Innovative Recruitment Strategies in Higher Education: A Guide to Effective Outreach

Gil Rogers sits down with John McGreal to talk about leadership and technology and the confluence of the two in enrollment management.

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Who is John McGreal?

John is the Executive Dean of Enrollment Services at Waukesha County Technical College in Wisconsin.

In this Episode

John McGreal, the Dean of Enrollment Services at Waukesha County Technical College, joins FYI host Gil Rogers to talk about the need for tailored approaches in admissions and the challenges of keeping staff focused and effective in a constantly evolving educational landscape.

John also emphasizes the importance of work-life balance and the need for tailored approaches in admissions. The conversation touches on the shift towards utilizing digital marketing and AI in enrollment processes while stressing the significance of maintaining motivation and proper staffing.

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Episode Transcript

Innovative Approaches to Recruitment at Different Levels of Higher Ed with John McGreal

Publishing Date: October 1, 2024

[00:00:00] Gil: Welcome back to FYI, the For Your Institution Podcast, presented by Mongoose. I’m your host, Gil Rogers. And today, I’m joined by my long-time friend, John McGreal, Dean of Enrollment Services at Waukesha County Technical College in Wisconsin. John and I talked a lot about leadership and technology and the confluence of the two in today’s higher ed landscape. Let’s listen in!

[00:00:33] John: What’s up, Gil?

[00:00:33] Gil: Hey, John, how are you?

[00:00:36] John: I’m great. How are you?

[00:00:37] Gil: Doing lovely. Just got back from a conference yesterday. Threw my son off because I was driving home and my wife calls me, and she goes, “Where are you?” And that’s my wife’s voice. “Where are you?” And I said, I was, you know, north of Freeport, Maine, for anybody who knows the geography of Maine. And she was able to get me off the exit. The next exit was the exit for the camp he needed to get picked up from. So, I saved her the 30-minute drive to come to get him because I had just gotten off the plane. So, I tricked him because I’m standing there at the pickup area, and he’s like, “Mommy’s supposed to be here. What’s going on?” “I don’t know.”

[00:01:14] John: Kids are hysterical. My daughter, all week, she’s been at a zoo camp at the Milwaukee County Zoo and has been loving it, for the most part, but she’s been super scared each day just because it’s new, right? And she’s four and, like, new things are scary. And so, the last couple of days, she’s like, “Oh, I got to give daddy, like, five hugs before he leaves. Like, I got to soak it all in before he leaves, right?” And today, I go to drop her off — not even a look back. She just goes in and grabs and, like, just walks on in, doesn’t give me a second thought.

[00:01:41] Gil: The comfort level’s there now. It’s over.

[00:01:44] John: There, it’s over.

[00:01:44] Gil: She’s going to college, going to college this fall now. There you go. That’s it.

[00:01:47] John: Pretty much. She’s fiercely independent, so…

[00:01:49] Gil: Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. Well, how’s life in your neck of the woods? I know we connected a few weeks ago, but much changed how we look in class-wise. Are we enjoying stuff?

[00:02:00] John: Yeah, class-wise, we’re doing okay. We’re still ahead of our key metrics for the fall, which a two-year school are, we’re focused mostly on FTE and headcount and the combination thereof, right? So, we’re doing okay that way. We’ve got a few more weeks here, so we’re getting ready just for our final push in the fall. We have an event later today called “Admission Accomplished” that we’re doing. And then we have, you know, just about two weeks to round out the class, so…

[00:02:25] Gil: There you go. Well, for the podcast listeners, we clicked record and we just got started. John and I go back, we’ve been connected for years now. And so, we decided we’re just going to have a conversation related to higher education and see where all of this goes — no script, no outline, just let’s get together and talk shop and have a cup of coffee and hang out. We also punted this call probably six times because of the stuff we started talking about at the beginning. “Oh, my son’s got camp. Oh, my kid’s got this. Oh, we got…” so, we kept pushing, pushing, pushing. So, it’s great to finally be able to do this.

[00:02:57] John: I know. It’s awesome! I was trying to think when we were supposed to really officially do this. And I don’t know, it’s probably been-

[00:03:03] Gil: At least two months.

[00:03:03] John: Six months.

[00:03:04] Gil: I’m going to say two. You’re probably right, it’s probably more like six. But time is a social construct.

[00:03:10] John: Correct.

[00:03:11] Gil: So, it could have been yesterday and we just pushed it for 12 hours. So, it’s fine.

[00:03:15] John: Absolutely.

[00:03:17] Gil: So, John, before we start talking, chop a little bit more for our podcast listeners, would love for you to give a little bit of an introduction — who you are, where you work, how you got there, what inspires you, favorite comic book movie, anywhere you want to go.

[00:03:31] John: Sure. All right.

[00:03:33] Gil: You can’t say Avengers: Doomsday, though, because that’s a very hot topic of conversation right now with San Diego Comic-Con and all that sort of stuff.

