Hello, and thank you for joining us for today's keynote. I'm Jonathan Clues, CEO and founder of Student Bridge. And I'm very excited to have a new friend of mine we met virtually about a year and a bit ago, Luke from [INAUDIBLE] in. So why don't you go ahead and quickly introduce yourself self, Luke?
Thank you. Thank you, Jonathan.I'm Luke Schultheis. I'm the Vice President for Enrollment planning and effectiveness at Fairleigh Dickinson. We have two campuses in New Jersey, one over in the in the UK, and one up in Canada in Vancouver. So as Jonathan mentioned, a minute ago, we we met just over a year ago, we've never shaken hands, actually. But we've had plenty of meetings and feels like we've known each other for quite some time--
It does true online dating really, really felt like it. And so today's topic, thank you again for spending some time with me today, Luke, from surviving to thriving in the new virtual world. That's pretty freeform conversation between us two today, I might say we never met in person, we've probably had about 20 Skype calls, I think of zoom calls. And so we're used to seeing each other. I think what where we're trying to go here with Student Bridge is trying to give our friends and other partners and your colleagues in the industry just just some insights of how FDU has done. And the reason that we selected you Lucas as our kind of guest today, we've got a lot of great partners, but you're someone that really impressed me personally, but how quickly you were willing to adopt change or adapt. And you've really, I think right now you've actually dry tested, and or signed up for every single thing that student sells. We have a lot of the clients who use maybe two or three of our core solutions, but not everything that we have. And so hats off to you for that. But as I put it in, in the meeting notes, Peter Helton said adaptability to change is itself a hallmark of successful education. And yeah, I would say the industry from my experience of being in the industry for many years, it's not a fast changing industry, it's very much we did something last year, we both do the same again, rinse and repeat. And there will-- I think the industry is always interested by new solutions and technology but but has a little bit of fear of moving towards them. And I assume the pandemic just forced everyone to-- Well, it wasn't a chance of not trying anymore. So why don't you talk us through maybe that kind of first, but like looking back at last March, when everything changed, to describe what happened to FDU, please.
Sure, thanks. I remember when we first heard about this virus going around, and we all felt, you know, fairly safe, and we just, you know, kind of keep away from other people. And a week or two into that we had to shut down the entire campus. And that meant every everybody except students who had housing crises, had to leave the campus. And we kept behind a skeleton crew of public safety officers, and maybe a few folks to help maintain buildings. But it was a real shock, because we didn't have the opportunity to go back to the office to bring files and computers and, and all sorts of things that were locked up in the buildings, nor were we going to have that opportunity. So it was a very scary time, we were in the middle of, you know, really working part of that funnel, those that, you know, we're gearing up to consider depositing buy that May 1st deadline. And we didn't have much runway. So it was a time when we had to figure out how to meet with each other. Frankly, we had not used zoom technologies or things like that any large degree, it was you know, you'd pop into somebody's office or you meet them at the watercooler or after work or something. So we we began calling each other, assigning someone to be the zoom master to set up all the meetings for us. And it really spending an unbelievable amount of time with-- aside from the leadership of the institution, all the various unit directors so that we could coalesce, bring some sort of plan together, and then figure out what resources we were going to need and where we had some holes. Some of the solutions were obviously the IT department could help, you know, set up workflows and transactional things for for internal processes, you know, between the institution of someone need to sign a document for approval or things like that. But none of that was forward facing to the students or the prospective students. So that's when I was talking to a colleague, one of our school directors, and and he said, I know a guy named Jonathan in he's pretty bright and he's good. He runs a firm that has a number of solutions. I don't know what they are, but you should talk to him. And I remember very, very clearly, you taking the call. And I said you know after we got through 10 seconds of pleasantries, I say, here's what I need. What I need right now is a way to engage students because normally we would have I have an on campus event between now and deposit day. And that event was it was an opportunity for families to come to campus, to meet with other prospective families and students to meet with the faculty to, to work on finalizing financial aid and all those sorts of things. And that's just what we've always done. And as you mentioned earlier, higher ed, it's kind of slow to move. So every year, we, you know, make an improvement of some sort. You know, we're gonna get chocolate covered doughnuts, instead of playing donuts this year, you know, and pat ourselves on the back for doing a good job or, or, you know, have a different giveaway or something like that. It's all out the door. So the first solution we needed was a platform in which we could make a general presentation to students, let them know what the expectations were of the day. And then break them out into into different groups, some affinity groups, you know, students were interested in talking about clubs or social life or things like that. Talking about faculty, people want to meet the chairs, the directors, the deans, and then again, they'd have to meet with the administrators, and we'd have to do a lot of transactional stuff, you can imagine submitting financial aid documents to prove your situation, and to be able to work through those. And if I recall correctly, I think you said, we haven't done that, we can definitely do that, we've got something that we can we can tweak a little bit. And it may not be 100% of what you're expecting. But I think it'll be pretty close to satisfy your needs. And, and we agree the biggest risk was not in the product, not satisfying our needs, the biggest risk was doing nothing. Right. There were certainly some institutions that that really did struggle through this and didn't reach out. So--
One thing just I wanted to touch on, though, but [INAUDIBLE], you as the person again, I don't know you particularly well, yes, but are you quite an adopter of technology anyway? I mean, do you have a smartwatch? Do you? Do you try the latest and greatest? Is that your own DNA or where does that DNA come from?
