Impact of Enrollment Pressure on Admissions Teams and Students:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 226 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Teege Mettille

Transcript: 

Impact of Enrollment Pressure on Higher Ed Admissions Teams

Changing Higher Ed podcast 226 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Teege Mettille

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David. Our guest today is Teege Mettille. Teege is a thought leader in the field of college admissions. He’s been in higher education on the enrollment side of the house for over 20 years, and with his extensive experience on both the institutional vendor side of the industry, he understands enrollment from both the student perspective and the enrollment numbers perspective. Teege is the author of the insightful book, “The Admission Counselor Malaise”, which provides a critical yet constructive analysis of the current state of college admissions and he joins us today to talk about how to balance need for enrollment numbers and the mission driven wellbeing of students. Teege, welcome to the.

Teege Mettille: Thank you. I am so excited to be here.

Drumm McNaughton: Likewise, I think we’re going to have a great conversation. You just came out with a recent book called The Admission Counselor’s Malaise.

Teege Mettille: I did.

Drumm McNaughton: But before we get into that, you’re an expert when it comes to this kind of thing. Tell us a little bit about your background. Because when we talked a couple days ago, I was fascinated.

Teege Mettille: It was a lively conversation. I really enjoyed it. My background, entirely in higher education. I started as a hall director and then jumped over to admissions about 16 years ago. And for me, I was a first generation college student, I can trace how the trajectory of my life changed by the institution I went to. And I found my way to admissions really excited to help students find that path for themselves.

 And I like to think the more I talk about this topic, “The Admissions Counselor Malaise”, with campus leaders, association leaders, just out in the industry generally, I really feel like there was something happening with admissions counselors that just wasn’t quite right. Things had just, fallen a little bit askew and I hope to have shined a light on it.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, I think you probably did. I haven’t had a chance to read the book, but I’m looking forward to it. I actually am heading out on vacation shortly, and it’s one of the things I’m going to download.

Teege Mettille: Okay. Listen, it is an exciting tale and it comes with a nice dose of feminist history as well.

Drumm McNaughton: Very good. You’ve given us a little bit of background. We all know higher ed is facing challenges. The colleges are tuition driven. There’s a lower number of traditional age students, there’s a lower number of public funding. And there’s the public distrust in higher ed. The changes that we’re seeing, they really boil down to enrollment and making the numbers and this is something that’s really been highlighted since the pandemic. Talk to me a little bit about this, would you please?

Teege Mettille: I sure would. It’s not just that the drive for revenue and enrollment is a shift. It’s how colleges have chosen to approach that challenge that is really draining and zapping the morale for admissions counselors. Colleges are tuition driven, of course, right? State disinvestment is real and not going away there are some challenges that are just baked in. And admissions leaders, myself included, when I was a dean and a VP, we would every year set out to increase the applicant pool. And we’re not increasing the number of available students, we’re just reducing our yield collectively, right?

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, that summer thaw is a mess.

Teege Mettille: The summer thaw is a mess, and listen, if we can increase the average applications per student, we are not increasing the number of students going to college.

So, over time, colleges and universities, admissions leaders, have been growing their applicant pool a little bit every year, 5%. And that compounding effect has just overwhelmed admissions counselors. There are too many applications per counselor because we haven’t been increasing the admission staff by 5 percent a year. And that increase to try and fight against the demographic cliff, or other pressures that colleges are working against, has slowly but surely eroded the level of relationship and the quality of relationship that counselors have with students. And I contend while counselors are aware of enrollment targets and revenue needs, they’re not driven by them. They are driven by the ability to make a positive impact on students.

And when we overwhelm them with too many applications, and then shifted the measurement of their success more towards revenue and enrollment. I think that’s led to a staff morale challenge on college admissions offices that ultimately is hurting counselors, it’s hurting students, and it’s hurting colleges and universities.

Drumm McNaughton: I think you’re absolutely right. I hear this all the time about institutions, not doing the marketing enough, not having enough enrollment counselors, can’t getting out to doing what they’re doing. And we always say that businesses have to make money, they have to make more revenue come in than expenses. You had a quote the other day that I thought was fabulous.

