46. TRU ENROLLMENT INSIGHTS STUDY
COLLEGE-BOUND H.S. STUDENTS
MALES FEMALES TOTAL
1394 1432 2826
CURRENT COLLEGE STUDENTS
MALES FEMALES TOTAL
1350 1452 2802
ON-LINE INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED IN SPRING 2012 / WEIGHTED TO MATCH US CENSUS DATA AND COLLEGE BOARD DATA /
NATIONALLY REPRESENTATIVE BY GENDER, AGE, ETHNICITY, REGION, AND COLLEGE TYPE
47. DESPITE HEADLINES, TEENS BELIEVE COLLEGE DEGREE
HAS VALUE
96%
More likely to find a good job
95% earn more
48. CAREER OUTCOMES ARE PRIMARY REASON THEY GO TO
COLLEGE, BUT NOT THE ONLY REASON
88% 88%
87%
86%
85%
84% 84%
83% 83%
To prepare for
a career
To have a
successful
future
To gain
knowledge
To develop a
skill set
Next stage of
life
Make the
income you
want to make
Personal
growth
Broaden your
experience
Pursue your
passion
49. FOR MANY STUDENTS, COLLEGE PROCESS STARTS
EARLY
37%
10th graders have started
researching colleges
50. FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS,
IT STARTS EVEN EARLIER
40%
Have done internet research
on college by 9th grade
51. BUT THERE ARE THOSE WHO LAG
22%
still hadn’t moved beyond the research
stage by spring of 12th grade
53. PARENTS ARE HIGHLY INFLUENTIAL IN THE DECISION
69%
said parents were the most
influential people
54. WHEN IT COMES TO THE FINAL DECISION,
MOST STUDENTS SAY THEY MAKE IT
STUDENT BOTHPARENTS
79% 18%4%
55. Minority Teens Also Look To Other Role Models For
Guidance
73
58 56 54 53
70
55 57
51
38
Parents College
Representatives
Teachers/Coaches Guidance Counselors Friends
Hispanic African American
56. THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IS MAJOR, BUT FINANCES AND FIT
ARE CLOSE BEHIND
55
51 50 49 48
46
My intended
major offered
Tuition Scholarships/
financial aid
Felt like right fit In-state Dorms
57. WHEN IT COMES TO NOT APPLYING,
HOWEVER, MONEY IS THE TOP REASON
TOO EXPENSIVE APPLICATION COSTTOO FAR
38% 26%29%
58. THE MOST INFLUENTIAL SOURCE OF INFORMATION
IS THE WEBSITE
63%
48%
34%
25% 25% 23% 21%
College website Brochures College tour/visitStudent review sitesProfessional review sitesSocial media College guides
59. THE TYPICAL NUMBER OF SCHOOLS VISITED IS THREE
9% 76% 12%
0 1-5 6-10
NUMBER OF COLLEGES VISITED
60. THE COLLEGE VISIT IS ALL ABOUT “FIT”
71%
Getting a sense of
the campus
70%
Overall look
and feel of
the grounds
67%
Overall vibe of the
campus
66%
Overall
friendliness of
the people
65%
Campus buildings
61. PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS WERE MOST LIKELY
TO BE DISAPPOINTED ABOUT THE DORMS
19%
Seeing a
dorm room
19%
Ease or difficulty
of getting around
17%
Overall vibe of
the campus
15%
Campus buildings
14%
Food
62. FOR MORE FROM TRU, FIND US ONLINE
EMAIL: deborahm@tru-insight.com
WEB: TRU-INSIGHT.COM
FACEBOOK: TRU-INSIGHT
TWITTER: @TRUINSIGHT
Editor's Notes
We always like to start our presentation with a game. Shakes things up a bit. Who remembers this show? Take an old person in the room to appreciate this theme song.1) Asked teens & twenty-somethings: “Would you rather have…Option A or Option B”.
We asked teens and twenty-somethings…We asked teens and twenty-somethings… Would you rather have a SECURE LIFE or an EXCITING LIFE…Which is higher… the blue card or red card?On the heels of recession chaos, these folks are looking for security and stability.
High paying job that you DON’T like or a low-paying job you DO like. Follow your passion and NOT the money winsThis (following passion) is a message from parents…who grew up believing a high-paying job was all that and then some.Note: Jeremy Linn – 23 years old, transferred from New York Knicks to Houston Rockets – more money.
