Highlights from 2015 enrollment research: 7 things we learned this year about college students and higher education enrollment management

2015 research from Ruffalo Noel Levitz shows student trends and data that colleges and universities can use to guide their planning processes.

Ruffalo Noel Levitz conducted numerous studies in 2015 to further understand the behaviors and attitudes of prospective and current students in higher education as they relate to student recruitment, campus marketing, and student retention. We also examined current enrollment practices on campuses across the United States. Here are just a few highlights from all that we learned this year:

40 percent of high school seniors rule out colleges based on sticker price. A national survey earlier this year showed four of every ten high school seniors are ruling out colleges based on sticker price alone and 87 percent believe paying for college will be “somewhat difficult” or “quite difficult.”Download the 2015 Rising Seniors’ Perceptions of Financial Aid report.

The top three practices for recruiting adult learners are face-to-face information sessions, open houses, and website “request information” forms. Only a minority of campus officials in a poll last spring reported using webinar information sessions, but those who did rated them effective. Download the 2015 Adult Learner Marketing and Recruitment Practices Benchmark Report.

Adult learners are more committed to their educational goals and generally satisfied with faculty availability. Through two new national studies, we also learned that adult learners tend to have higher intellectual interests and greater receptivity to career counseling than traditional-age students. Download the 2015 National Freshman Attitudes Report and the 2014-15 National Adult Student Priorities Report.

Email is still their first choice, but high school students like to hear from colleges via other channels, too. Looking closer, we learned that high academic ability students prefer direct mail at a higher rate than average academic ability students (GPA between 2.5 and 3.4), while average academic ability students prefer the telephone at higher rates. We also found differences by students’ racial/ethnic background. Download the 2015 High School Students’ and Parents’ Perceptions of and Preferences for Communication with Colleges.

The top three practices for retaining undergraduates are academic support programs, honors programs, and giving students practical work experiences in their desired majors. Also rated effective were first-year programs and one-on-one advising by professional staff. Download the 2015 Student Retention and College Completion Practices Benchmark Report. Also, identify opportunities for improving persistence and progression in the 2015 Student Retention Indicators Benchmark Report.

The average freshman discount rate appears to be leveling off for private client institutions of Ruffalo Noel Levitz. For the past three years, the average discount rate has held fairly constant for private colleges and universities that partnered with us to manage their institutional gift aid. See the trendlines, including rates for our public institution clients. Download our 2015 Discounting Report.

70 percent of high school students have looked at a college website on a mobile device, but some college websites still aren’t mobile-ready. We also learned nearly 60 percent of high school students check email on a mobile device at least once a day, and the number of students completing forms on mobile devices has soared. Read the 2015 E-Expectations Report and the 2015 International Student E-Expectations Report and watch for our forthcoming 2016 Marketing and Recruitment Practices Benchmark Report to be released in January 2016.

You can find more higher education papers and reports on our website along with more than 300 posts on our blog. Also see these new white papers in 2015:

The Correlation Between CollegeStudent Satisfaction and Alumni Giving; and

Navigating the Student EngagementStream: The Evolution of the Funnel for Enrollment and Beyond.

Looking ahead to 2016, we plan to release new benchmarks on college student satisfaction and the cost of recruiting an undergraduate, new researchon electronic recruiting, a study of effective campus practices in the area of marketing and recruitment, and updates on rising seniors’ perceptions of financial aid and high school students’ and parents’ perceptions of and preferences for college communications. Also watch for Ruffalo Noel Levitz’s 2016 update of the book, Strategic Enrollment Planning: A Dynamic Collaboration.

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Learn more about our Higher Education Research. To help educators stay on top of the many changes in higher education, we regularly conduct trend research and share our findings widely. Learn about several ways we provide information.