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

The Power of Retention: ROI Formulas - Excerpt from White Paper

This is an excerpt from an AcademicMAPS white paper The Power of Retention.If you would like a copy of the entire white paper, please just contact us at info@GreatServiceMatters.com

Calculating ROI from Retention; Three CSF Formulas

There are three primary CSFactors™,(Customer Service Factors) AcademicMAPS has formulated to help universities, colleges and career school figure out the loss or gain from retention and attrition. The CSFactors are provided as formulas schools can use to figure out how much revenue they are losing, or could and would gain if they focused on improving service to students. The formulas are quick methods to understand the financial power of retention coming out of customer service to students. Placing your college or university’s actual numbers into the formulas will quickly bring forward the real power of retention to positively affect the revenue and future or the institution.

They could also be applied to employee retention, another significant revenue and service issue but here we focus on students. The formulas were developed and tested from the research AcademicMAPS conducted during college service audits, workshops, presentations, retreats and other services provide to higher education as well as just pure research.

CSFactor 1: The Cost of Attrition CSF1 helps a college figure out how much money it is losing from its actual attrition. Factor 1 is stated as:

CSF1 = [(P X A= SL) X T]

In the formula, P represents the total school population; not just the starting fall freshman number. Most schools use the fall incoming freshmen number and that is an error. The assumption is that attrition occurs most in the first six weeks of the freshman year. That may be have some validity for the freshman year but the reality is that students are leaving colleges and universities in any one of the average six-plus years of a four-year degree and in the four-plus average years of a two-year degree. Students leave a school throughout their experience at the college. In fact, some schools are beginning to realize this and worry about the sophomore bubble. But they really need to worry about the super soph sluff, the rising junior jilt, the junior jump, super junior split, the fourth year flee and so on. Every year, every semester, in fact every day is a chance for a student to dropout. Colleges need to be concerned with every student every day of their attendance for it could be his or her last. So we look at the total population.

Annualized tuition is the number a school should use to figure its real attrition. Not the retention between the first and second semester or the freshman and sophomore years which are very popular ones. That leaves out all the students who already dropped out before the end of the second term or semester. That number fudges failure. For instance, if a college began a year with 100 new freshman and 99 left in week one but the remaining student stayed the whole year and returned for a sophomore year, the freshman to sophomore percentage would be 100%.

In CSF1, A equals attrition. Again not just from freshman but an annualized attrition rate. And this rate is to include ALL students who leave for any reason. It does not matter if the student says he or she will be back. They are not in the population and bringing in revenue until they actually do return. If they pay a “place holding fee”, that does not count them as a student until they are actually back in classes.

Fudge with the numbers if you have a need for delusion, or are insecure, unethical, or want to keep the Board feeling better but when you use the formulas, be fully honest. It will help you understand why the budget is not working or may suddenly implode. No one likes surprises, especially ones that have parentheses around them in the budget and

lead to freezes, cuts and the like. Using the formulas honestly can help forecast a reality to avoid surprises and initiate work on retaining students to maintain fiscal and operating health.

SL stands for students lost annually from total population and revenue production. And T equals annual tuition at the school.

So here is what showed up when we analyzed CSF1 for Mammon University. You may know it. Its motto is Omnes Por Pecunia. Anything for a Buck.

Its total population was 500 students.

Annualized attrition was at 39.6%

So SL (students lost annually) was 198.

Times an annual tuition of $13,000.

So, the formula becomes:

[(500 x 39.6% = 198) x $13,000] = a revenue loss of ($2,574,000).

To carry this forward a bit, we can plug in other numbers and see how an increase in retention could add to the bottom line and thus the ability to pay for full time faculty, staff, their benefits, increases for adjuncts, instructional equipment, tutors, research release, new curricula and programs, maintenance, …. All those pesky costs that make a college or university better.

If attrition dropped by 5% for this school and we substitute 5% increased retention for attrition percentage in the formula.

CSF1 = [(500 x 5% = 25) x 13,000] =

$325,000 more revenue.

Plug your school’s numbers in and see how increasing retention affects your budget and instructional strength while attrition will sap the ability to meet budget and mission.

For the full white paper, please contact info@GreatServiceMatters.com

(I have been told the link is sending people to our web page where the email can be found but if you wish to skip the web page, copy and paste the address in your email editor. Sorry for any inconvenience.)

The ROI of Retention part 3 CSFactor 3

A school loses an average of 12% of its potential enrollments as soon as a prospective student makes contact with it. Whether that contact be the website which was created by the tech designers of Sites That Hoover, by telephone, email, or make it onto campus, 12% of probable enrollments are lost with actual contact. And these are most often people who were seriously thinking of enrolling in the college.

They had found an enough interest in the school to explore it and consider applying or enrolling. But then they made contact. And that contact convinced them that they were no longer interested. That leads to

Customer Service Factor 3

[(AE x12%=EL) x tuition] = CSF3

IE - Initial actual Enrollment

12% is what is lost on initial contact

EL - is the Enrollment Lost and

T once again is the tuition.

