We promote the attainment of college degrees for economic and sociological reasons. And our motivations are based on data: College graduates have significant earning potential advantages over non-graduates, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and supported by the APLU, median earnings for college graduates are $40,500 or 86% higher than high school graduates.
And while we push most students to the goal of degree attainment because of the statistics, we have run into a large and growing problem of adults over 25 who have some college and no degree and this has been further expanded to add no credential (this phenomenon is so prevalent that we have now reduced this to SCNC). The most recent data estimates a 3.6% increase from the previous year to an estimated 42 million Americans. And the earning potential of these individuals is more on par with those with a high school diploma than those with a credential. That means that these individuals are losing time to earn and many are accumulating debt but not receiving the earnings benefit. That’s a problem.
Because of how egregious this is, many individuals, organizations and institutions are working hard to solve this problem. The University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI) implemented a program called YourPace allowing students to gain credit for prior learning and complete credentials asynchronously at their own pace. This program has seen massive growth and is reversing enrollment declines. Sometimes the best marketing is product design.
In North Carolina, the state launched Project Kittyhawk to actively engage past students who have stopped out. They are utilizing direct outreach to the 103,000 former students from ten universities in the UNC System. A massive effort that’s yielded 2,800 students to date. Direct outreach is valuable to a target market that may have felt let down by the university system in the past, causing them to lose faith in themselves and the institution. Direct outreach rehumanizes the institution to the prospects and makes them feel comfortable returning.
The Cal State System has launched a GPA reset program to overcome another potential problem for stopping out, bad grades. If you stopped out due to poor performance, this removes that barrier for your return, using an insight driven program design and campaign to bring people back.
Overcoming the SCNC crisis is going to take marketing professionals working with faculty, program, product and policy professionals to address the complex issue. Just communicating that college is valuable when the systems are not in place to bring back and keep stopped out students is only going to exacerbate the issue. Marketing professionals can help provide persona-based research and recommendations for why students don’t achieve their credentials and work with program and policy teams to create solutions that can then be effectively communicated to prospects. It can be done. It must be done.