Teege Mettille: Yeah. It’s interesting that you say that because I love this quote and who would have thought, right? That I would be pulling up inspiration from, the former CEO of Quaker Oats from the late 1970s. Right? That’s not really where we go.

Drumm McNaughton: Wait a minute, Captain Crunch was one of my favorite cereals.

Teege Mettille: Yeah. And that’s fine. Listen, Hey, we’re talking about, just a leader in oatmeal, right, specifically oatmeal and he said specifically in the late 1970s, and I think what he was responding to was the kind of increased drive towards profit over all else in American businesses at the time.

But he said to some effect, that “For businesses focused on profit, sure, profit is necessary for businesses to succeed and thrive, just like eating is necessary to live. But the purpose of a business, much like the purpose of life, should be different and more meaningful and more significant”.

I think what he was lamenting in the world of business, is that there’s is that businesses had been drifting away from their purpose to not just be mindful of revenue, but for that to be their purpose, their goal. And I think that has been happening over time at colleges and universities.

And I can anecdotally or not anecdotally, point to example, after example, after example, but colleges and universities seem to be more and more likely to make decisions, not based on what’s in the best interest of their students or their mission or their purpose, but on what is going to bring revenue next year.

Drumm McNaughton: I would have to agree with that. What I really appreciate about many higher ed institutions is there being what’s called mission driven. Their mission “What they do, how they do it, and who they do it to”. And it’s, the student has got to be at the central focus of that and everything works around. But you also have a number of institutions out there, who, for financial reasons, other reasons, they become very, quote, profit oriented, or, bottom line oriented. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it can’t be their main purpose.

Teege Mettille: It can’t be. At least with the staff we’ve been hiring.

Drumm McNaughton: It shouldn’t be, let’s put it this way.

Teege Mettille: I would agree with you that it should not be. But listen, if an institution is in that position, and that’s the route they have to go, that’s a decision to make. But we are hiring intentionally, we are hiring mission driven professionals to work in admissions. And so that’s the job we’re bringing them in for and if while they’re there we shift and say, “actually, just so you know, your definition of success is purely based on numbers and revenue and money”, that’s the disconnect that I think is dragging us down. I’m not taking a moral position on which is the right answer or the right approach. I’m just saying we’re coming at it from two different angles, and we haven’t addressed that. And in addressing it, we can help solve it. And there’s examples of admissions leaders going through that if I can, just give you a quick example.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, please.

Teege Mettille: 15 years ago, some of the major discounting firms. Don’t quote me exactly on 15 years, but some of the major discounting firms introduced the idea of gapping financial aid and just saying, it gives students less money than they need, knowing that it’ll drive down yield, but it’ll increase revenue and you can apply your resources elsewhere.

And as a profession, we were very uncomfortable with that concept. We all got used to it out of necessity and I think most places are doing it now, right? It’s rare to find a place that isn’t gapping on financial aid, but it took a while to get there and we addressed it head on and we talked about it and discussed it and some folks left the profession and some folks weren’t willing to do that. And all of that is reasonable and makes sense. And I think we, we need to have a similar kind of, coming of age conversation with admissions counselors.

Drumm McNaughton: It’s interesting because you talk about how leadership at universities, and it’s not a bad thing, it has to be done, they’re driving toward the numbers. But this is in conflict with the enrollment counselors motivation.

Teege Mettille: It is

Drumm McNaughton: If you call enrollment counselors “salespeople”, which essentially is what they’re doing, they’re salespeople who are not on commission. Most enrollment counselors are going to push back. It’s just that what you talked about, they’re mission oriented versus sales oriented in most cases.

Teege Mettille: Correct.

Drumm McNaughton: Walk me through that, if you would.

Teege Mettille: Sure. They’re mission oriented because that is how we recruit them and we bring them into to say you’re going to get to meet students, you’re going to make a big impact, you’re going to have a positive influence on students who need to find this institution just like you did. And that’s fine.

But I think, follow the career trajectory of a fresh admissions counselor coming in 22, 23 years old, maybe at their alma mater that they still love, although that fades away when they spend a few years in admissions very often, right? Like when they see how things work, they get less thrilled and, maybe that was an early warning sign that something might be off kilter, but those that elevate through into leadership roles, they will tell you, I will tell you, we spend less time with students and our focus becomes more focused on revenue and numbers and enrollment targets. By the time a professional, she or he, or they are an enrollment VP or a Dean, they’re very used to and comfortable with the idea of measuring success by money.

