Innovating for Higher Ed: Challenges and Solutions

In this episode of FYI, Gil Rogers sits down with Higher Education CMO, Jamie Hunt, to discuss the challenges and opportunities for driving innovation.

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Who is Jaime Hunt?

Jaime is a recognized leader in higher education marketing. She recently started her own consultancy focused on providing marketing leadership for institutions.

In this Episode

Jaime Hunt, president of Solve Higher Ed Marketing, joins FYI host Gil Rogers to talk about the perception challenges facing higher education. Jamie shares her transition from a long career in higher education marketing to founding her consulting firm. 

Gil and Jaime explore how institutions can tackle the feared ‘enrollment cliff’ by innovating their approach, targeting non-traditional students, and considering hybrid education models. The solutions have a chance to both increase enrolled students and create more champions of the institution and fewer detractors. They also discuss the importance of breaking down silos within institutions and engaging parents in the educational journey.

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Episode Transcript

Innovating for Higher Ed: Challenges and Solutions with Jaime Hunt

Publishing Date: October 15, 2024

[00:00:19] Gil: Welcome back to FYI, the For Your Institution Podcast, presented by Mongoose. Today, I am joined by Jaime Hunt, president of Solve Higher Ed Marketing. We talk about the challenges facing the perception of higher education and how a rising tide can raise all ships. Let’s listen in.

Hey, Jaime, how’s it going?

[00:00:22] Jaime: It’s going great. How are you?

[00:00:23] Gil: I’m doing lovely. Thank you. I know you’re exceptionally busy. I appreciate you taking the time, but how are things treating you towards the end of the summer here?

[00:00:32] Jaime: This summer’s gone by so fast. It’s been, like, wild. I can’t believe, like, kids went back to school here in Virginia Beach on Monday, and I’m thinking, “That’s a nightmare. Like, how is summer already over?”

[00:00:44] Gil: Yeah, I read a meme this morning while I was drinking my coffee. It was, you know, September 1st through 15th went by in about 48 hours. It’s going to be Christmas in about a week, right?

[00:00:54] Jaime: Right.

[00:00:54] Gil: Just time flies, I guess, when you’re having fun or when you’re exceptionally busy or probably a little bit of both.

So, I know you’ve been busy—you’ve been starting things and doing things. For our podcast listeners, I’d love for you to share a little bit of your background, what you’re working on, who you are, how you got there. And then we can go from there.

[00:01:13] Jaime: Yeah. So, I, after 20 years working in higher ed marketing, the last nine years at the cabinet level as the chief marketing officer and vice president, in February, I was like, “You know what? It is time for me to do something different, to have a different impact on higher ed.” And so, I launched my consulting firm, Solve Higher Ed Marketing.

And my boss at the university I was at asked me to stay through the end of the fiscal year. So, I’ve been, sort of, jobless for the last seven or eight weeks, running my business full time, absolutely having a blast. Like, I don’t know why I waited so long to do this. It has been so fun, like different.

And I was telling my husband today, I don’t have to remind anybody to do their leave report or do their timesheet. And that’s probably, like, the best part of being a solopreneur.

[00:02:02] Gil: Absolutely. So, I think one of the similar boat, right? Last year, February timeframe, I found myself in a situation where it was like, you have a crossroads, do you pursue continued job in the lane that you’ve been in forever and know and love and are able to do? Or do you broaden that scope a little bit, right?

And the work that I do is more, like, helping ed tech companies with talking to colleges and universities and helping them to build things that are going to actually support institutions and not just widgets for widgets’ sake, right?

[00:02:35] Jaime: Yeah.

[00:02:36] Gil: What was your inspiration for saying just that? Like, “Hey, I want to do something broader, bigger impact, more institutions.”

[00:02:43] Jaime: Yeah. So, I was a fellow with the Academy for Innovative Higher Ed Leadership last year. And we met quarterly in person and then had, like, in-between homework. As I was in that, I was seeing all these statistics about the declining perception of the value of higher education. And I was like, how do we stave this bleeding, right? Like, how do we get people to get into higher education, pursue higher education? How do we overcome these challenges? I hate the term, “enrollment cliff,” but, like, how do we overcome the enrollment cliff?

And I realized that I thought I could have a bigger impact doing consulting and helping a lot of universities solve their biggest marketing challenges versus helping just the university I worked for. And so, as somebody who is a CMO, I know what it’s like, I know that there’s no time in your day that you are being pulled in a million directions, that it can be really hard to tackle some of these, like, really big issues and really big problems. And so, I’m going to start a consulting firm that does truly bespoke consulting: you tell me what your challenge is, I put together a proposal for how I think I can solve it, and then we work together to do that.

