State of the Independent School Enrollment Industry, Part II [S5.E4]

Small schools offer a tremendous education to students, both individually and to families.

They also face some challenges when they're in markets with larger schools.

peers and better resource peers.

And we want to be careful to not conflate those two things.

There are many very, very healthy small schools, small day schools and small boarding schools.

And there are large schools that are struggling.

And so there's not a one to one correspondence.

But As we started at the beginning of our discussion, it is more likely that a small school is having trouble meeting its enrollment and net tuition revenue goals than large schools.

I think we have said that correlation does not equal causation in basically every research report podcast we've done with you all over the last several years.

And at the same time, we understand the interconnection of some of these pieces in theory and in practice.

So larger schools and schools with more resources are able to just pull up on the things at their disposal in ways that small schools can't.

If you are a director of enrollment management at a small school, and you are a single person shop who's also in charge of marketing.

You do not have an outsourced digital marketing partner, which about half of responding schools said that they did.

You are challenged in comparison to a school that might be right down the road that might have five people in their department and three people in their marketing and communications department and a digital marketing partner that might have a pretty significant advertising budget at their disposal that they can optimize in a week by week sort of way based on data because they have both time and expertise to do that.

That is not a level playing field.

That is a dynamic that I think people feel very acutely when they are senior enrollment leaders at small schools.

or when they're at schools

where the budget has been trimmed back because of difficult financial positions, and we see that a lot.

A school is in a tough financial moment, and so hard decisions are made.

It might be that the marketing budget gets cut back or the enrollment budget gets cut back, and now there's even fewer resources to compete for mission-appropriate, tuition-capable families in a dense marketplace, whether it be day or boarding.

And the reality is in most metro markets right now, there are 800 pound gorillas that have the expertise, the human capacity and the financial capacity to be front and center of families.

And if you're trying to find right fit students and families when when your voice is much smaller than others it's it's it's an uphill battle and there are ways to to make inroads in that but i think we also have to acknowledge that that's that's a hard place to be in many cases those are the those are the schools that most benefit from outside expertise and pairing with good partners that that do that kind of work that it can extend the school's capacity without having to add ftes to it

Great.

Thanks, Ari.