And in the last couple of years, I think because of the pandemic, which I can go into later, but the pandemic was the inflection point, we’ve shifted the enrollment leaders, who used to protect counselors from that concern have now tried to bring them in and motivate them by saying, look how much we need this revenue, and that does not motivate an admissions counselor.

If you want to motivate an admissions counselor to get revenue, for whatever reason, you got to take a different tact.

Drumm McNaughton: So what that, what would that different tact be?

Teege Mettille: Oh, sure. It’s celebrating and enabling opportunities for the counselor to be more in contact with students who need the benefit of a counselor. So in some ways maybe it’s leaning on technology, which is something I do in my role at EnrollML or working on your data analysis with your internal team to identify the students that are most receptive to communicating with an admissions counselor and, setting those situations up. Or it can be just as simple as, Drumm, when I go to college admissions offices, you’ve seen this too, there’s always somewhere a whiteboard with the numbers, right? X number of applications, admits, deposits. Which is fine because that’s how a director, how a dean is measured for success. We also need to remember there are names, there are stories, there are lives, there are families, and the director in that, that can serve as the bulwark between the revenue needs and the mission driven focus of counselors.

And you can still talk to counselors about revenue goals and aroma targets, but you also need to be asking them who they’re excited to be working with. Which of their students they can’t wait to see on campus. How would it impact students, some of the students they’re working with, if we change this policy or if we add this visit day, et cetera. When the focus is always on, “if we do this, we’ll get more students, i. e. more revenue”. That’s true, but admissions counselors are reacting negatively to that

Drumm McNaughton: And so the conversation should be along the lines of, the more students we get in, the more we can impact people’s lives and help them. Is that what you’re saying?

Teege Mettille: To a degree, but I think even more explicitly, “tell me about individual students”, right? Like just tell me about Jaden that you’ve been working with, right? Help me understand why you’re so excited for Aviana. And when we measure it, when counselors get to reflect that way, it encourages them to have more conversations like that, which is going to give them the intrinsic reward that they need to through the tougher times. And that has the benefit of increasing enrollment.

But if you ask a counselor Hey, I’m going to need you to come in on another Saturday, because we’re down 3 percent in deposits right now. And it’s April 27. That’s not going to go well, but if, but they will do it because Aviana is coming, they will do it.

If Logan is at the door is coming for a visit on Saturday. And they’ve been trying so hard to get Logan to come to campus. So

Drumm McNaughton: It’s, I had a, a principle. I did a, an accreditation visit at a high school, and the culture was the most unique I’ve ever seen at a high school. And it started with him at the top, the president or the principal. And he said, people don’t care about how much, until they know how much you care. And that’s the whole thing with enrollment counselors is they are caring people. They want to help and, but the money is important. So you’ve got to, it’s got to be a fine balance. It sounds like

Teege Mettille: it is a fine balance. Listen, just like the Quaker Oats CEO, right? Counselors are aware of the revenue implications, they’re just not motivated by it, and they’re not going to be motivated by it unless we hire different people. So for an enrollment leader to, if the goal is to increase enrollment, she or he or they need to motivate their staff, and the way to motivate their staff is not with If you don’t get enough students, some, someone’s going to lose their job, right?

That’s not going to work. That might, that works for us for leaders, right? That works for VPs, for presidents, like when we’re balancing the budget, but the 24 year old wide eyed, idealistic admissions counselor, who’s in their first job, they’re not there.

Drumm McNaughton: I get it. So it sounds like this whole process needs to start. By hiring the right people. Does that make sense? So when you’re looking for enrollment counselors, what should you be looking for?

Teege Mettille: I’m so glad you asked that. In preparation for this interview, I listened to one of your recent episodes with Gil Rogers. And I was thrilled he referenced the Time Study that I did that I’m just about to tell you about, but last year, and this is part of how I started to come to the conclusion of what’s dragging down counselors.