And that, I feel like, kind of, scratches that itch of being able to still be in higher ed while also scratches the itch of I’m helping a lot of different schools get a little bit farther toward thriving. And that’s really struck me that, yeah, that’s what I want to do. This is the moment for that. This is what I’m called to do right now.

[00:04:19] Gil: Yeah. And I think it’s interesting because I, you know, during the whole FAFSA fiasco during this cycle, we had numerous guests on, talking about how institutions can best support students and what they should be doing. And recently, we had a, how do we avoid an encore of the FAFSA fiasco, right? And there’s some things out of our control, but we can control how we prepare, right?

And one of the things that came up during that thread of the conversation was a rising tide raises all ships, right? And there’s certain things where we came up with the idea of, like, you know, we do it like the old got milk campaign, right?

[00:04:53] Jaime: Yeah.

[00:04:53] Gil: Where the Dairy Farmers Association of America got together and did this national campaign to get people to drink more milk. And so, that benefits all the farmers in the association, because rising tide raises all ships, even a rising tide of milk sounds, kind of, gross. But I feel like that analogy there can be applied, somewhat, to higher education, because this isn’t an individual institution challenge. This is a category challenge, right?

And so, I think, obviously, when in your role, when you’re supporting multiple institutions with projects to help their profile or help them to better articulate their message, if we level that up a little bit, what can institutions, as a whole, do to help? Because the demographic, you can’t change the demographics of the country, right? There’s nothing you can do about birth rates 18 years ago. What you can do is make the process easier for the students who are in the pipeline. You can create a product that is a better value for them.

So, what are some things that you talk to your clients and contacts about to help with articulating some of that message?

[00:06:01] Jaime: Yeah. So, one thing that I’m super passionate about, and that is, I think universities need to be thinking a lot harder at people who need to finish their degrees. Like, maybe they started when they were 18 and they didn’t graduate, and they ended up with debt and no credential and they’re under-employed because they didn’t get that credential. And I think a lot of universities need to be thinking about how they can change their product and their processes to help that audience.

And I think the schools that are effective at that are going to be better positioned to overcome the “demographic cliff,” right? Because birth rates went down, right, 18 years ago. But we also know there’s, like, 35 million Americans who started college but didn’t finish. So, what can you do to pull those people back into the pool? And that can, I think, help overcome the demographic cliff.

But another thing, my fellowship project was to develop a proposal for, sort of, like that national Got Milk? campaign, how can institutions come together to build a playbook that countermands that message that higher ed’s not worth it, or higher ed is going to brainwash your kids, or higher ed is too expensive, or whatever? How can we collectively come together to countermand that message? So, it’s not just one institution saying, “This is the value of higher education,” but just, “This is the value of higher education. You should go to college.”

Lauren Griswold at Boise State, who I think is a brilliant genius, partnered with her fellow public institutions in Idaho to do a campaign just like that. And they saw some amazing results from that. How do we scale that up? How do we make that a nationwide campaign? And what entity is best positioned to do that? And that’s, kind of, part of what I’m trying to figure out between doing my consulting gigs, like, where I would love to play a role in that national conversation.

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[00:08:37] Gil: I think part of that, too, I see an opportunity for efficiencies with things like admissions and enrollment and talking better to alumni and advancement, right? And I think, if I’m looking at it for my role as a ed tech CMO, right, what do colleges and universities want to see from their CRM provider or potential CRM provider or marketing partner or, name the product that they are investing in, to help support their goals? They want to see proof points. They want to see case studies. They want to see testimonials, right?

And so, I think one thing that higher ed has not necessarily mastered on a global level, there are sparkles of genius at some institutions, but for the most part, it’s that alignment between alumni advancement and enrollment, where talking to each other, sharing those stories, sharing those resources are things that, it’s very low lying fruit, right? I feel like there’s families want to hear about it, alumni are looking for ways to get involved, but there’s that silo that people don’t want to cross through, sometimes. 

You can always get the recent tour guide who wants to come talk at a regional session to come talk at a regional session because they were a tour guide in the admissions office, but what about that middle career professional who is there because of their experience and their background at that institution? That’s some untapped potential there.

