Understanding why your students fail to enroll or persist is a critical step towards re-engaging these audiences and ensuring the success of future students.
We used to think it was the job of higher education institutions to weed out the less capable and deserving. In recent years, this kind of deficit thinking has given way to a deeper understanding of the complex challenges facing students in their personal lives such as food and housing insecurity and others. Colleges have also gotten better at taking responsibility for the ways their communications, processes, and bureaucracies create add to the already mounting challenges students face.
Understanding the reasons your students fail to apply or complete is not only important for reengaging these students and helping them finish their college educations, but also critical for improving retention and the success of future students.
A quick note about the data: The following research highlights are based on accumulated data from five representative surveys of 9,518 community college students. The data is not weighted, and the combined results are not considered projectable nor conclusive. However, they do provide some consistent and compelling insights about student needs, challenges, and media habits.
Here’s what our data tells us about ANR and Stop-Out Students
Obstacles for enrolling and/or completing classes are a combination of individual and institutional. Those who apply but never enroll often cite a lack of availability of their desired class(es) or inadequate info/guidance from the college.
Top 5 Reasons for Applying but Not Registering
For students who don’t complete their studies, the reasons tend to be personal, with many indicating that family or job needs interfered and had to take priority.
*Note: The years covered by this data include the COVID-19 pandemic. While that answer is no longer relevant, the others remain as pertinent as ever.
Top 5 Reasons for Discontinuing Education
The good news for community colleges is that student-friendly improvements that help students juggle their many priorities are high drivers for future consideration.
More convenient and flexible class schedules, and the ability to choose a preferred method of instruction (in-person, online, hybrid) are of primary interest. Lower tuition/fees or more financial aid support are also highly desired.
Top 5 Desired Changes to Consider Registering/Re-enrolling
While the reasons students fail to enroll or persist are complex, our research shows that there are many shared struggles and concerns that cut across these audiences.
As we’ve seen over and over again, addressing these concerns with targeted messaging and collateral can lead to surprising results.
For Glendale Community College, we started by surveying term-eligible, applied-not-registered students to identify what had stopped them from signing up for classes and see who needed direct assistance. We then launched an ambitious three-month marketing campaign with targeted touch points. A geofencing campaign was coupled with website retargeting and social media activities while postcards were sent out to eligible applicants followed by additional emails, texts and robocalls for those still needing a bit of extra help.
At the end of the effort, we had 222 confirmed enrollments representing a 10% growth in headcount. If these students are full-time, the potential ROI for this campaign is an estimated $1.3 million dollars—not bad for a $40,000 investment.
Such is the power and promise of good research. If your college is ready to recapture your own ANR and Stop-Out audiences, or is ready for some custom research of its own, please reach out and we’ll do what we can to help.