But how does the job stack up to the love life? Would they rather have…The love life wins, especially for twenty-somethings as they get closer to actually settling down.Note: Taylor Swift on left; Courtney Stodden on right (latter woman married her husband – Doug in picture – when she was 16!)
And let’s get a read on the partner… We asked young people… Would you rather have a ….Both agree… the smart spouse is preferred… You can see how well that worked out for Kim Kardashian.Not a big difference based on age, but definitely a significant difference based on gender. Guess what side of the fence guys are on?
The data and insights in this presentation today come from a variety of sources…HEADLINE(S)The data and insights in this presentation today come from a variety of sources…The TRU Study – big national study conducted twice a year. We survey a cross section of young people ages 12 to 29 from all across the country. 4000 in total. Representative in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, region. All of the data is from our study released in November 2012.Qualitative experience – larger part of our business is ad-hoc custom research work for clients which places in front of young people constantly, as well we talk to youth as a filter to help us make sense of the data from our study.A few outside studies that round out the ideas we have for you today.
Why Should You Care?Obviously their size. But also they are entering their prime consuming years… full of firsts… first job, first new automobile, first home, first time going on vacation on their own dime. Getting settled… setting up house, having kids, etc.As we’ve talked about before, they are incredibly influential… on pop culture in general, across categories.
The big story today is: fragmentation. It’s a force that’s wreaking havoc across three major areas…The big story today is: fragmentation. It’s a force that’s wreaking havoc across three major areas…CATEGORIES ARE FRAGMENTING – Consumers have so many choices. We all see this every day. Think about coffee creamers for a moment. How many choices did you used to have? How many do you have now?MEDIA – Media used to mean choosing between print and television. Then it meant the Internet. Now it means the totality of theirenvironment…ATTENTION – with the proliferation of time-shifting, multi-tasking, and mobile media consumption, the average consumer has access to more and better content than ever before.This fragmentation has companies and brands worried. But what about the consumer? How are they doing?They are doing just fine. The consumer has simply become more powerful and abundant. As Peter Diamandis said in his epic TED Talk about our abundant future, 70% of the developing world will have a cell phone by the end of 2013. A Masai warrior in Kenya today with a smartphone has access better information and knowledge than President Clinton did 15 years ago.
ConsumerTwo broad measures we track – Weekly Spending & Spending OutlookGood news!
QUESTION: Personal purchases PAST 7 DAYS HEADLINE(S):TEEN SPENDINGFirst increase in 4 years.Attributable to parents’ income gains since this is where they receive the bulk of their monies.TRANSITION:Similar good story for twenty-somethings.
HEADLINE(S):More muted increase but definitely movement in the right direction.Why the more muted impact? More likely servicing debt, in particular student loans.TRANSITION:Another important measure…our spending outlook…
QUESTION(S): Simple question: Do you expect to spend more, about the same, or less than you did last year?HEADLINE(S):Spending outlook among Millennials is highest it’s been in 5 years!37% expect to spend more this year, than they did last year. When you add that number to the percentage who expect to spend the same…. you get 81% who expect to spend more or the same. Only 19% expect to spend less.TRANSITION:So spending is on the rise, optimism is going up. These folks are interested in spending but they will not return to their old spending ways.
HEADLINE(S):Today’s Millennials are demonstrating what we at TRU are calling “Rational Exuberance” as it relates to their spending. We’re lucky to be spending so we’re going to make good rational decisions. Going back to the store is JOYFUL… even the small purchases. Consumers seem ready to spend again, provided marketers meet a value proposition. TRANSITION:We selected two music videos, one from Pre-Recession and one from Post-Recession which capture this theme.
HEADLINE(S):The Google Samsung ChromebookEveryone knows a laptop should cost about $1200. But you can get this one for $250.It’s what Rational Exuberance is all about…major product from a major brand at a low price. Functional enough for $250.TRANSITION:And the examples of brands in tune with this theme are endless…
Community colleges are doing a lot of things right. Not only are they creating 4-year degree programs, now that restrictions are starting to lift, but they are offering programs that have a direct path to job outcomes. They’re also focusing on campus life more than ever, building dorms, fielding sports teams, so that students aren’t sacrificing the traditional college experience.
