Navigating the New Landscape of Higher Ed Marketing: Part 1

Kevin Hogan All right, Verlan. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. Verlan Stephens Kevin, a pleasure as always. To have an opportunity to talk with you. Kevin Hogan Absolutely. And when it comes to the higher edge space, I think the toughest part of this conversation is going to. Keeping it under half an hour or or an hour or two hours. There's so much going on that it's kind of tough to wrap your head around it, let alone trying to do business in this space, I suppose. Verlan Stephens Yeah, you know, and I think it it it is and it's a, it is a very changing and evolving market. I think there's a lot of forces at work here and none of which we're going to solve in a 30 minute conversation. So you know I think that's the the gist of this is it's a it's going to be challenging. It is challenging. It's going to be more challenge. Changing and there's a lot of a lot of moving pieces here and folks trying to figure out what that means to them. Kevin Hogan Yeah, in all the upheaval of the past four years, starting with COVID, starting with the other social unrest occurring, conversations that I had at the time of is higher. Ed actually gonna survive this. Our university is gonna survive in a traditional sense. And again, that rush to remote learning that forced beta test. That most universities, from community colleges up to the top schools had to deal with and dealt with, I would say for you know, kudos to them. And kudos to the. Verlan Stephens Yeah. Kevin Hogan History for assisting in the support of that during those times, a lot of new innovations, a lot of new infrastructures, a lot of new attitudes, a lot of new behaviors. When it comes to students and their expectations from their universities and how they support their education. There's so many where places where we could go. I guess the tough question for you to start off is. From your vantage point, what is the current state of play post pandemic current atmosphere when it comes to universities and college campuses? Verlan Stephens Yeah, the net of it is that we've certainly seen a flattening of enrollment. In fact, I just pulled the numbers this morning. NCS just put out the fall enrollment numbers and for the first time in a while, undergraduate enrollment was actually up. Yeah, up like this much, you know, 1.2%. So you know, it's not up much. The interesting thing I thought was digging in the numbers a little more was that it was driven by community. College enrollment was up 2.3%. So that one's outpacing the whole. The other one that was outpacing. With non traditional students, so freshman over 21 years old. Speaker Hmm. Verlan Stephens And so those two segments are the only thing that pushed it into a positive growth area that traditional freshmen under 20 years old still sits at 5.3% below the 2019 levels. So we're not seeing traditional 18 year old 19 year old. Incoming freshmen rebounding. And I'm just, you know, fundamentally I have big doubts whether it's gonna happen and it's based on two things. One is if we look at backing up a few years, what does K12 enrollment look? Speaker Like. Verlan Stephens Well, looked at that just recently as well. And K12 enrollment has been for 30 years from school year 1990 through school year 2020 on roughly a 1% growth every year. So Bam, we're we're notching it up 1% in over 30 years. That's pretty good gains. That is not happening anymore. And so we saw between 2020 and 2022 drop in public school enrollment of 1.3 million students. So pretty significant drop overall, you know and so. Hmm. When that starts to, then how does that translate to college as well? And if we look at that enrollment and the causes of the enrollment drop, about 25% of that is just declines in birth rate. Kevin Hogan Hmm. Verlan Stephens So the US isn't making babies at the rate they used to make babies, and that means they're not going indicated 12. They're not, then gonna go into college 20 years from now. So this is a problem that's going to span out over a long period of time. They were talking about, you know, this is 30 years, 25 years of higher education that's going to be looking at a declining. Speaker Right. Verlan Stephens More flatter declining enrollment numbers. You coupled with that the extremely high cost of higher education and I think a public perception of a lessening value. You know it's hard to do the ROI on it. I I remember to the penny I when I and that yeah, I've been out of school while I'm you know I'm just over 60 years old. You know, I then I went to a State University and my fees the first year were $184.50. Kevin Hogan Right. Verlan Stephens You know, those days are long gone. Yeah. And, you know, even state universities these days, you know, you're racking up 10 to $15,000 a year. Private schools, it might be fifty $60,000 a year, easily, some 100. And so it gets more and more difficult. You couple that with less and less. Companies are requiring college degrees to get in, and so I think it's really hard, particularly with a high school teenager brain, to do the math and go, oh, yeah, I'm going right on into college. Kevin Hogan Right. Verlan Stephens I'm going to rack up 100 to $400,000 in debt and no problem. I'm going to get such a great paying job. It's going to. Take care of that. Kevin Hogan Right, right. Verlan Stephens I can't even imagine. Having that kind of student loan debt. Kevin Hogan Yeah, no, it's credible. But so with these fundamental changes that are occurring, how is that impacting the solution providers? How do they pivot to account for these changes? Speaker Is. Verlan Stephens You know, I think that's again a a super challenging question. You have to look at where the gains are at. So more and more employers are looking at recognized certificate programs. OK, so instead of supporting four or four year programs, are we looking that we have more certificate type stuff and some of our faster growing clients in that space have done very well? You know there is more and more things going on around certificate type based training and things like that and that segment of the post secondary training has actually continued to climb pretty significant and I think will. So I think that is 1 area that people can look at and say. How can we take what we've been? I mean. For higher Ed and look more towards how can we chop that up into certificate type programs are things the other one I saw today and I sit on an advisory committee for the local Community College and their IT and computer science program. And one of the things I had really said to them recently was. We can't find in my company the staff we need that is knowledgeable in AI and he. Said really, I just saw a stat this morning that said 40% of employers are expecting that we need to be hiring our next round of employees with some level of AI experience and knowledge. So there are going to be areas where and. That was going to be I was. I was literally in having the conversation with the department chair, thinking about it's easy for me to say that where you going to find trained people to actually teach those courses. Kevin Hogan Right, right. Verlan Stephens So, you know, I think there's