News and Tips for Higher Ed Pros

That’s one of the findings of “The Game Has Changed: College Admissions Outpace Corporations in Embracing Social Media,” the preliminary executive summary of a study conducted by 2 academics from the Center for Marketing Research of the University of Massachussets at Dartmouth: Nora Barnes, Ph.D. and Eric Mattson.

This study is based on detailed interviews with 453 admissions departments as explained by both searchers in the introduction of their online report:

The responding institutions are diverse in student size (from under 50 students to over 50,000), annual tuition (from less than $1,000 to over $40,000), funding (69% private, 31% public) and location (49 states are represented). The sample includes well-known private schools like Duke, Carnegie Mellon, Vassar and Wesleyan as well as many large public universities from states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

Barnes and Masson plan to publish several academic papers later this year, but they are already sharing some interesting points in this 6-page executive summary available as a PDF file.

• 55% are very familiar with social networking
• 61% use at least one form of social media (defined as blogs, social networking, message boards, online videos, wikis and podcasting)
• 33% use blogs, 29% social networking and 19% online videos
• 88% think social media is either very important or somewhat important to their marketing/recruiting strategy

What about your admissions office?

• Higher Ed Update: “Facts and stats on how admissions offices use social media” mini-webinar now available on-demand for free
• Admissions Offices spend twice more of their budget on print than on electronic student recruitment methods
• Higher Ed Experts Update: Stats and facts on how admissions offices use social media
• Top 15 Features to Recruit Prospective Students with Your College Website
• Want to get your university admission officers blogging? Show them these admission blogs by their peers!