No, actually, I haven't had a house phone and a number of years, you know, I do have my portable phone. But outside of that I'm not the most advanced, technologically savvy person. I've had two careers one was in the hospitality industry before I moved into higher education, which was through hospitality faculty. And I think, in that business, you really have to understand everyone has an expectation, it's, it's going to be different. So, you know, excellence for me and for you in a in a restaurant or a hotel may be different. But our job is to satisfy and exceed your expectations. And to really try to blow your mind with an experience. And in every experience is different. And I think that's just gotten into my DNA, and being able to recognize, we have to do something different. And there's not, there's not a canned solution out there for what we're going through right now. So yeah, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know what we get. and when we started getting it, and I did, of course, involve a number of folks on our team, to help with the logistics of partnering with your team. The staff were saying this is cool, you know, families are gonna like this. And it launched really quickly. And there weren't hiccups, you know, in the process. So it was a fantastic launch into this virtual Admitted Student Experience Program that we had. And kind of another bonus, you know, higher ed is, as you noted again, it's not so quick to change. So the traditional activities we have or you know, an open house once a semester, and a virtual admitted or an Admitted Student Day. One, right, and the faculty and the staff.
So you kind of had to be there or not [INAUDIBLE]--
Right? And you know, we'd have to reserve space a year ahead of time and to have to grovel to get people to come in on a Saturday and, and that type of thing. And what we've realized through this endeavor is we can have a virtual Admitted Student Experience every week now because we don't have to tax people's time and have them you know, coming to campus and reserving space that when the athletic teams might need. So it's given us a huge degree of flexible.
A lot more nimble, yeah, much more nimble.
And in in many regards, the service level is much better as well because we can have families log into some of these platforms at their leisure and watch pre recorded things or conduct transactions or whatever the case is, and not force them to give up half of their day, you know, on a weekend or something like that.
I'm gonna come back to that in a moment. But something about nimble I didn't want to bring up is that I went, we went from first conversation to signed contract in five days or certainly less than a week. Clearly, that's what we might call in these offices as a hair on fire problem, but the industry finally has had it, because the industry is doing pretty good not thinking its hair has been on fire, because my real fireplace, the background, there could be a play on the words, but we, we have a situation with you that, that opened our eyes as well, because we're always to ours, you take months to get done weeks to get done. But when that problems right in front of you, people can get stuff done quick. And of course, your institution is private, you have slightly different opportunities. But what-- Talk me through a little bit about, was that the first time you push things through that quickly? Or was that-- Was that FDU have the ability to kind of do things rather quickly, when they've committed to it?
We had a, we had a pretty formal contract review process and when this situation arose, and that would take some some amount of time we were led to you know, expect it to take several weeks or so, and that was fine. When the pandemic struck, we're so tuition dependent. I mean, we're, we're so tuition dependent. I can't buy pencils. without counting the students. I mean, we really need to pay attention to our enrollments, the institution recognize that and we made the case that, you know, we're certainly not going to bring in the enrollment that we had anticipated to be in person. But we have to come as close to that as possible. Because you know, there's overhead if you're open or not, there's overhead there. And thinking as well about all the people that need to continue working that we need to support. So the contract review process was expedited, the IT department, you know, got on the horn with us. And there were some unknowns, you know, they have all sorts of requirements, I don't necessarily understand completely, but I said, we got to do it, let's do it. And if we, if we find out, we've got a hiccup or something, we'll go back, and you know, iron it, we'll address it, we'll figure it out. But we can't, you know, sit here and wait for the ink to dry for three months before we think every little bug is gonna work out.
Yeah, I'm not the only one in this in this telecast that, you know, while you've now pretty much, I think, you've signed up for everything Student Bridge offers, but that's not how it started. Even that's gone quickly, because in the space of 15 months, it went from zero to all, but so that was kind the FDU way to get out there, try something, see if it works, set expectations. But then if it doesn't work, kind of double down on the next one and, and keep trying things. And so, but what I want to talk about being nimble, you brought up an interesting thing that I hadn't even thought of before, which was, hey, look, we focus on the, kind of, we're very proud of what our solutions bring to the student and their pet and their parents because really bring the virtual campus experience into someone's homes then having to travel. And that was a more like a nice to have before it became a must have it became a must have. But you brought up this interesting thing about what it meant to your staff. So talk to me a little bit about how your your administrative staff, how they, kind of, how this helped them as well?
it's helped us tremendously in a number of ways. One is we've really, let's say recorded messages to families. That in itself is allowed us to receive less phone calls, less emails and things like that, because students can be referred to a place where they can constantly go back and re access some messaging or or recorded workshop or presentation by by one of the staff. That's been of tremendous help. And it's been helpful for for our staff as well, in that we've got two campuses, and we've got one group to serve both campuses. And to do all the preparations for these events and activities is extremely difficult. And it takes a lot of the focus away from the actual recruitment effort. So running the events, running the mailings, and all those sorts of things have been very difficult. But you know, as I said earlier, we tried to fine tune them and things like that. But this has just been a game changer for us. And so although we're returning to kind of normal interactive life this fall, we're not going to change what we do. So we will continue utilizing these platforms because it's a great easy way to get into someone's house but will complement that with some on campus things but we're no more going to be wholly reliant on on campus work. It's not convenient for the staff. It's not convenient for the families it's not convenient for you know, for faculty members and things like that. This is just a-- this is something we always should have done. We always should have had a capability to meet people where they are. And, you know, frankly, entire families can get around. And in participating in an event, well, you know, grandma and auntie and all the little kids would have to stay home and everyone couldn't get a taste of the school. So, you know, these platforms have helped us really enormously in managing our labor and providing for a good experience, I think.
