Millennials as Consumers: Campus-Wide Efforts to Recruit

and Retain Millennials

Deborah Thompson, Vice President for Enrollment Management

Will Miller, Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness

Jill Miller, Director of First Year Experience and Co-Curriculars

Higher Education Today• Faculty may hate it, but we are selling a product• 11th century notion of learning• 19th century agrarian calendar• 21st century students• Technology has changed it all

What We Know• Special, sheltered, confident, team oriented,

conventional, pressured, achieving, rule followers, well-educated, open-minded, influential, achievement oriented, used to being assessed• Did not wait to college to get out from under the wings

of adults and experiment with matters such as sex, alcohol, drugs, spending money, or even different lifestyle options

Age and Technology

Teaching and Learning with Millennials• Faculty need to remember these differences• What worked for their cohort may not work anymore• Millennials enter college differently• Want teamwork, experiential activities, structure, technology• Want to be led, challenged, to work with friends, to have fun,

to be respected, to have flexibility• Focused on grades and performance, busy with

extracurriculars, eager to be involved, technologically talented, interested in math and science compared to humanities, more politically conservative and socially liberal

The Dumbest Generation?• Millennials “care about what occurred last week in the

cafeteria, not what took place during the Great Depression…they heed the words of Facebook, not the Gettysburg Address.”• The constant communication amongst their peer

groups has made it so that “equipped with a Blackberry and laptop, sporting a flashy profile page and a blog…teenagers pass words and images back and forth 24/7” • Can’t trust anyone under 30

Paradox• “We have entered the Information Age, traveled the

Information Superhighway, spawned a Knowledge Economy, undergone the Digital Revolution, converted manual workers into knowledge workers, and promoted a Creative Class, and we anticipate a Conceptual Age…yet young Americans today are no more learned or skilled than their predecessors.”

• Faculty, in Bauerlein’s opinion, are equally to blame as he finds them to be too worried about being labeled as old or reactionary to challenge today’s students to move beyond his negative opinions.

Debt-Ridden!• Student loan debt, poverty, unemployment, lower levels

of wealth than their previous two generations at same age• BUT, 8/10 say they have enough money to lead the lives

they want

Single!

Diverse!• 43% non-white

Not Trusters!Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too

careful in dealing with people?

MILLENNIALS: 19%GEN XERS: 37%BOOMERS: 40%

Group Culture• Millennials are different• Just like every generation that has come before us• BUT, their culture is also significantly different

• Brooks• “We have seen a broad shift from a culture of humility to the

culture of what you might call the Big Me, from a culture that encouraged people to think humbly of themselves to a culture that encouraged people to see themselves as the center of the universe”• Trophies, scoreboards, and kindergarten graduations

The Big Me Generation: Data Points• In 1950, Gallup asked graduating high school seniors if they believed they were a

very important person. Only 12 percent said yes. In 2005, four out of five high school seniors responded affirmatively.

• Psychologists regularly employ narcissism tests, which ask respondents to identify if particular statements apply to them. Over the past twenty years, the mean narcissism score has risen over thirty percent with the most significant gains coming on agreement with “I am an extraordinary person” and “I like to look at my body.”

• Perhaps even more telling in an era of female empowerment are the results of study of middle school girls that found Jennifer Lopez and Paris Hilton to be two of the top three dream dinner guests (with Jesus falling in between) and twice as many preferring to be a celebrity’s personal assistant than president of Harvard.

Decision-Making• Herbert Simon: maximizers and satisficers• Barry Schwartz argues there is a paradox in the

availability of choices

Good Decision-Making• Determine the goal• Evaluate the relative importance of competing goals• Lay out options• Evaluate likelihood of each option to meet goal• Select the best option• Use the consequences of initial decision to guide future

decisions

• Where does higher education struggle in the above calculus?

Impact on Higher Education• More mailings = more applications = more decisions• 86 institution record in 2014• Impact of economic downturn• Media speculation regarding difficulty of getting

accepted• More applications = more denials = lower accept rate =

panic!• Big Me generation thinks it will get in• But this is not a lottery

We Need Lazy Rivers• It’s exactly the psychology of an arms race. From the

outside it seems totally crazy, but from the inside it feels necessary and compelling• Product becomes more expensive = higher student fees• Teenagers do NOT understand• Teenagers have little understanding of diminishing marginal returns and the tyranny of small choices

Maximizing Behavior• Comparing their experience at the school of their choice to what they hoped it would

be• Comparing their experience at the school of their choice to what they expected it to be• Comparing their experience at the school of their choice to other experiences they

have had• Comparing their experience at the school of their choice to the experiences friends are

having at the schools of their choice

• Impact of social media• Unlike what the direct mail pieces may show, college will be about more than student

centers and intramural volleyball.

The Flagler Story• Why we almost had horse stables at Flagler College• Tuition-dependent• Competing with state institutions

• Dropping the shotgun and picking up a rifle• Relying on lists and unworked apps means profile will drop,

yield will plummet, acceptance rates will decline (for the wrong reasons), and retention will freefall• By treating the Big Me generation individually, the profile can

increase, yield can quickly improve, acceptance rates can hold steady, and retention should take a positive turn

The Flagler Story• Much like with student choosing a college, looking at

more applicants is not nearly as important as looking at the right applicants. • By modelling the successful student (in terms of retention and

graduation) through use of demography and a minimum of three years of historical data, we can identify, target, and recruit those students who objectively appear to be good fits for Flagler.

• With fewer students in the funnel, our enrollment management staff can offer the personalized recruitment they expect and also experience a process reflective of what the educational environment will be once they become part of the Flagler family.

Changes from 2013 to 2015• Change in approach• Impact in results

Everyone has a first-year experience…

…but what was it like?

What do they need?• Life-management skills• Back to basics – reading, writing, communicating• Critical thinking• Time-filling/Time-management• Social-engagement• Information literacy

The High-Impact Practices of the FYE• Extended Orientation• First-Year Seminars• Common Intellectual Experiences• Learning Communities• Writing Intensive Courses• Undergraduate Research• Service/Experiential Learning• First-Year Advising• Accelerated Developmental/Remedial Coursework

What we’re doing at Flagler• Data, data, data…• …but with a personal touch.• Fixing the math deficiency.• Social engagement with an eye to retention.• Keep the smart kids.• Identify the murky middle.

Lessons Learned (some the hard way…)• Collaboration is key.• The first-year matters…• …but it can’t fix everything.• The basics still have the biggest impact –• personalized advising• impactful teaching• student-focused services

On the Horizon• Big data gets smarter and information digging starts

earlier;• Core/Major/Minor replacement;• Market and regulatory focus on outcomes;• Change in demographics;• Continued need for personalized advising combined with

state of the art technology.

Summary• Millennial student• Big Me generation• Colleges and universities need to respond

Questions