Last summer, I did a qualitative research study, talked to dozens of enrollment leaders about the specific tasks admissions counselors are doing on any given day and how much time they’re spending on it. And we were focused on the yield process. So throughout the year, how much time are counselors spending on yield?

And what jumped to me that I wasn’t expecting is when we worked through that and then did the math. The amount of time admissions counselors are spending on data and spreadsheets and CRM management, et cetera, is about a third of their time on average, so some were much higher, some were much lower.

So we’re bringing, we’re recruiting effervescent, energetic, outgoing, dynamic admissions counselors, and they come in eager to make a difference in the lives of students. And we say, so glad you’re here. Please sit at that computer for three hours a day on a spreadsheet. And by the way, that’s the definition of success is numbers, not the impact you make.

So the way I think we could do this differently, some of the tangible solutions for admissions leaders or other university college presidents or leaders right now is to make sure the admissions office has a data team or a data person so that work is not on an admissions counselor. Who, to be frank, Is not very good at it, right?

As far as sorting through their applicant data and spending hours on exports that they didn’t want to do to figure out which students to reach out to. Second, we admissions leaders need to help counselors feel comfortable with the idea of targeting specific students for outreach. I’ve learned this in my work in counseling and guiding counselors right now.

When I would say, look at all these students, they’re not interested, you can set them aside. You don’t have to reach out to them. There’s this negative reaction to that, that I didn’t get at first. But in prodding, I came to see admissions counselors are really hesitant to do that because they want to know.

Why am I leaving the student behind? Why am I ignoring them? What if they could, what if they need me? What if they could be really helpful? So admissions counselors are instead spending all their time on group messages, group emails, and just waiting to see who replies because they think it’s the fairest way.

And then finally, I think admissions leaders need to be sure that the job expectations that they have, with the tools that they have, line up with how they’re talking about the job to incoming counselors. Too often, folks my age, are talking about the job that existed when we were new 15 years ago, 20 years ago.

And it’s not like that anymore. It is much more about data analysis. It is much more about crowd management. And if you can’t change that’s fine, but you gotta let folks know what it’s like on the way in.

Drumm McNaughton: well, there’s another piece with that, that I think, cause you’re talking about much more of a high touch enrollment counselor. What about using AI to help narrow your funnel? And then that allows your enrollment counselors to do what you want them to do and. Sorry, cell.

Teege Mettille: We can, we can have another debate about the sales title later, but I think that’s spot on, and one of the ways AI can really help, that’s the company I work for, EnrollML, that’s what we do. We use AI and machine learning to say, In your applicant pool, these are the students, and it’s about at least half of most applicant pools, that are just not interested.

And here’s the students that are all the way there and would move in tomorrow if they could, and then we say, here’s the students in the middle. And part of what that draws out is, there was a, I went to a session at the Wisconsin Association of College Admissions Counseling Conference, just over a year ago, 14 months ago, and Perry Robinson, a retired dean, retired school counselor, Reflecting on his career.

And he said, when I started in this profession, it was low tech, high touch, and slowly it’s become high tech and low touch. And what I think the solution is, which is just what you said, it needs to be high tech and high touch at the same time. We can’t get rid of the fact that, the demographic cliff is here, that institutions are as revenue driven as they are, and that application applicant pools are as large as they are.

We also can’t get rid of the fact that we’re not going to pay admissions counselors like we pay salespeople. So we’ve got to find ways to bridge that. And one of the ways to bridge it is to say, we’re using technology, whether it’s AI or something else to identify. Here’s the. The 18 students, not the 1800, but the 18 students that you need to be trying to get to know right now.

Drumm McNaughton: To me, that makes great sense, because if you’ve got a tool, whether it be a I machine learning, whatever, who can help narrow your funnel down to the point where a student, it’s time to engage someone On a personal level, to me, that makes so much more sense.

Teege Mettille: It does. And the counselors, I will, I promise you this, they will grumble about it, right? Because they’re so used to their jobs being, group emails and then responding to incoming. They’re not used to any more individual proactive outreach the way we used to. So they’ll grumble about it, but.

It’s like the tough medicine, right? It like, it is good for them. This is what they want. They want to get to know these students. And see the positive impact. And feel that their work mattered. And when they’re just measured in how much revenue did I bring in, they don’t feel that the way maybe we think they should.