So, continuing with Mammon U, (which has just written a formal complaint about US News and World Report for not including it in its top tier of colleges and universities which everyone at Mammon knows is an error and just makes education a commodity in the minds of the public which should care about purer motives while Mammon knows that a top ranking will improve its application flow and mean a more likely full class and reduced advertising expenditures and can actually consider raising tuition for more revenue because it can still attract a class at the higher cost from the increased ranking…..)

Mammon’s original enrollment is budgeted at 200 in the Fall. They aren’t there just yet so the admission’s folks are beating the bushes and going through every potential applicant they have. They are at 180 enrollments at this point so the CFO is concerned that the budget they created in June will not be met for the third year in a row. And the president is now reading the Chronicle starting with the career section. So if Mammon does not find the last 20 enrollments, CSF3 will be calculated like this.

CSF3 [(200 x 12%% = 24) x $13,000] = ($312,000).

The point that may hit you immediately if you are not an admissions or enrollment management person is the revenue loss of $312,000. That is a solid amount of lost revenue which may lead to starting the year with some budget, employee, equipment, maintenance or other cuts. That will usually catch most everyone’s attention. We all hate cuts.

But if you are in admission’s what you will be thinking now is “DARN (well maybe stronger than that) “Darn, we would not have just hit the 200 goal but we would have exceeded it by 4! We would be celebrating instead of commiserating”. The formula could have shown

[(200 +12%% =+224) x $13,000] = +$312,000.

Okay, So Now What?
So now the issue is what to do in the future to gain, rather than lose 12%. The list is unfortunately long for some schools but realize it all has to do with how the school presents itself and provides its services to potential customer/ clients/applicants on their first contacts with the school. Since the list is long, we will address parts of it in other postings. But for now, one of the first customer service turn-offs.

Websites and CSF3
Far too many of them simply vacuum. They do not provide viewers with what they want but with what we, a group of adults, out-of-contact with our potential students’ world and technology, think they should want. We load them up our web pages with words when the web is a visual medium. The words we use are those we are comfortable and generally have little meaning to those outside of academia. This is so since they are too often our academic-ese technical or vernacular language. The information we provide is how we would want to see our college and not how a potential student might wish to see it.

We make sure we load the web site up with things the staff and faculty ask for such as a link labeled FACULTY that if a viewer clicked on, he or she would be told it’s not for them. Foolish viewer. Thinking one might learn about the faculty from a tab labeled faculty.

We often even include the whole college catalog on our sites as if someone would want to try and read a long, turgid, ponderous, tedious, self-important document that even less than 5% of the college has ever read through. And they had to since they were assigned to do so on the catalog update committee. And what’s even more foolish is on the websites, the catalog do not even come with an active index. There is no search protocol to help users find what they are looking for. There may be the original index but fear not, the entries are not active links to take the reader to a specific section. Would not want to make the catalog accessible after all. By the way if you do want to have the catalog on the we site,at least use a program like Leadwise to make it accessible and personalized.

Even if we discount all the many, many, many words on a web page, the graphics and the layout of the pages immediately tell potential students “old skool technology.” BORING! The designs and layouts are old fashioned and the graphics used too often clichéd. There is little that conveys a message that this university is technologically exciting or even up to date. And the so-called “blog postings”, c’mon. Everyone realizes that they are either written by the PR office or by people so carefully chosen that they sound like advertising copy. They do not make the college sound up-to-date but manipulative. If you you want to use blogs, take a chance and let people say fully what they want to say.

I could go one quite a bit more but then I will sound to much like an entry on one of these web sites. Just one more issue. One that really ticks off potential students and viewers. Difficult or impossible navigation. This includes links that don’t work (and yes, I know I too have created and apologize for them). Links that take you to a page you cannot return from since there is no return link. Or links that say a reader can make contact or ask a question that take people to an “apply on-line” or fill in the request for an “admission’s person to contact you” form. That pushes the issue and makes the viewer feel once again, manipulated.

Sure the goal is to get the potential student contact admissions. But let them make the decision. Web users like to at least have a semblance of control over their use of a site. They want to be the ones to initiate the contact. So let them click on, contact admissions or apply on-line or some such link. Don’t manipulate. Even if they do complete the contact the college form that goes to admissions without their assent, the college is not getting anything more than a very weak inquiry. It is not a lead.

We will get to other negative CSF3 factors such as poor phone protocol, messages not returned, misleading or just plain ugly signage, parking problems, rude greeters and a few other issues in other postings. This one has gone on long enough.

Figuring the ROI of Retention and Customer Service - CSF1

Following a presentation on customer service and retention at a major conference, I was asked by one of the attendees if I would supply the way I figure ROI from retention and customer service. In my presentations I always review the students’ seeking of their personal “ROIs” as well as the fiscal ROI the school should be looking at. His interest was to use the information in his marketing to show his company would provide a good return on investment.