Community colleges don’t carry the stigma that they used to. It used to be that going to community college was considered an inferior alternative, and mostly for students who weren’t academically prepared for a four-year institution or who didn’t know what they wanted to do. But in our recent survey, 76% of high school students agreed that a two-year school can be a good stepping stone for a traditional college or university
QUESTION: Have you purchased anything online in the PAST 12 MONTHS? Please select 1 answer. Y/NHEADLINE(S)Nearly 90% of twenty-somethings have bought onlineNealy ¾ of teens have bought online22% increase in teens buying online since a year agoMuch of increase driven by both groups accepting a “reasonable” waiting period.Especially true given same day shipping (e.g. Amazon Prime)Online provides comparison shopping, finding best price, size/color/style difficult to find in-store (example of D.C. store for men where you visit and then order online)TRANSITION:So, where are they shopping online?
QUESTION: Please type in the names of the 5 websites that you most like to shop. HEADLINE(S):In terms of Favorite Shopping Sites… game over Amazon wins. We talked about them last year.Significant YOY % increase in Favorite by both teens & twenty-somethingsTRANSITION:While there are many things to like about Amazon, their main currency is their reviews… and they’ve even made some improvements in that feature.
HEADLINE(S):Verified Purchase feature Guarantees that the reviewer actually purchased the product at Amazon. Doing so raises the bar for the competition and creates a differentiation Competition can no longer stack the deck.TRANSITION:Product reviews are more important than ever before. A few years ago we introduced a theme called TRUST LUST, which essentially said that young people were hungry for finding information they could believe…. Beyond the marketing and advertising hype. That’s where peer reviews came into play.So, we asked if they actually read online user reviews and…
HEADLINE(S):Impressive numbers…There is safety in numbers & currency in content.Three quarters of twenty-somethings have read online reviews. That’s huge!No surprise there’s a difference between teens and twenty-somethings as twenty-somethings are just more practical when it comes to making purchases. Still, you’ve got 3 in 5 teens who read user reviews. TRANSITION:We were interested to see if reading reviews translated into purchases and we found that reviews are becoming increasingly influential.
QUESTION:Based on your personal experience with products or services, have you ever… Not bought something based on other people’s negative reviews/comments Bought something based on other people’s positive reviews/comments HEADLINE(S):Look at the increase in terms of importance.The percentage who didn’t buy something because of negative comments has increased dramatically. Reviews can dissuade people from making a purchase.But look at how important advocacy is to you. Those who bought something because of positive comments…HUGE! CONSIDERATION: What can you do to encourage ADVOCACY?TRANSITION:And guess what…even comfortably, clueless Marge Simpson is “in-the-game”
If you want more evidence of this, look at Rate My Professors. Over 4 million college students each month are using RateMyProfessors. They’re looking at College Prowler. They want to hear from other students. Not from you. And if you don’t give them information from people like them on your website and through social media, they’re going to look elsewhere. To sources you have no control over.
First, prospective students don’t care about your president. And you can substitute dean, or tenured professor, or YOU, for that matter. If it’s an authority figure, prospective students don’t care what they have to say.
This relates to a TRU theme called the Big Easy. Let’s face it, teens are used to things being easy for them. Not only have they grown up with helicopter parents, who have done more for them than prior generation of parents did for their teens. This is a generation that grew up with Mom car-pooling them, and with their schedule posted on the fridge. They’re not used to life being hard.
This is a generation that grew up with Amazon one-click. And Zappos.com. Push a button one afternoon, and the next morning, a pair of boots shows up at your door. It’s beautiful.
Because the rest of the world has whole staffs dedicated to making them feel special.Now, we don’t like to talk about customer service in higher ed. It’s kind of a dirty word. We don’t talk about students as customers. But at TRU, we believe that customer service is going to become a bigger and bigger deal in higher education in the next five years. As institutions realize that it’s just as important to focus on retention as it is to focus on new students, they’re going to have to start identifying those obstacles and breaking down institutional silos to make it easier to be a student.
And all of us in this room have done everything we can to make things easier for prospective students. We’ve joined the Common App.
Many of us have built those recruiting mico-sites I talked about earlier. And we have people monitoring Facebook pages so any conceivable question can be answered within two hours.
The last thing I want to talk about in the consumer section as it relates to higher education relates to customer service. If you are honest with yourselves, you have a lot of students who feel like you stopped caring about them once they enrolled. You did everything you could to make them come to your institution, and then you stopped caring about them.