Okay, that's interesting. And then as far as like, the pandemic hits, now, your old industry hospitality was ravaged by it. Education was everyone's eyes gonna get ravaged by it. But you know what? No, it's got-- Education's got the opportunity to survive this kind of thing because you can't do a virtual vacation, or a virtual meal, but you can do virtual learning, there's things you can do. Now, one of the big components of student life, I believe that the most-- a large reason to go to universities to actually experience student life, leave your parents the rites of passage, to go and do your own laundry and buy your own toothpaste. But what for your staff? I imagine it's quite nervous times about what job security, and you mentioned something interesting to me that I'd like to expand on just what it meant to the whole kind of internal kind of culture of the university that we're not giving up to, we're not stopping, we're gonna keep on going with these new things. Could you expand a bit on that about how it can lifted the team up?
Sure. Thanks. And in it, aside from the team, it lifted up other other groups as well. So let me talk about those other groups first, when other divisions around campus saw some of these initiatives that we were taking, they became motivated. And they saw that they were opportunities for them also, to do things remotely. So we had remote orientation programs, which no one had considered before, you know, we were used to a sleep over thing and you know, two days worth of events. The group in IT that provides support, was able to kind of take a peek into into the system here and come up with their own ideas on what they could develop as service enhancements for general transactions between employees at the institution. And we engage them. So there was an element of you know, of job security in folk on our team, for example. So you know, we have events managers, we have people that manage marketing, we have ambassadors and recruiters, this gave them an outlet, and a way to contribute as well, so that they did have an element of job security, because we all know, you know, recruiters weren't going to high schools anymore, it just-- it ended, there was no face to face. And there's not a lot of joy in just picking up a phone every night and calling up families cold asking them, you know, are you interested in applying to the institution? So in those regards, I think it gave a lot of hope. When we shared the initiatives we were taking with our board. There, there was not only a sigh of relief, but there was a quite a number of board members who expressed you know, kind of wonderment at what was being done and saying this is awesome. This is this is not where we would have expected anyone to be because it's uncharted territory. But where we're ending up, it looks like it looks like a good place. At the end of the day. We didn't take a dip in enrollments by about 8%. And that was not unexpected. I mean, when we knew that no one was going to be on campus. You know, the students knew that as well. For the most part, we did have several hundred living on campus, we expected that. But in talking with peer groups, there were an awful lot of institutions, it took really, really big hits in enrollment, and not just from the new student perspective. But the continuing student perspective. One aspect of it is you brought up with with student life, is what are the students going to do? So we had, we had about 600 students living between the two new jersey campuses, who were living in an environment that probably was less comfortable that they would have expected, really strict rules.
Some of those were self imposed enhancements on state rate and federal regulations. So you know, if you saw someone walking across campus outdoors without a mask on, you know, we're gonna chase them down and take the mask to their face kind of thing like this is a rule. And there weren't a lot of outlets for students. So one of the platforms and I shared with you in a different conversation, we need the students to be able to do something they need to connect somehow. And they're not allowed to go into into rooms together. You know, and I don't know what to do. Do you have any ideas and if you did have an idea and it was your your bubble platform And that was a really neat opportunity for us to do a couple of things. One was to provide the bubbles for affinity groups where students of like interests can schedule events and plan things to get together virtually, it's neat too, because there might have been a student interested in the chess club, but it was too embarrassed to pop in on the chess club meeting, but could pop in on the chess club bubble and check it out and see if it's interesting enough. And then we were also able to engage the students. And that was something that we really have enjoyed is the flexibility and adaptability. And, you know, if we've got an idea, maybe this little tweak might, you know, help it be expanded or be easier for the user, we discuss it. And, and I know and instances, we've helped move some of these platforms together. So we really had an excellent success with the bubble platform we had, I think, in the first month, we had about 1000 student users on it, which is, to me, it's astounding, you know, it was in an unknown product to them, and unknown kind of resource, they jumped right in, they were able to use it, our student government conducted all of their announcements and activities through it. And that helps with retention, which is so important for for tuition dependent institution. And, and that's been a real, a real cool opportunity for us-- We're gonna continue doing into the future as well, because, you know, everyone's not gonna live on campus. People have different obligations during different times of the day. And it's given convenient for them, frankly. So it's been a great tool.
There's something quite brilliant about our relationship is that I'm the CEO, I'm the worst, but I don't do sales. I do kind of vision and so a lot of people here have a much better product and solutions than I am. But you've kind of come to me each time going, Jonathan, here's my problem. Have you gotten your treasure chip chest to kind of help me out? And that's kind of been fun for me to go back, and scratch my head and go, well, yeah, we do, and it may not be primetime ready yet, or it might be in development, or it might be a beta product. But each time you know, we've kind of set those clear expectations of, hey, if you don't do it, you've got nothing. So let's try and see if it works. And I think right now, everything we've done is worked. And nothing makes me proud of actually. Student Bridge, I feel like it's my name on that company. And so nothing makes me proud of when things were but can we go back to some of the results. And let's start with the events platform. What quite measurable compared to other you know, when you're in person, you can try and take names and see who's coming, [INAUDIBLE] engaged people are, what they're doing. So what kind of results did you get out of your event platform, you didn't run it more than once, didn't you?