there's some, but there's opportunities in areas where there is a real lack of workforce readiness in those areas. So I think there's going to be good opportunity around those. I think there's still plenty of. Opportunity for. For supporting the four year degree programs, there's still a lot of push around employers that want to hire people that are well-rounded enough that they're flexible enough. They're not just, hey, I need a programmer that knows this language. Yeah, yeah. You know, I went to school, I got a degree in computer science, and I I wrote code. For a number of years. I've spent more of my time writing English. Than writing code for many, many years. And so having better language and presentation skills and other things made a bigger difference in my career long term than having very specific technical model. And I think there's still going to be a desire to have. Speaker Yeah, yeah. Verlan Stephens In your workforce, people that are on an upward management track and things that have a more wounded education. Yeah. That they're able to adapt and change as the business grows as those needs change. They've demonstrated the ability to do that, not just a proficiency in one particular thing. Kevin Hogan So would you say it's becoming more incumbent upon the solution providers to? Assists the institutions in these kind of changing priorities where it's not only just getting the sheepskin, getting to magnitude later, getting that that grade point average, but it's more about. As you were just mentioning, getting students to a point of employability, pointing them to places where they're going to have a better career pathway, student retention and just kind of the the persistency even getting those degrees at all. Verlan Stephens No, I think and I think all of that plays in, I think you know one of my personal pet peeves, it's been for for many, many. Ours is our K to 12 system. Does a very poor job of preparing students for any kind of career path that most students graduate high school with no knowledge of what real careers look like. They know what their parents do, they know what teachers do. You know, they probably know a little bit about their best friends. Parents and what they do. But beyond that? Knowledge of your average high school student about what kind of career possibilities, things I got a good friend of mine that I worked with for quite a number of years. Smart, smart guy. Graduated high school and he thought, you know, the the nearest college is University of Colorado. I'll. I'll probably go to see you and he opens the course catalog and just kind of goes. Yeah, that and he's like. Ah yeah, aerospace engineering. I think that's what I'll major. Kevin Hogan In, right, right, right. Verlan Stephens But it was literally that kind of thought that went into it. It was he didn't know. An aerospace engineer, he never met one, you know, it it just literally was so poorly thought out. Because he didn't have any knowledge. He's not alone there. I absolutely. Most people I know or have worked with didn't end up working in the field that they went to. Speaker Yeah. Verlan Stephens Cool. I'm one of the few exceptions there. I I went to school in computer science. I've worked with computers my entire life. I've been on that track, but almost nobody I know has been there. Kevin Hogan Yeah. Verlan Stephens And I think that's one of the challenges and it's one of the things that the higher Ed system in many ways brings to it is it gives students and there's a there's more programs with internships and other things that get some exposure to. What do these careers look like? And as higher Ed has transitioned themselves to less and less full time, professors and more and more instructors out of the workforce. You get an opportunity to talk to people that. Are in the workforce. And so I think that adds to it as well in terms of just, hey, what does your everyday day look like and how does that work and? Maybe that's something I'm interested in, or maybe it isn't, and I think that is also one of the things that this has been part of the changing culture there is is some of that. Kevin Hogan So to wrap up any of our our readers, our listeners who are looking to market to the higher Ed institutions in this new landscape, how would you prioritize, say that top? Two or three things that they should be looking forward to their next e-mail or their next zoom call or their next in person visit. Verlan Stephens Yeah. I think part of it is try to continue to be on top of where the trends are going. There's a lot of information coming out. There's a lot of people concerned about, you know, what's this future of education look like of post secondary education. Our certificate program is going to continue to grow. You know, we talked about at the beginning, you know, the one of the drivers for. Rising enrollment this year was community colleges. Well, if Community College enrollment is up, what does that mean? What does that look like you and I talked a little bit about. You know, I met the President of Lamar University and and he was envisioning this long range view of a college that. You had engagement with throughout your life. That you didn't just go there, graduate, get your sheepskin, and move on, that you kept coming back as you needed your career evolved, you changed. You needed additional certifications or you needed additional knowledge. I took a a post secondary class last year on customer experience. The lead School of Business at CU. It was really interesting and so I think. The colleges are starting to look for those kind of opportunities where they can, you know, I enrolled I was 60 years old and I needed. It was interesting to me of how to improve our customer experience enough to enroll and take a college. Level class in it. So I think that that's the kind of model that people need to start thinking about. Is what does a continuous learning model look like, where a school or university or program gets involved and gets an affinity with a group of people? They kind of keep coming back every many years as they decide, hey, I could use a little more information I could and I think remarketing yourself. To your alumni starts to make a lot of sense, and I think that's where where Doctor Evans was going with that field of thought. Kevin Hogan Fantastic stuff. I know. Again there. There's so many at different rabbit holes that we could go down, but I think good first part of our conversation, I know that I'll be looking forward to our next episode where we're going to talk about what it means for solution providers and get more into the weeds about specific solutions. But this big picture really put things into perspective. For me, and I know well for our our readers and listeners, so again, I appreciate your time, Berlin. Verlan Stephens Kevin, looking forward to our next segment, I think we'll talk a bit more about kind of the nuts and bolts of you know, with all this changes in this market and and what does that mean? It means listening well and it means you know being adaptive and really thinking about what you're doing and we can talk about that in the next segment. Kevin Hogan Excellent. Looking forward to it. Verlan Stephens Thanks Kevin.