[00:09:59] Jaime: Oh, for sure. And I famously hate silos. Like, silos are the bane of my existence. I’m actually giving a keynote next week about that. But I think, like, if we can bust down some of those silos that exist on our campus, we do a much better job telling a compelling story to our audiences.

And another thing I think we have to think about is, most of higher ed leadership at this point are late boomers and Gen X. Our parents drove us to college and pushed us out of the car and came back and got us four years later, right? Like, my parents had no idea what classes I was taking. They didn’t know what grades I was getting. They didn’t know anything about my education experience. But Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s parents are heavily involved, but the number of institutions I talked to that aren’t collecting parent data and aren’t proactively doing parent outreach is absolutely astonishing. Like, it’s almost everybody I talk to.

And so, I think we also have to break down, like, the mental silo of thinking, just because my parents wouldn’t have cared. We know millennial parents care. And so, how can we engage the parents in the conversation and engage the parents in the conversation earlier? For example, when parents are thinking about, “Should my kid be in every sport in high school? Should they be in every club? What’s going to give them an edge when they apply to college?” If we should be there, part of that conversation, telling them what they need to do to help prep their son or daughter for college.

So, I just think there’s so many silos, even within our own heads, that keep us from being successful. And we need to break those down.

[00:11:33] Gil: Yeah, and I think it’s a matter of spending time together with folks. And I think it’s so caught-up in our day-to-day and you see the old comic that gets circulated every couple of years of the, you’ve got the guy trying to sell wheels to the person who’s pulling the carriage. And it’s square wheels instead of round wheels. “Oh, I’m too busy. I can’t talk to you right now,” right? And it’s like, how do we get together and just take that time to be more effective and more… I want to revisit your comment about getting students to finish what they started, right? Stop-outs, I think, are a huge opportunity for institutions to, not only grow their enrollment and revenue, but also deliver on their promise, right?

[00:12:09] Jaime: Yeah.

[00:12:10] Gil: And I feel like there’s some really great stories for those students who are, you know, a semester away from finishing their degree, but they have a lien on their account because they owe for a book that they left from the library or whatever, right? I think we can make the case where you say, let’s solve that issue from a outcomes perspective, because now you have that bank of people that are probably out there saying, “Higher ed is not worth it because I’ve got all this student loan debt, and I don’t have a good job because I dropped out because my experience is bad,” to then flip that narrative and have more advocates out there instead of detractors.

[00:12:43] Jaime: Oh, 100%. When I was at UW Oshkosh in the late aughts, the chancellor there got it. He went and saw we had tens of thousands of students who had started and stopped out. And when we went and looked, a lot of them had frozen accounts because they had a parking ticket or they owed 100 bucks or whatever. Or maybe they got, like, bad grades for one semester.

Well, how can we work with people to get them to wipe away those parking tickets, to wipe away those book fines, to your point, and get them in a position where they can come back with a little bit of grade amnesty? Because they’re adults now. They’re going to have a different approach.

And we ended up with, like, 1,000 students in that degree completion program within two years. That’s, for a lot of schools, 1,000 additional students would be transformative for their budget. And they’re just there. It’s low-hanging fruit.

[00:13:38] Gil: Yeah. And it’s also, like, think about once those students are out, now you’ve got happy alumni, right? And so, it goes back to that connection of advancement and enrollment, where these, again, students who were detractors in the market, at worst, they were neutral, right, and they just didn’t talk about it. That’s at best. At worst, it’s they’re out there saying, “Hey, this school is terrible. I didn’t get a degree. And that’s a waste of time and money.” Now, they’re giving back to the institution longer term, right? And I think there’s so much untapped potential there.

On the new student enrollment side, there is a population of students that are just not going to college. So, while the demographic might be lower, the percentage of college-bound students in that population, if that goes down as well, that’s a double whammy, right?

And so, how do we tackle… you know, we talked about the returning students and getting them to come back. How do we boost the college-going mindset for the right students? And college is not for everyone. I think we need to break that mindset, sometimes, with some folks, too. There are apprenticeships. There’s other things that we need people in the workforce and people doing. But for the students who should go to college because it will help them to support what their goals are, but don’t go to college because of that fear of failure or not having the resources or feeling like they don’t have the resources, what are some of the things that we should be talking about or thinking about to boost the percentage of students who are eligible to call it to go to college to actually have them go to college?

[00:15:04] Jaime: Yeah, I think there’s, sort of, two things here. The first is I think we need to figure out how we convey the value proposition. Like, what are you going to get? How are you going to benefit from this college degree? And it can’t just be the same story we’ve always been telling because it’s not working, obviously, because fewer and fewer people are seeing value.