We did and at the end of this cycle, if we'd normally have about 85% of our families show up for our virtual-- for our Admitted Student day, the percentage was the same. So they didn't all need to come at once. We ran it several times. But the percentage of attendance was the same as that 85% of our incoming student body participated in it. And some of them came more than once as well, which was great. And the family sizes were larger. You know, and again, maybe it's because you didn't need to cram everyone into into a car. And there's only four seats or something like that. So event attendance was really good. And in fact, I don't remember when it was it wasn't that long, it might have been half a year, where we started to work with you to develop the same platform for graduate students. And, and that really is seems to be the preferred means of engagement with especially the working adult. We've never had a lot of success, getting the working adult to come to campus for something, you know, it almost seems to adolescent.
Right?
What do you do, you know, you're not going to have goofy, you know, icebreakers and things like that. These people want to, you know, they want to see what your program is, see what the value proposition is, and enroll for classes,and they're on the business end of it [INAUDIBLE]. So tell me what you can do for me and [INAUDIBLE], let's get on with it.
Exactly.
So we had a school-- We have a partner in the northeast, and they actually saw a slight increase in their opportunities from doing virtual. And we spoke about something brought something up but the overused term of the new normal. And I think the one thing that pandemics proven and what we have 14 months into it now, well 16 months, four months, really. And so it's like that, who knows what the new normal is because every month there's something a slightly new, and it acts up the new normal, but then it changes again. I definitely the pendulum swinging back the campuses opening up. And at the end of the day, it was a tried and tested methodology that felt good. It just felt comfortable because it's comfortable where you were, and schools like trying to control that timeline. Because they want you to come on this date and do this, but I think there might you like you said just the fact that we'll look how you watch television, look how you look at what sport I mean, you know, typically watch stuff on demand. Now sport might be different as a live event, you want to know the school there, and you were typically on demand. It's our timeline. And when we want to do stuff, so you really are just listening to the audience. I mean, really interest the audience. It is the audience adopts or embraces engages with content all day long. And so it's your your product, you break the cycle, you do something opposite, but so you see the pendulum now, I mean, being digitally supported all the time.
Absolutely. And to your point, we have two, two groups that constitute schedule needs. One is the employees, and in admissions and financial aid and various support offices. They there, they're never overstaffed, right and anywhere, those those teams all work, to death, and to be squeezing them to, you know, come in on weekends, or, or to stay late one night a month for an event or something like that, it's it's really not great for morale. So, you know, the other group is the customer. And so telling a family, if you want to come to campus, for an event, it's going to be on this day come or don't come, frankly, in our neck of the woods, there are, you know, a lot of universities, and there aren't that many Saturdays in the fall when there's not something big going on, like there used to be SAT testing all the time. But our holidays are things so on a Saturday that we're able to do an open house, I guarantee there eight other schools doing an open house on that same day, guarantee it. And then the families got to choose and and so that puts everyone in a bad situation. And then we structure the event as if we own the day. And people can pop in and out. And that's a problem. Because if you want to get to the point where you're going to meet with a financial aid counselor or a faculty member, you first have to have had and heard me give an introductory speech. And then we need to play a video and then you need to meet the mascot. And then you need to get in line to get caught. And there's 15 different things we've programmed and you can't go to the next one until you've gone through the first 14. The ability to for people to pop in and out at their leisure, I think is it's invaluable. And again, we will go back to offering some on campus programs, but there's no way in the world we would we would give these opportunities up. Because I really feel it allows us to get into more homes. The campus visit program that we have, we were limited. With a pandemic, initially, we couldn't have any visitors on campus, then we gradually were allowing very small groups, but they'd have to maintain you know, six feet distance, be masked, show us they were healthy by completing an app and do all sorts of things. And in the tours, we just weren't getting people on the campus. So you know, developing the virtual tour and the campus maps where we've now got videos in them. And it's not just you know, you click in it gives the height, the name of the building, there's, you click, and there's someone that's actually been filmed speaking about what's in the building. And there could be a tour of the building, and you took some some old role that we had, and we're able to incorporate that without having to, you know, upset the whole place with needing to bring in big film crews and things. It was brilliant. I mean, it really gave people the opportunity. And we're going to continue to use that we'll just keep updating it every year to visit our campus. And you'll know by that initial visit, if that's the place for you to actually come in, like snoop around or not, right?
Yeah, we see that we see it like we pop, right, we play our part in the funnel. But we're not trying we're trying to replace the person because at some point that will happen. And you want it to happen. What we're trying to do is maybe better qualify that perspective and look for the right fit. You've talked about retention, if you're just a student making rushed and harried and, and non well informed decisions. Yeah, it's great for your initial enrollment number, but it really hurts your retention number. So we believe better, better retention through better recruitment. And that's something you're taught right now. It's that kind of ability to pop in and pop out with content on their own term, so with that comes thriving versus surviving. It seems like pretty early in that in the pandemic, FDU said, we're not we're not going out of business here, we're not we're not gonna-- we're going to adapt 8% drop in enrollment sounds really quite good. Have you got much benchmarking against other peers in the industry? I mean, I obviously don't want to compare yourself with similar like institutions, but you get some more a lot worse. I mean, so everyone's pretty happy with you. I know, it's less pencils, as you said, but--
Yeah, at the end of the day, we were able to pat ourselves on the back and say, Yeah, we did have a modest decline, but it was not a tragic decline. You know, one of the biggest revenue hits we took, which most most places did, I believe, is in room and board. And, you know, we were highly restricted as to who could live on the campus. So that was a self inflicted wound, for the sake of safety, and it is what it is. But we were able to fill the classrooms, we were able to fill the clubs and, and we're looking like, we're going to have a pretty solid fall coming up as well. We have got graduate applications out the roof, right now. And again, that's a group that's been contacting us through remote means exclusively. There's been nothing to see on campus for those people. So we are looking at a right now a fairly significant increase in the number of graduate students coming to campus this fall, I'd say we're looking at about 13-14% increase, which is, which is really huge.
