Student Loan Blog : San Diego State University

College Admissions Offices Using Facebook as Recruiting Tool

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:39:00 GMT

A growing number of graduate school admissions and college officers are turning to Facebook for recruiting, communicating with potential students and providing up-to-date news on the school through the social networking site, instead of relying on more traditional recruiting methods like mass mailings or emails, according to an article in Business Week (“The Admissions Office Finds Facebook,” Sept. 28, 2008).

A recent study indicated that a full 29 percent of university admissions departments surveyed now use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, to recruit new students. To date, about 60 institutions have gone so far as to establish official pages for their school on Facebook, according to Nora Barnes, director for the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

“If you're an undergraduate or graduate institution and you’re looking to attract people 35 and under, then I think you have to go to Facebook because that’s where your opportunity is,” Barnes said.

Admissions Officers Use Ads, Fan Pages, Chats to Attract Students

While some schools have leveraged Facebook as a marketing tool, purchasing ads to target students based upon their age and where they live, other institutions have focused on maintaining their Facebook fan pages, uploading pictures, news pieces, and videos detailing recent campus events.

San Diego State University’s Facebook page, for instance, features video footage of the school’s involvement with the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach and its students’ visit to the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista.

Scott Minto, the director of the admissions office for the school’s Sports Business Management MBA Program, uses Facebook to invite students to college admissions open house events in different cities around the country. He says that the school’s Facebook community has become so active that he now uses it as his sole means of communication with many students.

The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management put up a Facebook admissions page just a year ago in response to increased student demand and has experienced phenomenal success, said Richard Powers, assistant dean and director of MBA programs. Cheryl Millington, the school’s director of admissions, holds Q&A sessions with students that have drawn about 100 students each time.

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As Lawmakers Consider G.I. Bill Expansion, Colleges Reach Out to Veterans

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:33:00 GMT

In spite of the financial assistance offered by the current G.I. Bill, military veterans face a series of daunting challenges when it comes to getting their college degree, including administrative hurdles and navigating the often complicated maze of veteran support services, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“As Congress Prepares to Expand GI Bill, Colleges Reach Out to Veterans,” June 9, 2008).

Though 71 percent of veterans use some portion of their G.I. Bill benefits, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, only 6 percent of veterans exhaust the higher education benefits they’re entitled to.

In an attempt to help rectify this problem, Congress is considering ways to expand the current G.I. Bill to enhance veteran benefits and remove some of the existing barriers in place for veterans’ trying to obtaining a higher education.

At the same time, educators are looking at other ways to reach out to vets and to make their campuses more friendly to those who have participated in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. A recent conference in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the American Council on Education, addressed colleges' ideas regarding how to better meet the needs of their veteran students:

Extend scholarships to disabled veterans (University of Idaho)
Award academic credit for military training (Minnesota State Colleges & Universities)
Offer courses in Iraq and Afghanistan (University of Maryland University College)
Hold free entrepreneurial boot camps for aspiring business owners (Syracuse University)

College and university administrators say they have a lot to gain academically and financially from offering increased support services that help attract veteran students and maintain higher veteran student enrollment numbers. If Congress passes the revised G.I. Bill, which covers the cost of attending the most expensive public college in a veteran’s state, the veteran population would have the potential to generate even more tuition dollars for the nation’s colleges.

And as Stephen Weber, president of San Diego State University, told the Chronicle, veteran students typically have better grades, lower drop-out rates than civilians, and bring “a maturity and discipline to their studies that traditional students sometimes lack.”

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