And boom. Then they become a student. And all of a sudden, everything becomes hard. We have terrible intranet sites that are not intuitive to use, making it difficult to register for classes. We have financial aid and the registrar’s office and student accounts in different buildings, so they may have to go three different places to be able to figure out their bills. We make them submit immunization records to two different offices. Those of us in higher ed know that these problems are not easy to fix. They’re a result of the silos that we have on campus. But students don’t care about your silos. They don’t care that two departments don’t talk to each other.
Who’s got what? Everyone has everything. It’s not the computer it’s computing. We work with media agencies, as you likely do. They say don’t think TV, think video, don’t think radio, think audio. Here’s why….consumers are not device loyal and don’t think about the device but rather the content. The goal is cross-platform coverage that can’t be circumvented. Big question… where does the home-gaming console fit in the picture? For now, the numbers are declining but that could change as devices blend.
The meteoric rise of smartphone ownership in three years time. Two-horse race.Raise your hands if you have an iphone… now raise your hands if you have an android… that’s just about everyone in the room. It’s pretty simple… this has become a two-horse race and in many ways it’s become Apple VS. SAMSUNG.See LINK: New Media Trend Watch.com Affinity research – emarketer August 2011Millennials are 28% more likely to have a smart phone than general population. Boomers lead in e-readers, Gen X leads in tablets, Millennials lead in smartphones.
Consumers now feel they can have what they want, when they want it, in the form and location they prefer. They’ve moved from a constrained environment – what’s on now that I want to watch – to an unconstrained environment, in which their biggest choice is not what, when, how or where to consume media…the larger choice is: what do I truly care about?
Independent of what phone you have, the 24-7 access, and the proliferation of social media has created what we call a Quiet Riot… an ongoing, self-sustaining, existence online whether you encourage it or not.Conversations are being had about you and with you. You can be tagged in photos that you didn’t sign off on, you can be checked in to places that you didn’t want people to know you were. And this is true not only of people, but of brands. So it’s important to be listening to the conversations that are being had about you.
I’m a big fan of Alabama football. And was thrilled Alabama made it to the National Championships AGAIN this year. On game day, I heard from everybody… My Dad, my roommate from college, lots of my friends. You want to know who else got in touch with me? My friends at Amazon.com.
They know I’m a fan. based on my purchase history with Amazon.And you know what they were trying to sell me? Absolutely nothing!They are paying attention .
Taco Bell has 9.5 million fans on Facebook15-year old Ray Klarner… swimmer/diver at a high school outside of Chicago.
The week before Christmas, 15-year-old Ryan Klarner posted on Taco Bell’s Facebook page, introducing himself with a rundown of his swimming and diving achievements before making an offbeat request. Klarner asked for a special speedo swimsuit that says… “Think Outside the Buns” on the back. If you did, that would mean the world to me,” the Illinois teen asked.Other than that, keep up the delicious food, and the quick and quality service.
QUESTION: How much do you agree or disagree with this statement:Now, a lot of news lately on Facebook, particularly that it is declining in popularity. And, our numbers show a bit of the same. Overall these numbers show boredom with Facebook. It’s a vicious cycle… with all of the content based user generated, and fewer actual users posting interesting content, it’s going to result in fewer visitors.Youth are always interested in the next new thing… They can see life beyond Facebook. They witnessed the demise of Myspace… so they could see the same for Facebook.
QUESTION: Please list your 5 favorite websites.But wait! Don’t write Facebook off so soon. Millennials seem to be USING the same amount, but with less enthusiasm. Facebook has become more operational than aspirational, but still they are NUMBER ONE on the list of favorite sites.Yes, there’s buzz around Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter, and usage numbers are increasing. But, there is always something hot, new, trendy and young people will always gravitate to them, but we need to see where these numbers head before writing in a new #1 or even top 10.Implications for higher ed? After you get your website right, the next thing is Facebook. We don’t see Facebook as a huge opportunity for lead generation. Teens tell us they don’t want higher ed institutions to reach out to them first. Not even important for conversion – are teens going to “like” the Facebook pages of the 10 institutions they’re applying to? No. But it’s critical for yield, and even after they’ve decided to enroll. Make them feel part of the community. Important also to have a YouTube presence. Then, if you have resources left over, do Twitter.