But perhaps, more importantly, I don’t think we’re listening to our customers the way we need to be. So, I think the pandemic shifted and changed what our traditional undergraduate student population wants. I think that we’re not listening. I think we went straight back to in-person full-time classes without considering hybrid, without considering that there are students who are like, “Yeah, I want to be able to decide some morning, but I’m not going to go to the class in person. I’m going to watch the lecture virtually, or fill in the blank.” And we just decided, no, in-person is better and we’re not going to listen or change or shape what our “product” is.

And that’s just not good business. Like, if a student is sitting there thinking, “I don’t want to sit in a class three times a week for an hour. I want to be able to make a choice for what days I’m going to physically go to the class or which classes I physically go to. Like, I know I’ll benefit from being in a finance class in person versus whatever,” we’re just like, “Well, tough, this is how it is.”

I don’t think that’s preparing them for the real world, either, with the hybrid work environments that we have. So, I think we need to look at our products. We need to look at how to deliver our product more affordably. I think we need to look at what students want, and so that, when we’re conveying that value proposition, it scratches those itches, it helps students see that this thing that you’re talking about has this value for me in my life.

And I think we also have to understand that people are much more value- and price-conscious than they have been in a long time, in part because of inflation and that sort of thing. And so, how can we be really sensitive to that price sensitivity and lower our costs accordingly, so that people can find a financial way to go to college without going into, you know, $100,000 of debt.

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[00:18:08] Gil: Yeah, I think modality is a huge part of that conversation. And they expect there to be flexibility. They expect there to be quality opportunities that are more of a hybrid option.

I think, you know, when you look at the enrollment trends for online programs, it’s still a localized type of an experience for most online programs. You take out the Southern New Hampshire’s and the Western governors of the world, you’ve got an opportunity to really, again, boost that college-going mindset by creating those different types of programs and curriculum, right?

And I think, from a place that higher ed is in that ecosystem perspective, there’s such that laser-hyperfocus and narrative around that traditional four-year degree, which is actually more like a secure degree for a lot of people, anyway. But is it that traditional four-year degree? Or do we offer stackable credentials? Do we offer certification programs? Do we offer capprenticeship programs, pathways to employment? These are things that so many institutions are, kind of, stuck in. “Well, we are a small liberal arts college that provides the in-person brick-and-mortar education.” And you know what? Unfortunately, when you look at all the trends, those are the institutions that are on the hard side of all of this.

And I’ve had many conversations with folks on this podcast. It’s the value of small schools, and there is a value for the student that fits for. But reaching those students and providing the value for those students is getting harder and harder when the masses are looking at these things differently.

So, yeah, I know that’s a lot. But what are your advice for those small liberal arts colleges that are the ones who are, kind of, under the thumb right now with, you see article about a closure every other day, or I was reading one on LinkedIn about, like, there was a guy predicting which colleges were next to close based on their financial index? And I don’t want to get into that game. That’s hard. I just feel bad playing that game. It’s, like, really awful fantasy football.

[00:19:59] Jaime: Right.

[00:19:59] Gil: What can those institutions who are, kind of, steeped in that tradition, but they’re highly tuition-dependent, they’ve got faculty considerations and cultural considerations? It’s, kind of, the hardest nut to crack, I think.

[00:20:10] Jaime: Yeah. So, I’ve worked at schools as small as 1,000 students and I’ve worked at big, large R1 public universities. And in my experience, the smaller schools have a better ability to pivot and a better ability to innovate than the bigger schools. And it seems counterproductive because the bigger schools typically have more resources, but the smaller schools can be more like, “All right, everybody, we’re going to pivot hard. We’re going to do something truly innovative.” And it’s a smaller number of people to get buy-in on.

And typically, in my experience at a small school, people have a better sense of, “We’re all in this together,” than at a bigger school, because it’s just, like, a smaller cluster of people. So, if I were to talk to a smaller college president or a smaller college VP for enrollment or VP of marketing, I would say, like, “This is time to get real creative. Figure out, what can you do that nobody else is doing in the marketplace? How can you start talking about different delivery options? How can you get a better sense of what your audience really, really wants? What unique thing can you actually do? Find some sort of donor or corporate partner or somebody that will work with you to accomplish that and then do it. And don’t be afraid to think about changing your tuition model. Don’t be afraid to think about changing who you’re trying to approach for a prospective student, like, what your target demographic is. Just, like, really put innovation to the test, and maximize your resources as much as possible.”

