UW: Emergency recruitment efforts on track for success
Student applications are up seven percent thanks to a $1.5 million boost for UW recruiters. The university is now shifting focus, seeking to turn those applicants into enrollees.
An emergency $1.5 million recruitment campaign launched by the University of Wyoming last fall is paying off, UW administrators say.
The UW Board of Trustees’ March meeting was dominated by a discussion of the university’s embattled diversity, equity and inclusion programs, but UW leaders highlighted a number of other ongoing and pressing concerns, to lesser fanfare, when they gathered in Laramie last week.
Perhaps chief among those items was an update the board received on the university’s well-funded, aggressive and mostly digital campaign to turn around a multi-year trend of plummeting enrollment.
Associate Vice President of Institutional Communications Chad Baldwin said UW’s student headcount will likely grow for the first time in four years.
“Applications for first-time and for first-year students for fall are up around about seven percent — that’s approaching about 6,000,” Baldwin said. “The ‘admitted’ students are also up, a little closer to eight percent — that’s about 5,500 students. And we can document that over 2,200 of those came through our digital advertising.”
Those figures are welcome news at UW, which has seen enrollment drop 11 percent in just the last five years.
Of course, applications do not equal enrollments. To submit an application, prospective students must pay a $40 fee, so the tally of applications received is one indicator of interest, but it captures a number much larger than the ultimate first-time student headcount for the Fall 2024 semester.
UW administrators are hoping the seven percent increase in applications will translate to an increase in enrollments. UW enrolls about 30 percent of those who apply in any given year.
“When we made this pitch to board members last year, we projected some numbers,” Baldwin reminded the trustees. “We projected that we would get about 140-180 more students in our freshman class than we had last year from this additional spending. Right now, our admits are up about 400 students. If we convert that at the 30 percent rate, we’re gonna get pretty close to that.”
UW has delayed its enrollment confirmation date, pushing that deadline from its traditional spot on the calendar, May 1, to a month later, June 1.
A national campaign
The digital campaign relied heavily on “retargeting” — directing ads to those who had recently clicked on a previous ad for UW. But the wider campaign also included expanded merch, mailers and other print material, as well as in-person ads on billboards, in Denver International Airport, and even on ski lifts.
The results varied by state, with about half of all applications coming from Wyoming or Colorado. There has been a 3.1 percent increase in Wyoming applications and a 5.2 percent increase in Colorado applications from last year’s figures.
“We advertise there and that’s where we get most of our students, and so it’s very encouraging to see that those are up,” Baldwin said. “Now, you could argue that our digital advertising might have less impact there because we’re already a known quantity in this region. We’re reaching students who already know about us. But we found that we can’t just assume people are going to come here. We have to court them.”
The largest gains were elsewhere. UW has seen a 16 percent increase in California applications, an 18 percent increase in Texas applications, and a 22 percent increase in Nebraska applications from last year’s figures.
Targeting transfers
As it launched the new recruitment program last fall, UW decided to target transfer students in addition to out-of-state first-time students. Those applications are also up, by about four percent. But that jump is driven by out-of-state transfer students, rather than transfer students from Wyoming’s community colleges, which saw a slight decrease.
Ben Moritz, executive director of the Wyoming Community College Commission, said UW might be losing those in-state transfers to online alternatives like University of Phoenix.
“Wyoming does have a disproportionate number of students taking online courses from out-of-state providers, which means that we still need to work on — both at the community college level and at the university level — being that vendor of choice, so to speak, for online courses,” Moritz said.
He added personal connections, or the lack thereof, between prospective students and the university are a significant factor when it comes to choosing one’s future school.
“The community college students who have the most relationships with UW faculty, staff and administrators are those that are most likely to then make that connection,” Moritz said. “So it could be advisors. It could be opportunities to do research. It could be visits to UW; it could be visits from UW to the colleges.”
Next steps, next round
UW President Ed Seidel said university leaders will now press the advantage and try to actively recruit from this expanded pool of applicants. This will likely involve Seidel himself, as well as other members of the UW administration and the board of trustees, personally calling and talking to prospective students.
“Now that the applications are up due to — I think it’s pretty clear — in part to this effort that we’re hearing about, we’re looking to convert them to students who enroll,” he said. “So we’re going to work very hard on the ‘high touch’ aspect of this now to try to convert them.”
Looking forward, then-Board Chair John McKinley suggested that UW consider baking this digital recruitment campaign into the university’s budget.
“This was a one-time infusion of funds last fall to kind of test-run this,” he said. “I would sure hate to see a program that’s in its infancy, and is appearing to show success, die because it doesn’t get funded in the next round.”
The board will host budget hearings in May.
$1.5 million for an additional 180 students (at best) works out to $8,333 per student. Worth it?