That's huge. And I imagine like with with the graduate side again, and they're more for the purpose of the business side of the whole thing, but then just coming in without the fanfare, getting their learnings done, get it back to their career, versus I mean, so you've seen graduate on the quite a hefty increase with like, last summer, coming through even to like the sort of fall sorry. And even now, spring, you've probably seen even now a lot of the response from your move to virtual, paying dividends, because it still has to be quite supported. So what's life been like on campus, like, what's it been like our last couple of months? I mean, people walk around with smiles on their faces. New Jersey, obviously, was one of the more lockdown states during the height of the pandemic, but how have you seen things adjust?
We had to, right as the semester was winding down, we launched the marketing campaign, primarily internal called, Campus Come Back. The students were not shy about expressing their displeasure with the lack of in person instruction, and the ability to live in a more kind of liberated way on campus, they were not pleased. So the initial kickoff for campus comeback was a series of events that we held on campus in a safe way. But to show, A, we still know how to throw a party. And and we invited the students who were on campus and those off to come join us so that they can prepare for the fall. We still get an awful lot of phone calls from prospective family saying, Are you sure you're going to be offering classes in person in the fall? We say, Yes, we're sure we're committed to that pending. You know, there's there's not another outbreak.
State regulation, yeah.
So everyone's really looking forward to that. So there's a lot of excitement. Now the applications for students to to return to campus housing aren't at capacity. But they are, they're well above double of what they were this time last year. So it's, it's headed in the right direction. And I think, you know, the key is, again, to be able to provide that virtual remote experience that is of high quality. The worst thing we've been told by families is I don't want another zoom meeting, I don't want an open house. It's a bunch of zoom meetings, and all they've done for their secondary or community college education is zoom instruction, people are zoomed out. And we said we promise we promise, join us on this day, this week, there will be an experience for you. And we've provided experiences there. They're rooms, they can kind of travel into their different schedules of events and activities and, and in video recordings that they can log on to. There's all sorts of cool stuff. So the key for us is been providing a quality experience in saying you know, and we hear back from them saying, no one's done this kind of stuff for us. And it's not every single student that says that I'm sure there's some schools that are doing some cool stuff. But we have heard an awful lot of you know, we were considering several schools who went to their open house events or whatever it was and just the effort that you put into yours. We believe in you and it was a quality. It was a quality event. So you know we're signing up, which is fascinating to me, because these are people that have never been on campus and we thought for sure that was like the single most coordinate things that campus visit. And it is important, but apparently it's not the single most important
[INAUDIBLE] But you mentioned this about the-- about the students kind of come back to you saying, hey, it's important, like, Wow, well done. And I think that perception is reality. Another great saying and so, when you've got [INAUDIBLE] out there, you know, you're in competition with 5,6,7 other institutions where it may be if they're all doing the same stuff, or nothing at all, or literally rescinded back in a shell. But then if they use, they're bringing the experience, bringing the virtual convenience, bringing value to the student, um, I think it helps present you in a very, we've got this light, Halo, you know, we want when we say we're going back, we're going back, hey, we say we're gonna do something different with additionally different than I think that isn't dearing. And that is something that students won't associate with, didn't you think you actually got a student emailing you saying the only reason they came to it, well, one reason they came because of the way you managed to really adopt and thrive virtually.
That's right. That's right. I think I shared that with you. It's, it's been, it's been an interesting journey for us, I think of ourselves as being scrappy. And I think that bodes well to the consumer. We, we are not, and most schools are not, you know, rolling around and in balance, and can buy anything in the world and you know, have the best of the best of the best. But those of us who really try to advance ourselves and be creative and do something unique and fresh, I think that really impresses people. So you know, I do want to add that kind of the way we were able to do all of this is, if things would have been this been normal, I don't know that we could have done it. But because the world turned itself upside down, we stopped our events, we stopped our travel. And instead of, you know, putting that money in the bank, we said let's invest that in a resource that's going to help advance us. And we were able to do that without you know, hurting our budget. Because we simply reallocated were we be flying people around to do the road runner type of work into some platforms, where now we can support them on an ongoing basis. And we're gonna pull back some of that travel because we recognize life isn't so productive in some of those old things that we used to do, you know, having a having a road runner go out and in sit in a high school cafeteria during lunch with a bunch of brochures at a table, and go into a fare with a bunch of random kids are just taking the brochures and taking them home and looking at them and probably trashing most of it. We can't keep track of those people. You know, the amount of money that we spend on some of our events on things that we thought were so important. We don't have payback, the return on them isn't isn't good. But we've always done it that way. So we didn't want to deviate. Because if we deviate, we might upset the market and then no one comes to the institution. So this presented us with a really cool opportunity to try something new on for size, and to see if it works and it's working. And then we can just supplement around it and keep moving forward. So I think it's impressed a lot of people who have known us because we our campuses are really highly populated area, and for them to see us being scrappy, and putting together some cool things that the that you don't see everywhere else. It's shined a nice light on us.
So let's review. So February, March, you thought we might have to do some social distancing, no shutdown. How many months? Were you totally on lockdown?
Well, to be quite honest, you uh, you can't get on the campus right now. You know, a year later, you're still in lockdown. That's right. That's right. A few. A few critical people can make appointments to go onto campus, but but it's been a highly restrictive environment. Yeah.
