrid typist. Anyone who has received an email from me has already read my disclaimer. For those who haven’t here it is.

DISCLOSURE: In high school, Mrs. Burns, the typing teacher, told me I would not need typing when I signed up for it to be the only man in an entire class of young women. She said I would be an executive or something of the sort with a young woman doing my typing for me. I would be better of with something like philosophy to get into a good college. As a result, I went to Umass-Boston. I never learned to type as such and use a quite fast, yet at times creative, two finger typing method often leading to interesting neologisms (i.e. typos). I am my secretary. And spell check can be as bizarre as my typing. So if you are bothered by typos, tell Mrs. Burns.

I have no issue with the comments on the formulas outside of their being incorrect and unhelpful to the discussion of the issue. My math endowed colleagues tell me the formulas are fine. They work. I concur I was not an algebra whiz as discussed in the article on Dr. Tafi Tanimoto, a wonderful professor who was an exemplar of academic customer service, but years of Excel have helped me put together working formulas.

What kept me from posting the comments for a while was my sincere disappointment that the comments had nothing to do with the ideas. They did not say anything about the concepts expressed in the article on how colleges need to focus more on retaining students than simply bringing them in. That is deeply disappointing.

The issue is an important one that goes against deeply embedded academic beliefs that have hurt many colleges, faculty and students. Colleges lose revenue. Faculty lose jobs and the feeling of success from being effective teachers. Students lose most of all. They lose the chance to become a more productive and successful member of our society. They also lose some of their self-value and esteem when they leave a college. Even if they leave because we failed them, they recognize they made a mistake somewhere along the line. And finally, they lose the money and time invested which will make it ever more likely they will not complete at another college. But there are times when leaving can be better than staying.

All this came to me ever more strongly after reading Students Fail and a Professor Loses a Job, a piece in today’s Inside Higher Ed. The piece discusses how Steven D. Aird lost his job teaching biology at Norfolk State University because he failed too many students. It is important to note that nowhere in the piece did anyone make any claims that giving passing grades to students who did not deserve them was considered customer service. That’s good because it isn’t as has been previously discussed in other articles here for example.

What was discussed is how an administrator turned down Professor Aird for tenure because he failed students for violating University attendance policies and/or failing tests and quizzes. It appears that Dean Sandra J. DeLoatch turned down his tenure because he failed her unwritten rule that that 70 percent of students should pass a course. The University’s position is that it is a school of opportunity for students of color who it will “whip into shape” according to its spokesperson Sharon Hoggard.

Whip them into shape by not making sure they attend classes and learn anything? Whip them into shape by coddling them and making them believe they are prepared for the world ahead? Whip them into shape by rewarding them with passing grades for doing the very things that will get them fired in their jobs after college? That’s not whipping anything except some cover to keep students in school to meet bills under the guise of helping them.

This is an issue that could have been raised by the anonymous comment maker. (Oh by the way, why do so may people hide behind that anonymous or in this case Assistant Professor label? That is just such a symptom of our basic academic cowardice. We love to make comments but seldom have the fortitude to let people know we are making them. Why is it that academics claim a love of academic freedom when and only when you agree with me? This is especially so in comments on the internet though after decades as a college administrator I was sort of getting used to unsigned notes, accusations, allegations and disagreements slipped under my door or into my mailbox by Professor Anonymous. C’mon folks. If you have something to say, say it. And then stand behind your comments with your name. If you are so afraid that someone will disagree with you or each through the internet and grab you, you may have bigger problems than perhaps even basic spinelessness.)

Anyhow, back to the topic. The use of methods such as those employed by Norfolk State University are not what honest, sincere folk who talk about retention are referring to. Norfolk State is not retaining. They are deferring. They are cheating students and the society. This is not serving students. It is serving them, their families and their future a lie. They are also giving all other schools that serve a primarily student of color or neo-traditional students a large brush that educational bigots can and will use to paint all of them as inferior and their graduates will have their diplomas tainted as well. This will be especially so for those graduates of Norfolk State who earned their success through study and dedication.

So my friend Assistant Professor, if you wish to disagree with me go ahead and do it. I welcome comments especially ones that make me rethink my ideas since they open dialogue that can make whatever I or anyone else put forward better through contrariety and even compliment. I wish for comments, thoughts and examples. But falling back on math formulas….c’mon. The issues are bigger than that. Just ask the students at Norfolk State.

AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services.www.GreatServiceMatters.com 413.219.6939 info@GreatServiceMatters.com

Schools Budgets Aren't Flush

There is an article in the current edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education that begs for a comment. The piece “In Turbulent Times, 2 Small Colleges Brace of the Worst” ( 5/09/08, P. 1, and A12-14) discussed how Tiffin University and Heidelberg College are going about their financial issues in what I have to consider traditionally dumb ways. They are trying to increase admissions, primarily by increasing their tuition discounting, trying to raise donations, cut costs and build perhaps a new building. You know,” if we build it, they will come” as if The Field of Dreams was a recruitment training film and not a well scripted fiction. The only thing that is guaranteed by a new building is increased debt load and more belt tightening. I can hear the budgets flushing now.

They are using a traditional frontloading approach, i.e. recruiting more and more students. Spend more and more money to do that. Cut more and more costs to cover the recruitment and discount costs. Sort of a Payday Loan approach for academia. Keep borrowing up front to keep spending more and more to try and stay afloat when the answer is not in taking out more loans but in conserving what they already have.

Not recruitment but RETENTION.

Heidelberg College has a 47.9 four year graduation rate and a 51.7% six year graduation rate. Tiffin University a 24.2% four year graduation rate and six year graduation rate 31.1% according to the Educational Trust. This means that each of them lose at least half of all the students who start at the schools prior to graduation. All the money they are spending to increase the size of incoming classes is going out the back door with the students who leave the school without graduating.

Let’s use some of the formulas in the new book Customer Service Factors And The Cost Of Attrition that help calculate the losses schools suffer from attrition to clearly see the folly of frontloading without retaining. Formula 1 states CSF1 = [(P x A = SL) x T] or population times attrition equals the number of students lost times tuition which tells us how much money has been lost by a school.

So for Heidelberg’s current year it can look forward to a loss of at least $4,800,950 from its annual budget.

(using the figures from the four year graduation rate from the Educational Trust CSF1 = 1565 X 52.1% = 815 headcount x $18,190 = $14,824,850 over the four year period. Even if students left in an equal rounded down attrition distribution of 203 students a year that would mean Heidelberg is losing $3,692,570 a year by not focusing on retention.

By the way, every one of those students would need to be replaced and at least the average recruitment cost of $5460 (which is low for Heidelberg since it is using consultants and many people and money to recruit students). CSFactor 2 lets us know that Heidelberg is then losing another $1,108,380 in wasted recruitment cost just to bring in the students who have left and double that to replace them.

Tiffin University (using 6 year graduation rates since they have a fairly large non-traditional on-line population) loses an annualized $13,479,263 a year from attrition.

If either could cut their attrition rate, they would realize a significant increase in revenue and fiscal relief.

When will schools realize that the success comes not from bringing in more and more students to replace the ones they lose but from retaining the ones they have? And it costs a heck of a lot less and results in a self-perpetuating situation.

Students who stay become alumni.

Student who stay recruit other students.

Students who stay help build the strength of a school.

Students who stay do not have to be recruited again and again and again.

Students who stay are key to the long term stability and growth of a college or university.

If schools want to spend money, spend it on programs and assistance to keep the enrollment they have. That is the smart thing to do.