I was inclined to help this person since his company is one I feel most schools could benefit by using. They supply counseling to students that helps keep them enrolled. But since I receive no remuneration from companies I recommend (income-wise it would be wise to take it but ethics-wise, it would not be wise except from Leadwise™ (personalized on-line view books, catalogs and web sites which I helped create….wise) I thought it best to share the formulas with everyone who can use them.

They help schools figure out how much revenue they are losing, or could and would gain if they focused on improving service to students. Keep in mind that 72% of all attrition is due to poor, weak, even average customer service at a college or university. The formulas come from years of research I and very smart assistants conducted during college service audits, workshops, presentations, retreats and other services we provide as well as just pure research. . We have been studying aspects of retention it seems before retention was an issue. Just think back just eight years ago when I started AcademicMAPS. Who talked about retention as an important aspect of a college.? It was, , admissions, admissions and again admissions and still is at too many places. I recall quite well the statement of the CEO of a large career college group who said “there isn’t a problem that exists that can’t be fixed by enrolling more students.”

Keeping them? Not so much.

How many did we admit and did commit to the next freshman class? When we lose students, “okay. It’s planned for in the budget as long as we don’t lose too many more than we budgeted…..” Dumb business model. Planning to lose all those customers and all the costs associated with acquiring them is a confident way of making sure the institution is always running a tight budget.

Over the years, when I asked some administrators how much admitting a student cost, the general answer was to add together the marketing budget with the admission director’s and recruiters’ salaries divided by the number of new freshman and that was the cost. Not even close. Even for-profit schools use the same basic approach. That explains why some run deficits.

(Can a school that loses money claim to be for-profit? Don’t you have to make a profit? By the way, what is the difference between a good for-profit and a good not-for-profit? Accounting terms. In a for-profit, it is called profit. In a not-for-profit, it is called “fund balance” or “surplus” and most every college president is called upon to develop one – profit or surplus that is.)

So here is the first part of what will be a three or four part series on figuring retention and customer service ROI, the CSFactors™, at your school or business. By the way, if you use the formulas and publish results for any reason from marketing to self-flagellation, please be kind enough to provide attribution to us. It will be appreciated.

CSFactor 1 The Value of Retention (or the Losses from Attrition)

CSF1 helps a college figure out how much revenue/money it is losing from its actual attrition.

CSF1 = [(P X A= SL) X T]

In the formula, P represents the total school population; not just the starting fall freshman number. Most schools use the fall incoming freshmen numbers and that is an error. The assumption is that attrition occurs most in the first six weeks of the freshman year. That may be close to correct but the reality is that students are leaving colleges and universities in any one of their six plus years of a four year degree and in the four plus years of a two-year degree. Students leave your school throughout their experience at the school. In fact, some schools are beginning to realize this and worry about the Sophomore Bubble. But the really need to worry about the super soph sluff, the rising junior jilt, the junior jump, super junior split, the fourth year flee and so on. Colleges need to be concerned with every student every day of their attendance for it could be his last.

So we look at the total population.

A equals attrition. Again not just from freshman but an annualized attrition rate. And this rate is to include ALL students who leave for any reason. It does not matter if the student says he or she will be back. They are not back in the population and bringing in revenue until they actually do return. If they pay a “place holding fee”, that does not count them as an student until they are actually back in classes.

Fudge with the numbers if you are overly deluded or insecure, or unethical enough to keep the PR machine going or the Board feeling better but when you use our formulas, be fully honest. It will help you understand why the budget is not working or may suddenly implode. Remember, no one likes surprises, especially ones that have parentheses around them in the budget and lead to freezes, cuts and the like.

By the way, if your school is like most everyone I work with or call for help, you likely do not have a clear fix on an annualized attrition rate. Many schools have never figured it. Go figure and use an annualized attrition rate.

SL stands for students lost annually from total population and revenue production. And T equals tuition at the school.

So here is what showed up when we analyzed CSF1 for a particular college which for our purposes we will call Mammon University. You may know it. Its motto is Omnes Por Pecunia. Anything for a Buck. More on Mammon U later.

Its total population was 500 students.

Annualized attrition was at 39.6%

So SL (students lost annually) was 198.

Times an average tuition of $13,000.

The school uses a differentiated tuition scale per program.

So, the formula becomes:

[(500 x 39.6% = 198) x $13,000] =

a revenue loss of (sound of a trumpet flourish but on a kazoo since Mammon U cannot afford a real trumpet since it has lost) ($2,574,000)!!!!

To carry this forward a bit, we can plug in other numbers and see how an increase in retention could add to the bottom line and thus the ability to pay for full time faculty, staff, their benefits, increases for adjuncts, instructional equipment, tutors, research release, new curricula and programs, maintenance, …. All those pesky costs that make a college or university better.

If attrition dropped by 5% for this school and we substitute 5% increased retention for attrition percentage in the formula.

CSF1 = [(500 x 5% = 25) x 13,000] =

$325,000 more revenue.

Any school, college or university that doesn't want at least another $325,000 in the budget?

Plug your school’s numbers in and see how increasing retention affects your budget and instructional strength.