And so what are we even away from Student Bridge? Just what would be some other? What else did you and your team adopt as far as any club digital or virtual even non stretched, any other strategies you tried during this period that may not include us at all, but just whether you knew worked or felt you had to do?
So this is a this is a funny one. And I hope that the pendulum is swinging back too hard, but it's remote working. There are several offices where you really do want to have the interpersonal engagement on a campus. But there are an awful lot of administrative offices, where it just doesn't make sense. It reminds me going back this is probably 30 years ago. My grandfather went out for the day and he came back and we say where you've been all day. And he said, I went to the phone company to discuss a bill. But no one answered the door, and we laughed at him. And in the answer was business 30 years ago had already discovered, you don't need to have a bunch of people sitting in an office and a line going out the door, so people can talk about their bills, you can pick up the phone. And this is just a further iteration of that the amount of real estate in buildings and the physical footprint, the amount of traffic, the amount of hours people spend in their cars, to go from their home, to an office to process papers. And to top it off papers, right? It's almost prehistoric. So what we've done and I expect many institutions will do is have a combination, where again, some some offices do need to be on campus, we have that we do want to connect with families and give campus tours. But we don't need to have our financial aid office, and all these other administrative offices taking up space, giving students the run around, get this paper signed by as they go across campus get assigned. So it's more convenient for families, because they don't need to run around to different buildings, they don't need to travel to campus. And we've been able to extend our hours because we're more flexible now. So we don't have the need to fully staff an office at both of our two campuses, when we've got a staff we can have primarily work remotely serving all of the students. And because we can do that, we're able to also attend to people's personal needs as well. So some folk need to you know, take the kids to school or walk into whatever it is, they can do that they'll still put in their eight hour day. But it doesn't need to be from nine to five. And so now our offices are open for me now eight to eight. So there's better student service, there's more hours people can conduct their things electronically. Zip us up an image of something. The family can get around the computer and talk with us instead of you know, just a student coming into an office having a question not knowing the answer going home. I think we've been able to, to get away from the from the runaround, again, my hope is that, that we don't swing back too hard and say everyone's got to come back to campus now. Because I think we need to learn what we've learned. And it's we can do things better.
Right.
So let's talk about the pendulum came back. So I think it's a constant consideration for everyone. You're going to a new recruitment cycle. But just rolled over July 1, off you go. It's like a nonstop championship, isn't it? You win last year's champion. So don't forget that got to do it all again. How do you feel you and your staff have evolved? And maybe how are you approaching things differently? Just what would you kind of say has been that you've learned some stuff? And what are you going to do?
Well, quite a few that one is-- one of the biggest problems every institution is going to have except those most selective ones, which will never have it as lead generation. As the world went test optional, and primarily that meant most people couldn't take a test. So there weren't the scores coming in the door. The traditional way for probably most of us is to go buy a couple 100,000 names from one of the big sources. And then to to work the list. The list is expensive, the working, it's expensive, through the labor as well as through the mailings and the emails and all that kind of jazz, it adds up. And the ROI on is just not smart. So working much more through targeted digital means and we're engaged in some projects with you on that. I think is going to change the recruitment cycle for all of us. Because we don't have those traditional means to access anymore. We're also going to be pulling back a lot on our travel, it's expensive, it's not effective. Being able to engage people remotely, you know, reach them digitally, point them to some resources we've got. Especially when we're recruiting out of area people, you know, they're they're not going to be able to take off Saturday and come out and look at your campus, it would take them three days to get there, you know, and then to get back and it's just so we're going to be able to be exposed to people from from outer areas much better with the remote means. And I think through using platforms, yours as well as some some transactional ones, where we can conduct business much more seamlessly, much more secure. Where people can stay home and do it is going to be a game changer as well for us. So you know the big changes are we're not going out and buying lists and, you know, throwing rocks at hundreds of 1000s of people saying, Hey, Hey, Hey, take a look at us. We're going to be much more nimble in identifying who may have an interest in us, and reach out to them and give them some calls to action. So that'll be more effective, it'll be much more timely, and much more personalized, too. So that's gonna, that's going to have a strong impact on on their image of us. And the things that we call them to do are going to include much more engagement. So you know, seeing how we could do something with like a bubble for incoming students--the whole name of the game, we all know is engaging people. And it's the only way we've been engaging in this bringing them to campus. What we've probably all heard is, you know, your open house is just like you're Admitted Student Day, which is just like your orientation, because it's, frankly, only so many things you can do right. [INAUDIBLE] with the same thing every time or less. So by doing different and fun things, where we can reach them in their time, and keep them engaged, I think that's going to, you know, that's going to change it completely.
So let's get your crystal ball out what what do you think the one or two biggest opportunities are? And then start with the challenges or start with the opportunities-- start,whichever one you want to do positive or negatives, but let's go with two challenges-- we can start ending up with positives. So--
I think some of the big challenges for the industry are reaching out to prospective families in a way in which there isn't noise created. So if all of us started doing the same thing, it's just like open houses, there's too many of them. So we all need to really be as customized and as different, maybe as playful as we individually can to showcase our characteristics. Otherwise, it's just gonna be like 10,000 postcards coming in the door. And you know, so if our activities are all the same, or vehicles are all the same, I think that's going to create noise and not be helpful. That's a big challenge for us.
I heard that saying, once that marketers ruin everything. Because once marketers know, something works, they will do it. And then that means they've everyone's got the same, then you haven't got any differentiation anymore.