Maybe we, maybe we think you should feel good about funding an institution that’s doing great work, but it doesn’t land.

Drumm McNaughton: It goes back to the, the purpose of business. The mission of a business is not to make money. It’s to serve your customer. And if you do that well, and you’re well positioned, you will make money. I think there’s another piece with this. Is recruiting enrollment counselors instead of recruiting them directly out of school and they do that a lot of it because of the lower compensation that they pay and they train them and it is a good way for them to get to know the other side of the institution is bring people in, train them in sales, but train them in a way that is mission oriented sales.

Or bring in people who are salespeople. And train them on the university. There’s two different ways you can do it.

Teege Mettille: There are, yeah, there’s a lot of, tactics used by sales professionals, which I do think is a different profession, right? But sales professionals that are directly applicable to the work of admissions counseling and counselors. And I think our, my right, but our professional kind of, pullback from that term has left a lot of really useful strategies to help students.

We’ve left it on the table because that’s what salespeople do. We could do that. And it would have a positive impact across the board. One of the things that we can learn from the profession of sales is just get, just drive them to an answer. Yes or no. Most people are going to say, no, that’s fine.

Move on to the next one. But in admissions counseling, I see this every year at the end of a recruitment cycle, 75, 80 percent of their applicants it’s move in day and still have no decision, right? Cause we just. We, students won’t tell us no, and we don’t want to ask them if the answer is no. So we just keep hoping that they might come through, but bringing in sales people, I’ve worked with teams that are like that.

It’s a different energy altogether. It’s a very different energy and it’s a big, it’s a big step for an institution to make.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, it is. Now let’s, I touched on this just a second ago, but I want to explore it a little bit more. You’ve got your enrollment funnel. You’ve got people who commit, and then you’ve got your yield or your summer thaw. I just heard from one institution that they admitted 87 percent of their applicants.

Good on them. Either they’ve got an incredible pool of applicants or they’ll admit anybody.

Teege Mettille: Yeah.

Drumm McNaughton: But their yield at the end of that time, and I believe that’s the right term is their yield, was 13 percent. And it’s like, what can enrollment do during that period to up that actual butts in seats number

Teege Mettille: There’s, there’s a mathematical answer, which will be very unsatisfying, but then there’s a tactical answer, right? Mathematically, if students are applying to on average eight colleges, 12. 5 percent is the yield between all the colleges that’s going to come to be, and there’s no real way to change that unless increase the number of students going to college and things like that.

It’s on the margin. To me, the question is a little bit less of just increasing yield when there’s that mathematical, but I like to think, what can an individual institution do to punch above their weight one or 2%? When

Drumm McNaughton: or even 10%.

Teege Mettille: doesn’t need to be that drastic because when yield is, let’s say it’s 15%, that’s now a high yield rate for me, for many institutions.

If an institution can just get three more students out of the 85 who said no, that is a 20 percent year over year enrollment increase, just 3%. And one of the things when I look at applicant pools, I think 85 said no, you’re telling me we couldn’t, there weren’t three more students like on the edge, I almost think of it like a quarter push machine, right?

Like they were just so close, that we could get it. And that’s what, at Merle and Mel, we endeavor to do to try and help identify. who those students are that are ready to tip over. We’re just, we don’t encourage shaking the machine, right? You can’t do that with a quarter push machine, but just one more, one more kind of nudge might do the trick.

So I think what can institutions do at that front to punch above their weight just a little bit to outperform their market position just a little bit. And I think it is identify the students who are open to that engagement, who will have genuine conversations with an admissions counselor one way or another.

That’s how you do it. Those quarter push machines, I’m sorry, I love those, they have this sneaky part on the edge that’s open on the edges, so quarters slide off on the sides, and then they, the quarter push machine company just keeps that but your focus is on the ones on the front, there’s always going to be pressures, having students drop off throughout the cycle, throughout the funnel.

But if you can do a better job identifying those who’ve came all this way, they’re all the way there, they’re on the edge, but they’re also on the edge with another institution. And if you can set up a mousetrap that identifies those students and other colleges don’t, That’s how you outperform your position in the market.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s a critical thing. The other piece with that is once you’ve got a student on the phone and that we’re talking trad, trad age students, because most of them would much rather text you or do the entire enrollment online. Once you’ve got them on the phone, you’ve got to know that student well, and be able to relate to them very quickly so that you don’t lose them because The phone call is a make or break time.

