"Experience" - The Importance for ALL Schools

Schools fall short in recruiting for many reasons. One main reason is because they have not considered potential students as "customers". The idea that an individual who may want to attend their institution is buying something from them taboo and generally unheard of. However, the "buying experience" is as critical to schools as it is to any business, and as much as schools don’t want to admit it, education is a business. People pay to get an education. Non-profit schools take money from people in the same way as for-profit schools. The only difference is where the money goes when the year is done – foundations, an exaggerated number of staff, athletics, or stakeholders.

Think about how individuals of all ages consider a purchase in today’s buying landscape. We all use the internet to research the product we want to buy / consume. Schools are no different. The initial impression a student has will come from what they see on a school’s website. So, the question is, is this part of the ‘Student’ Experience or ‘Customer Experience. The answer is both.

Post-Secondary Advisors and our extended team are experts in exploring, reviewing, and modifying a school’s operations to ensure that the student journey in all phases is as enjoyable as possible.

The #1 recruiting tool that a school has is feedback from current and former students.
The #2 recruiting tool that a school has is referrals from current and former students.
The #3 recruiting tool that a school has is feedback from employers who hire recent graduates.

Most schools fail to recognize this and therefore fail in attracting potential students. Optimizing ‘experience’ in the student’s journey is by default the highest priority all schools should have. This takes work and effort. We’re here to show you how.

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The Importance of Student Experience

Schools too often confuse the 'success' of their students (the completion of an academic program - degree, certificate, diploma, etc.) as positive student experience. Schools fail to understand that the student's experience is their personalized experience suiting their needs, wants, interests, and preferred methods of communication. It is in short what leads to positive student success outcomes.

This includes:

Teaching and learning strategies which include and are continuously updated through the learner’s goal setting, performance, assessment, feedback, and continuous improvement
Social networking and extra-curricular activities including opportunities for debate, political dialogue, sporting events, various clubs created out of student feedback and desire, as well as peer-to-peer engagement and mentoring
Student access to support services (academic, placement, student counseling), housing accommodations, health care, mental health care, alumni mentoring

Student Success

Student Success is a direct result of positive student experience. It is proven that student's will achieve more academic success if they feel their personalized experience is important not just to them, but their 'community' and future. This is directly impacted through their experience as discussed above.

Student Success is defined and measured through:

Student Retention: Students remain, re-enroll, and continue their undergraduate education
Educational Attainment: Completion of the student’s program
Academic Achievement: Students achieve personally satisfying levels of academic performance
Student Advancement: Students succeed at goals for which their program prepared them
Personal Development: Students develop as they progress through their college experience - Intellectually, Emotionally, Socially, Ethically, etc.

Attracting and Retaining Students - 'Customer Experience'

Customer experience (CX) refers to how a school engages with its potential, current, and past students at every point of their journey—from marketing to sales to student experience to alumni experience. In short, for schools this is the total of all interactions a student has with the school's 'brand'.

In addition, CX extends to the systems used by the administration, staff, and faculty in relation to what the student's see and how the systems promote efficient and easy interaction with students.

A school's Customer Experience is critical to Student Experience which directly relates to Student Success.

Change Management

Academia, as much as it does not want to speak about it, needs public facing tools that operate more like a business than a school. Understanding regulatory constraints, schools need modern systems, both internal and externally facing, that engage the user and make them want to return. Because of this, schools need significant investment into their systems which as discussed above can determine the Success of the students.

Because of this, schools may need to consider internal change management procedures as they make the systematic changes to ensure excellent Customer Experience, Student Experience, and ultimately Student Success.