That's right. That's right. Absolutely. And I think another big challenge for us as an industry is that pendulum not being constituted in the right fashion. If we fall back in, it's easy to fall back to what's comfortable, and in a lot of starting to hear murmurs about it already where I am about, you know, we're going to go back to this is how we do business. And this is, you know, who's going to be in this office and all this type of stuff? If if we just swing back to that, because that's the way it was before? I think we've not learned anything from this. I think it's a real challenge. In speaking with, with several colleagues from the region. I'll say I'll say honestly, our institution was the only one that said we're we're not coming back 100% the others with whom I spoke, all said, Oh, no, we're all coming back. 100%. I said okay. You know, that's an advantage for me, I guess, because I'm going to give better service, and be there for the students in their space. And I think that's important. People don't go to the phone company to talk about their bills anymore. But higher ed still does. I think those those two are going to be real tough. And you know, this, this offers for the industry and opportunity to also rethink curricular delivery, how are we delivering that instruction? Everyone's done it more or less through a couple of different learning management platforms this last year. I think we've all seen there are good professors and professors who couldn't adapt to the technologies and maybe didn't understand all the bells and whistles that maybe came with them. And maybe there are more bells and whistles that we need in some of these. Because if we can do better than a zoom experience, I think we've got a real rich opportunity to educate more people in this nation. But right now our model is you're coming on to campus 15 hours a week, or you're living there and and that's how you do it. And the other options are those learning management platforms. And I don't know that experiences have been great for everybody in all those situations, but there are, you know, two thirds of the country don't have a bachelor's degree of those who are of age they could. Wouldn't it be great if if that number was was much smaller? Because we could give-- get an education in the people's homes in a way that they enjoy. So I think that's a, it's a huge challenge. But what a great opportunity, we've never had to immerse ourselves as an industry so far into technology, as we did now. So if we, if we come at the back end of it, we haven't done better shame on us, you know.
I think that doing better like even just take your data, enrollment was 8% down. So those people that don't, they only look at that first layer of the onion, they might go, Well, we did it virtual, rates went down. No, if you didn't do it virtual, you may have been 30%, down. So it's a bit like saying, you've got a temperature of 103 degrees, your medicine took you down to 100. So it didn't work [INAUDIBLE] , it wouldn't be much worse without the medicine, I think will be interesting is that if the institutions can stay on course, now with this digital learner, the digital acceptance, the digital bracing, digital, and now the students can come back around, they want [INAUDIBLE] they want to come back to it in person experience. There's a chance of digital recruitment will be traditional recruitment, it's just that you didn't have the ability to be traditional recruitment, because no matter what you did, the numbers are always going to be down when you've got how many percent of students taking gap year because they didn't want to miss out on their on their freshman year experience. And so you just your talent pool went down. It's just your size, your [INAUDIBLE] went down, there's problems and so, so yeah, I think that there, you will see it. And, you know, we didn't speak much today about measurement. And you know, as your systems get cleverer, and we get cleverer with you, it's, it's done to learn to demonstrate interest, or tend to buy and intend to apply, because you can make other business decisions based on on that potential prosper applicant. You know, what they're doing, and whether admitted where they are in the funnel, and you, you can really personalize a lot of the nurturing like enterprise does. You know, we do nurture campaigns, we realize that that anyone at any given time, the different states, the next person. And so how do you get more aligned? And only technology can do that, because when you have one event for everyone, it has to be that one size fits all. And then so, you know, it's very, very difficult. If you embrace technology correctly, I hope that the pendulum where [INAUDIBLE] tend to swing back past where they were before, right, if this is going-- but I genuinely know, we've had most of our partners. I mean, I think it's incredible that other partners have moved to if I --March, I think March 13, or something, you signed your contract for our for our brand platform. If I told anyone the week before that, or two before that we could do virtual events that are laughed me out of the room. But and, and we've been in business for years, and all of a sudden, we've sold like 25 of them in like five weeks or six weeks, it was crazy. Um, but what's great news, and since then we've done 5060 ongoing events through his platforms, but 93% of people just totally, 90% renewed, because they're like, yep, it works now. So I think that as long as the industry can just keep embracing technology in the right way. It doesn't mean it's got to be it doesn't mean it's gonna be less personal, doesn't mean it's gonna be less in person. It just means at any given point of your funnel, it can be more personal, and more on demand ,and more in the way they want to do it until such time as they're willing to take that next step with you.
Right.
Data analytics, as you as you mentioned, it is critical. And he can pick up those points just by you know, checking off heads who comes to events and you meet in the schools or something? There's no question. I mean that affects financial aid leveraging, that affects the admissions funnel, it affects everything, and once we know people's behaviors. And the rest of the business world has been doing this for years. That's why sometimes when my wife and I hear or see an advertisement, and we're somewhat offended by it, you know, we're like, What are you? Why are they talking about old person diapers? And then we look at each other? We go, because we're the market? Oh, no, they know, this is a product that's being marketed to people. That's why we're seeing these advertisements, because these firms are sophisticated.
Yeah. [INAUDIBLE]
And that's what higher ed needs to be.
Yep. You may have shared a bit too much information for your wife that she hit you over the head later loop for if she watches this. Well, and so as you look to the future throughout same crystal ball, about the opportunities and challenges, any technology rumbling around that you're, you've heard of, you're excited about, again, not fishing for something we've spoken about. But I mean anything in the world at all that you think it's time, you know, it's going to come into education with a bang.
