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Lead gen sites pose as informational resources, but give unlimited exposure to colleges that are usually paying for placement, largely for-profits. These sites drive unknowing students to the wrong schools.
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The $1.25 billion plague: Educa7on Lead Gen
Why They’re Evil and What We Can Do
The Problem • Lead gen sites pose as informa7onal resources, but give unlimited exposure (with liKle adver7sing disclosure) to colleges that are usually paying for placement, largely for-‐profits.
• These sites drive unknowing students to the wrong schools.
• Their methods are sneaky and predatory, and the market size is tremendous. An es7mated $1.25B is spent annually on educa7on lead gen.
The Problem • For-‐profit colleges have terrible outcomes
– 6-‐year gradua7on rate of 22%, compared to 60% at non-‐profit ins7tu7ons.
– Spend 23% of revenue on finding and enrolling new students, compared to the non-‐profits’ 1%.
– Average student borrows $39,950.
Who Does This Hurt? • Lead gen sites hurt the students who most need guidance: – First genera7on college students
– Veterans • The student who might start by searching for “best online university” is most at risk.
Pay-‐to-‐Play Sites
• Universi7es pay to be included in the website’s database. • Users search for colleges and are led to believe these pay-‐
to-‐play universi7es are their only or best op7ons. • How It Works: Users input their desired degree and
concentra7on and the portal yields a limited number of op7ons. Instead of “best fit” search results, users are prompted to fill out a lead gen form that collects personally iden7fying informa7on.
• These websites offer liKle or no informa7on about the actual program and have no data facets that would enable matching.
Websites that pose as degree search portals to match users to the right degree program
Two Types of Pay-‐to-‐Play • Type 1: only schools that pay show up in search results
• Type 2: paying & non-‐paying sites both show up in search results, but the site ranks paying schools higher and points students to them.
Examples of Pay-‐to-‐Play (Type 1) • Military.com’s School
Finder – Poses as an innocuous, student-‐centered search portal
• eLearners – Does include a disclosure to users about how their info will be shared, which many lead gen portals do not
Examples of Pay-‐to-‐Play (Type 2) • AllNursingSchools.com
– shows the paying universi7es as the learner’s top three matches instead of lis7ng them as sponsored search results.
Why Pay-‐to-‐Play Sites Are Bad
• These sites don’t help the user make beKer decisions or deliver on the “matching” they claim to offer.
• Users are led to believe that the six results are the only universi7es that offer their intended major -‐ but those universi7es are paying customers.
Content Marke7ng
• Lead gen websites expend a lot of effort to drive traffic to their websites. Content marke7ng has become a popular tool to drive learners down the conversion funnel into filling out a lead form.
• A student will start conduc7ng a search and be drawn to baity, ohen low-‐quality, content.
• Unbeknownst to the student, he or she is falling into a pay-‐to-‐play scheme rather than gejng real info about colleges.
Examples of Content Marke7ng
• Infographics • Syndicated content from agencies like Vantage Media appear as actual news, but are really ads for for-‐profit colleges.
Examples of Content Marke7ng • Yahoo! Educa7on posts syndicated content and includes content marke7ng on the main slider on its homepage.
Why Content Marke7ng Sites Are Bad
• Some of these sites will direct a student to fill out a lead form before even showing the user his or her top op7ons.
• All these websites do is create informa7on to get people to come to their website.