The Extreme Sport of Adult Student Recruitment
Today I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Tina Seelig, the executive director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program speak on entrepreneurship and the role that higher education plays in teaching our students to be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial as they move into the workplace. It was, quite simply, a great presentation.
Dr. Seelig’s message seemed fairly straightforward—thinking outside the box, being creative, being innovative, and being an entrepreneur are all crucial to our students individual success as they make their way in their chosen professions. What a great message—it could not be any truer in the highly competitive professional world as college graduates look to move up the ladder in their fields. And then it struck me, the same is so true for those of us marketing and recruiting to prospective adult students.
If we think about it, we are all in the position of needing to think outside the box, or at least outside the box that we have traditionally functioned within. The way we have gone about marketing to and recruiting adult students for the last 10, 20, or 30 years is no longer getting the job done for us the way it used to, primarily due to competition. Our competitors have created their own boxes and our ideas, our way of doing things, may not even fit within their box, let alone beat it when we are competing for the same adult students. Being creative, being able to try three new things knowing full well that two of them will fail, but most importantly being willing to let go of “the way we’ve always done it” is truly a challenge for many of us. Letting go of the comfort zone of the way we have always marketed and recruited is a little frightening, being able to take a look inside and acknowledging the need for change can create some hesitation, but it needs to be done.
One of my favorite messages from Dr. Seelig’s presentation today is that problems are opportunities. If you can’t identify a problem, you also have no opportunity to creatively discover a solution, you have no chance to stretch your way of thinking and acting, you have no invitation to think beyond your own box. Adult student programs need people who are willing to identify problems and then work to solve them. Many adult student programs right now are struggling with enrollment—some are declining, many are in a stage of simply holding on, and a few are absolutely soaring. I strongly recommend that you challenge yourself to make a choice about the type of adult student program you want to be and then take the innovative steps to become that institution. Remember it isn’t a problem, it is an opportunity!
Join Brenda alongside your colleagues at Stamats’ Integrated Marketing Conference and Stamats’ Graduate School Marketing Conference this July in Chicago!
Photo by Darek_Smid