I would love to see in this first one that is and I don't know that I can associate technology with a closely initially but much more of the stack of stackable credentials. And I think delivery of these will primarily be done through online means. And those delivery channels should be sophisticated. I've seen a product and I don't remember from where but it took the meeting and the the the engagement to different level because it provided a kind of an infrastructure of a building and an office. So that I could appear to be sitting in a really elegant, classy looking, you know, skyscraper in Manhattan, while I'm having a meeting with somebody. And then you could go over and, you know, like, knock on the door of someone else in this animated sort of environment space, right, and actually, that would be paying someone who's obviously not in the same building or next to me, but is wherever they are in their offices construe however they want. And that gives us an element of customization, personality, I think that's something that's been missing is, you know, the coolest thing that I can do right now with zoom is put this backdrop on. If I could do some really other cool stuff to let Luke shine in the show his personality, rather than just be a talking head, I think, I think there would be something that a lot of people, especially young people, and business people, for that matter would embrace is, you know, we are who we are. And we want to share that with people in as many ways as we can. So that's, that's something I think that could be really cool. And again, any new enhancements to the learning management place.
You brought up the word a couple of times a day now playful, personality. And I think that when I talk about technology, or digital is the means in which to get your message across, we're talking really about tone as well. And I do think that too many institutions go for a very safe tone. And just the tone of the message, makes them all blended together. And I think the students are looking for that right fit, like I said before, and I think that's what again, we ourselves, you can't be scared to be who you are. You don't suit every student. You suit a certain type of students. And so by putting yourself into the market in the right tone, you you will naturally attract the kind of people that respond well to that tone. And if they don't respond well to that tone, it's probably not the right fit for them anyway. So I do think that beyond just the delivery technology, institutions need to think a lot about the tone and getting personality across it, there's just too much everyone looks the same.
Absolutely. And it's a real, it's a real problem that you just brought up, because I'll get into discussions with others about our application volume. And there are ways to inflate your application volume. In some believe that makes you look more prestigious. I said, frankly, to me, I would rather spend marketing on 1000 students, have 1000 of them apply. They knew my criteria, I admit 1000 of them, and 1000 of them start and 1000 of them graduate, that would be the best business model. And we've got these funnels that we're going to need to work really hard on getting out of. And the funnel suggests we're inefficient, right? If we're if we're actually yielding--
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah, I mean. How would that be acceptable in any industry?
It's absurd. And to your point about the tone, I think gaming and engagement is something a lot of people like my daughter just wrapped up her first year at our institution, although she didn't set foot on it. But as I was talking to her about the admissions process, there was one institution that would, every so often send out little surveys, and she complete a survey and say, Hey, do you know I'm this kind of person? And I'd say, that's really neat, you know, and, and she just enjoyed the engagement. She enjoyed doing something and being told, yeah, it reaffirms that I'm this kind of person, or, you know, or I can earn some badges in this, or I could participate in this. And this is enjoyable. So I want to keep being engaged. And I think that's the name of the game is, is engaging the right people, and not trying to do be something to everyone. And then and, you know, our graduation rates in this nation, we if we're doing a good job, it's 60% on six years. That sounds like a terrible investment to me. You know, it's about 40% on average, for four years terrible investment that people don't even know that, you know, we all expect our kids going to get out in four years. 40% of them do, that's it. So it's because we're bringing in students, and not supporting them, and or we're bringing in students and we're not the right place for them. And so the more work we can do on the front end, the less we're going to need to do on the back end.
So we'll wrap up thank you for your time Look, you're bullish, you're feeling this new recruitment season's coming in you, you feel you got the right tools in place that only last year everyone got caught out, what's the saying? Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice. Shame on me. So you know, I'm hoping that the industry as a whole will get ahead of that there's no reason why you'd be caught out by the next cyber attack or the next virus is getting. Get where you can be now, get the right tools in place to be in front, you feeling pretty confident, or you know, the team coming into this summer ready for the big full push?
Yeah, we, I mean, it's uncharted territory. So we're as as nervous as anyone who you know, isn't, isn't top of class. But because of the test optional environment, and in which has led to 1000s of students applying institutions at which they wouldn't have applied, had they taken tests and then being denied. This cycle is going to be we're expecting it's going to be a long drawn out cycle. We're optimistic about it. Of course, we're nervous about it. But if we're using all of the right tools, and we're optimizing them, and we think we're doing the best thing that we can, there's no, there's no reason for us to feel bad at the end of the day, if we don't make our projections. I expect we will. But if we don't, we're not going to be far off it. And yeah, so I'm bullish, but cautiously bullish.
Yeah, I think that's the I mean, that's how we are as enterprise as well. You can feel bullish, but you don't, you can't get too cocky and fall over the skis, you got to keep your head down. And just go new data keeps coming every day. So it's just kind of wet cement, have a plan, but be ready if there's too much data to say try something different, but then don't wait around all over the place either. So, right? It's not a time to be lazy. That's right. Yep. That's how you get to innovate, Mr. Luke. And that's why you can thrive not just survive, but you got to lead from the front. And that's what, again, innovation is all about is that the audience wants to be innovative, that they still there. It's just you need to be innovative in the way you're going to reach them. So that's exactly it. Well, again, thank you for your time. We're very proud of your partnership. We really appreciate the faith you place in Student Bridge. And we enjoy working with you and the team and we look forward to meeting you in person one day. Thanks. I appreciate it as well, Jonathan, appreciate the partnership. It's been fantastic. Thanks a lot.
