Colleges Hustling to Lure the Best and Brightest

Centre College. Alma mater to two vice presidents. Upset Harvard on the gridiron in 1921.

Never heard of it? A generation ago, the liberal arts college in Danville, Ky., didn’t seem to care. “Centre may not be for you . . . ,” a brochure advised.

Those smug days are over. Like many schools competing for students, Centre--student population 1,050--craves attention.

This year it may have hit the jackpot: The school was picked to host a nationally televised vice presidential candidates’ debate on Oct. 5. For its 90 minutes on all the major news networks, however, Centre must raise close to $1 million, roughly $1,000 per student.

Worth every educational dime, says Centre spokesman Mike Norris. “Even if you can’t get a lot of your message out in detail, if you can get your name in the public consciousness, that is a benefit,” he says.

Vying for Attention

The mantra on campuses nationwide is “visibility.” Visible colleges attract more applicants. More applicants mean a bigger talent pool. Better students are more likely to graduate, donate money as alumni and recommend more good applicants.

To gain attention a few decades ago, it seemed enough to get the college president quoted in the press or sell parents a college decal for the family station wagon. Then, in 1972, the federal government placed financial aid in the hands of students, not schools. Students became shoppers, and higher education became a marketplace, says Ted Marchese, vice president of the American Assn. for Higher Education.

That year the pitchman entered the ivory tower, and admissions offices went topsy-turvy. “It used to be like an information office--host people who want to visit. Suddenly it became practically a sales office,” Marchese says.

Enrollment Dips

The pitch remained fairly restrained until baby boomers began trading diapers for mortarboards. Then, when enrollment slowed in the 1980s, colleges shed their reserve.

“You couldn’t even use the term marketing. . . . It didn’t sound right,” says Marc Harding, admissions director at Iowa State University in Ames. “Now you’ll find we have a director of university marketing, who is responsible for the big Iowa State image.”

Since the mid-1990s, enrollment has been rising steadily. The federal forecast for first-time freshmen this fall is 2.5 million--the most since 1982.

But schools are more competitive than ever, says Barmak Nassirian, policy analyst at the American Assn. of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “This is like the arms race. . . . It’s an issue of parity against your peers and your desire to be better than they.”

In their quest for bigger and better pools of applicants, schools invoke old and new media to apply the hard sell.

As in the past, college recruiters visit high schools, tap alumni, rent booths at college fairs. But they also appeal through campus Web sites and portals, such as www.xap.com, that link straight to financial aid and admissions forms.

Even direct mail, a staple since the 1970s, is evolving, becoming more popular, more sophisticated and, says Nassirian, “almost indispensable.”

Mailing lists identify high school prospects down to such details as religious preference, computer savvy, likely major. The ACT and the College Board, which oversees the SAT, compile these lists by inviting takers of their entrance tests to fill out questionnaires. A third company, National Research Center for College and University Admissions, surveys students at more than 18,000 high schools.

‘Geodemographics’

Apparently no one keeps comprehensive figures tracking use of such lists nationwide. But last year the College Board sold 4,700 lists to 1,302 schools, while ACT sold 2,200 to 700. The research center sold 1,343 survey lists to 788.

Through “geodemographics,” colleges use the characteristics of past and current students to find high school prospects with similar characteristics. Matchmaking begins as early as junior year, based on early lists generated by PSATs.

Schools may also search by Zip code, sorting high school students by size of hometown and distance from campus. This culling for those likely to flourish can also help fill particular departments short on applicants.

Iowa State University, facing a shrinking pool of young people in the state, blitzes 100,000 prospects nationwide with letters. Last year it paid about 23 cents per name and 11.4 cents per mailing--about $34,000 just for an initial contact, says admissions director Harding.

Like others, Iowa State seeks not only to raise its profile but to reshape it. The school, 35 miles north of Des Moines, seeks diverse views and experience beyond Iowa. “We want to prepare students to be citizens of the world, not just citizens of the region,” says Harding. Also, each out-of-stater brings $14,500 for tuition, room and board--about twice that of a resident.

Last year the letters and voluntary inquiries found 45,000 prospects for Iowa State, and officials followed up with brochures and a lively CD-ROM. Then phone calls, from students and faculty, and perhaps visits from recruiters who combed 15 states. Even after acceptance, high school graduates got a pep call to combat the fickle “summer melt.” The yield: 965 out-of-staters joining 3,040 Iowans in the Class of ’03.

Until a year ago, Miami University in Ohio relied chiefly on its acclaim as a “public ivy.” But its image as well-to-do and white--”J. Crew U.”--turned off minority kids. Last fall, minorities made up just 7.5% of its 14,500 undergraduates.

To diversify, the school spent around $300,000 on billboards and radio and TV spots. This year’s ads targeted middle-class blacks in Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati and Indianapolis; next year’s may add Detroit.

This fall, 9% of incoming freshmen are minorities--growth that Harold Brown, in charge of boosting Miami’s minority enrollment, says will help all students. Misperceptions and stereotypes cost minorities a good education and isolate those already enrolled, he says, and “we do a disservice to majority students if they go through four years and don’t have significant interactions with persons different from themselves.”

Even brand-name schools are hustling.

Each spring and fall, admissions officers from the University of Pennsylvania join counterparts from Harvard, Duke and Georgetown universities to visit every state as well as Europe. Their pitch --and slide show--annually draws up to 25,000 students and parents.

“We have to keep ourselves highly visible,” says Lee Stetson, Penn’s dean of admissions. Schools that fail to make such an effort, he adds, can lose their edge.

Centre’s bid for the national exposure of a TV debate took a yearlong effort. Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton sent a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates. Schoolchildren recorded “We Wish You Would Come to Danville” to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

Now the school is raising the $550,000 that the commission requires to turn Centre’s Norton Center for the Arts into a television studio. Extras, such as workspace for 2,000 journalists, will require several hundred thousand dollars more, says Centre’s Norris.

But “we’re not just buying a TV ad,” says Norris, a point made to alumni who are financing the event. Teach-ins on campus and students in the audience, he says, will show “the substance of the way this country is governed.”

No doubt, though, it’s also about visibility. Without that, Centre may not be able to be both selective and diverse.

The college must attract “a certain number of students who are both academically talented and willing to pay the full price,” says Norris, in order “to serve the students who economically just couldn’t swing it.” A year at Centre costs $16,900 plus $5,550 room and board.

In a few years, tougher challenges may soon eclipse those that Centre, and most of the nation’s colleges, currently face. Education-by-Internet is emerging as a rival. By the end of the decade, the current flow of college-age students will ebb.

Cheryl Blanco, who tracks national trends for the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education, forecasts a decline in graduating high school seniors starting in 2008.

Admissions officers are already angling for today’s 10-year-olds: Welcome, Class of ’12.

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On the Net:

Commission on Presidential Debates: https://www.debates.org

American Assn. for Higher Education: https://www.aahe.org

Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education: https://www.wiche.edu