[00:21:46] Gil: Yeah, and I think there’s parallels to that on, again, my work in the ed tech side. The large conglomerate companies don’t necessarily adapt as quickly as a smaller shop that is more nimble startup, that is a little bit more nimble, a little more creative, not afraid to fail forward, right? And obviously, the stakes are high at these smaller institutions. If you fail, then people lose their jobs, right? And that’s the concern.

However, staying the course is a path to failure right now, right? So, there’s only so many non-risks you can take. And so, for the smaller institutions, I think, being nimble and being proactive versus reactive, like I said, they’re not as insulated from other forces when you have a larger institution with multiple colleges and multiple programs. That institution can sustain some weather every once in a while versus these larger schools. So, you have to act, you have to make a change. It’s important to keep that in mind.

[00:22:42] Jaime: I recently presented to the cabinet of a midsize school. The whole notion of my presentation was around developing an innovation mindset and how, as leaders, you can, sort of, lead the idea of change, not being something that you need to be scared of, but that evolution is necessary right now. And how do you push through moving at the speed of business, which is very operationally focused. It’s focused on those immediate results. It’s focused on mitigating risk. And instead, moving at the speed of innovation, where you’re looking more at exploration and experimentation and setting a long-term vision and being willing to accept some risk in order to hopefully have a greater gain. I think that a lot of schools need to be thinking about, where do they fall on that speed of business, speed of innovation spectrum, and move more towards the speed of innovation, because that is… you’re staying ahead of competition because you’re thinking with this innovation mindset.

And if you’re just able to jump on change much more quickly, you’re better able to respond to student expectations because you have this mindset of, “We know how to pivot.” And then you’re much more proactive and you’re much more able to see, like, “Hey, I see a problem five years down the road. I’m not looking at my feet and figuring out what step I’m going to take next. I’m looking down the road and seeing there’s a train coming towards me, I need to figure out how to shift my path so I don’t get hit by it.” But if you’re just looking at your feet, all of a sudden, you look up and the train is smacking you. And so, shifting so that you’re looking ahead instead of looking at the immediate, I think, will be really, really important for leaders in the next two to five years.

[00:24:28] Gil: Yeah. And I think, keeping in mind that, on that theme of being risk averse, right, keeping your head down and just doing your job is not a solution. And not doing something because you’re afraid of losing your job is also not a solution, because if you don’t do something, you are going to lose your job. If the institution closes, you’d lose your job, right? And so, we need to stop with the status quo mindset and think about, how do we make change, really, from the ground up in this endeavor?

So, Jaime, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate your insights and your thoughts. For folks who might not be already connected with you, which I highly doubt, but if they’re not, what are some ways that people can stay in touch and get in touch and to continue this conversation?

[00:25:13] Jaime: Yeah. So, I’m very active on LinkedIn. You can find me there, Jaime Hunt, J-A-I-M-E, H-U-N-T. My parents gave me a fun and different spelling of “Jaime.”

[00:25:23] Gil: You’re not SEO-optimized.

[00:25:24] Jaime: I am not. And otherwise, you can find me on my website, which is solvehighered.com. And I have a contact form where you can shoot me an email through that and get in touch that way. Those are the best ways. I, kind of, walked away from X. It’s just getting toxic.

[00:25:41] Gil: Same. I think my last post on Twitter before it became X was, “Hey, you can find me on LinkedIn.”

[00:25:49] Jaime: Mine, too.

[00:25:51] Gil: Oh, awesome. Well, Jaime, I appreciate you taking the time. And hopefully, we have some really good conversations spawned from this conversation. To our listeners, we appreciate you being here. Don’t forget to subscribe, if you don’t already. And we will see you next time on FYI.

Hi, everyone. This is Gil with a quick post-episode update. In a couple of weeks, we are going to be wrapping up this season of FYI. At the end of this season, I’ll be taking a step-back from my hosting duties to focus on my core business, as well as my family.

It has been a privilege to support this podcast and be a part of so many amazing conversations. I want to thank Mongoose for the great opportunity to be the host, as well as their continued support of hosting this content on their blog, as well as anywhere you find podcasts.

We hope that you find these conversations to continue to be supportive, as well as constructive to your enrollment outcomes and your needs.

Thank you so much! And we’ll see you next time on FYI.

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