Five Things We Learned About Effective Graduate Marketing and Enrollment

We recently completed the data analysis for our upcoming 2021 Graduate Marketing and Recruitment Report, which will be published by the end of October 2021. The report is based on a survey of nearly 100 public and private non-profit institutions with responses from either the graduate marketing or enrollment leader. Our goal with this study is to understand the extent to which graduate marketing and recruitment operations, procedures, and policies are set up to most likely benefit from recent enrollment growth at the graduate level.

I asked my colleague Holly Tapper to review the survey data in advance of talking through what she thinks are some of the most interesting points. Holly is uniquely qualified to do this after spending many years in campus enrollment positions just like those we surveyed for this study. She has had marketing, enrollment, and academic leadership positions at not only non-profit institution but also for-profit institutions, so she also brings valuable insights into how both sectors plan, market, and recruit for their programs.

Among the topics we covered in our discussion were:

1. How are institutions bringing graduate programs from the periphery to the center of their strategic planning?
2. How will institutions be best positioned to benefit from the recent growth in graduate enrollment (which undergraduate has contracted)?
3. What types of organized communication, good organizational structure lead to meeting prospective student demands?
4. How are marketing budgets beginning to respond to how prospective graduate students conduct their program search?
5. How well are graduate admissions offices meeting the expectations of today’s graduate students—and how organizational structure is helping (and possibly hindering) timely response?

Holly Tapper joins me to discuss forthcoming findings from our survey of graduate marketing and recruitment practices.