Teege Mettille: Yeah. And let me tell you, I there’s a number of controversial opinions I take in the world of admissions. One of them is, yeah. One of them is we should call students more. And spend more time on the phone with students. But, it’s not because, it’s, what you said, the phone call is such a critical moment.

And it’s not that students won’t talk on the phone to admissions counselors. They won’t talk on the phone to all admissions counselors at every institution everywhere, right? But schools that they’ve really considered and they’re far down the line with, they will talk and there is no better moment to help recruit them.

But when college leaders, because we have these huge applicant pools, just give a calling list of 100 names, 200 names to a counselor and say, call them all, it’s going to feel like that counselor, like nobody wants to talk to me. And the reality is, it’s not that students don’t want to talk to counselors.

It’s that student didn’t want to talk to you right now. And how do you work through that? And again, it comes down to identifying students who’ve made it all the way and are just at that tipping point.

Drumm McNaughton: Exactly. What structural changes do we need to make to improve the enrollment funnel and get the counselors on board as we need to be? Or what changes do we need to make, to make sure we’ve got the right counselors?

Teege Mettille: Yeah, again, part of it, I think the first things first is being sure we understand our actual job expectations of admissions counselors today and that our job descriptions and our hiring process reflects it every time I did that time study and I said, Look how much time you expect your counselors in spreadsheets.

Nobody saw it coming, right? Like they, several times they said, let’s do that math again, right? So that’s one component aligning or fixing that structurally admissions leaders, deans, directors, VPs need to build in ways to recognize and celebrate the intrinsic value counselors feel in this job. Find ways to celebrate who they’re recruiting.

However you do that, whenever you do that, but find ways to put more focus there. You still talk about the numbers. You still talk about enrollment targets, but make sure that counselors know how much you as their supervisor care about the students that they are caring about.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, those are great ideas.

Teege Mettille: Yep. And then structurally, I would say this is another take a tangible tip I would give admissions leaders.

Find ways in your CRM for students to opt out quietly. Now that you’re going to withdraw their application, where you’re pretty confident that if they haven’t done any of these three things, we’re not going to spend a lot of time recruiting them. That will help this problem a lot.

Drumm McNaughton: And that becomes a morale and a motivation issue because if your enrollment counselors are, dialing for dollars, for lack of a better word, and they keep getting rejected.

Then it’s going to be a morale problem and that’s going to hurt your performance.

Teege Mettille: You got it.

Drumm McNaughton: This has been just fascinating Teege.

I appreciate your taking the time with me. I’d love to spend more time, but unfortunately we are almost out.

So as we always, we’re at the limit. So. As we always do, three takeaways for university presidents and boards.

Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards

Teege Mettille: Three takeaways for university presidents and boards. First things first, your counselors are not motivated to hit enrollment numbers the way you want them to be. And if you ask your deans, directors, or even vice presidents, they won’t tell you that because counselors aren’t saying it out loud, but it’s real. It’s happening.

Second, You have a position in the marketplace. You may not like it, but your admissions Dean cannot just change it out of sheer willpower, right? To elevate your position in the marketplace is years long, millions of dollars of investment. Instead, put the focus on how can you outperform your position in the marketplace modestly.

As I demonstrated, it doesn’t take more than a couple of students out of every hundred to drastically, change the picture. And third, find ways to celebrate your admissions counselors with the work that matters to them.

Drumm McNaughton: Great takeaways. Thank you. So what’s next for you?

Teege Mettille: Oh man. I’m excited. I’m heading off to LA for the NACAC conference next year, and I’m doing a couple of keynote speeches on the topic of the admissions counselor malaise, which is thrilling. And any of your listeners that would like to talk to me about that, I’m happy to do it. They can find me on LinkedIn.

I promise I am the only teach that shows up when you search T E E G E . So look for me there.

Drumm McNaughton: Very good. Teege, thank you so much for your time today. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the conversation.

Teege Mettille: Thank you.

Drumm McNaughton: Take care.