[00:03:40] John: No, I don’t want to be divisive. I know this is a podcast that brings people together, so I don’t want to create division. No, so, I’m currently the Dean of Enrollment Services at Waukesha County Technical College. And actually, I’m the inaugural person in this role. So, it was brand-new about two and a half years ago, which has been a journey. It’s been a good one, but it’s been a journey to get here. And I oversee the areas of recruitment and engagement, financial aid and scholarships, testing, admissions operations, our CRM and data team, as well as our one stop. So, I have quite the portfolio right now. And I’ve been here for about two and a half years, like I said, and we’re really getting going. We’ve had some great success, which is fantastic.

Before that, I was the Director of Enrollment Management and Admissions up at Bellin College, which is a small health science institution up in Green Bay, about 800 total students or so. Prior to that, I spent seven and a half, eight years at the University of Alabama overseeing all of our Midwest recruitment and serving on the leadership team for the admissions office there. And then before that, I was actually at Rockford College, another small private institution in Northern Illinois. So, I always say I’m one institution shy of bingo. So, I have a state flagship, a technical institution, a small private, as well as a specialized institution. So, I don’t know where I go next, but I’ve got to get that bingo score done.

But that’s where we’re at. Aside from that, my favorite comic book movie, I honestly don’t know if I have a really solid answer on that one, but I’m a huge Star Wars fan. And it’s not quite comics, but we’re in the same Disney house and the house of mouse now. So, but probably, with that, the thing I’ve loved the most recently was the Ahsoka series, which was awesome.

And then, outside of that, when I’m not here, I’m a runner. So, I actually went for a two and a half mile run this morning. So, I’m already well-caffeinated. Now, we’re on to hydration. And then I’ve got two kids, a loving wife who’s incredible. And I like to eat and enjoy the odd drink here or there.

[00:05:38] Gil: Which is why you run, right? So, you run so you can eat and drink, which you want.

[00:05:42] John: So, I can eat and drink, yep, absolutely.

[00:05:43] Gil: That’s it. It’s awesome that you mentioned the Ahsoka series. So, when it was coming out, I was, like, on the third episode. And I’ll stay up and watch these things when they come out. My family doesn’t… my son was into the Star Wars cartoons a little bit. So, I was going to introduce him to Ahsoka at some point because that’s, you know, like, she came out. But my daughter came downstairs and she was, like, not going to bed that night. And I didn’t feel like fighting with her about going to bed because I’m watching the Ahsoka show. And it’s, like, third or fourth episode, spoiler, whatever one her master comes back in. For anyone who doesn’t know the Star Wars stuff, I’ll leave that there.

And so, I tell her, I was like, “You know, you actually like this one. It’s led by a strong female lead. It’s, like, you know, over the top craziness.” And so, she sat down, she watched it with me. And then the closing scene happens and he appears in your… and I go crazy. Ah, there it is. Ah!

[00:06:34] John: They did the thing.

[00:06:35] Gil: Yeah, did the thing! So, then she’s been hooked on Star Wars ever since. She made me start it over, so we watched episodes 1 through 1, 2, 3, 4, and then she got into all of this sort of stuff. And then, of course, we’re watching, like, the original trilogy at some point, and my wife goes, “So, why is Ahsoka not in this one?” And I’m like, “Well, funny story.” But they, kind of, made her up way after the fact. And so, it’s like, it’s so it’s just fun filling in the blanks for my wife who’s like on the fringe of Star Wars stuff because she’ll watch one thing and be like, “Why is this all because of that?” Anywho it’s good times.

So, let’s talk about, I said in the email when you asked me, hey, what are we talking about, this will be the one loose agenda thing that we pulled together. And part of it’s because I’m coming back from a conference where it was a lot of small colleges talking about challenges, and there were two big topics of conversation that bubbled up throughout a lot of the sessions, the common themes being staff morale and the other theme being the impact of technology, specifically AI, and where that presumably help with the former, right, if we use it correctly and also support student success better, which also supports the former, right?

So, from your perch as the person in your seat, there’s a whole option we can do with, like sequels and reboots, and we can do the common theme of these here at some point. But, you know, from your perch, what are some of the things that you grapple with – I’ll use that word – that you grapple with on a day to day basis to ensure that your team stays motivated for the true end game, comic book, movie pun again, the true end game of better supporting students and their success in this process?

[00:08:19] John: Yeah. I think this is a really big question, right? Like, staff morale is constant, right? In fact, we’ve had so much turnover across higher ed as a whole, that I was talking with my director of recruitment the other day. And he has been fully staffed this year for about 15 days in the past year, fully staffed for about 15 days. He was fully staffed, finally, and then someone put in their retirement notice, right? And we’re like, “Well, that’s going to end.” And that’s, you know, it’s just what it is, right?

And so, one of the things that we’re actively trying to do is trying to really focus our staff in on what we hired them to do, right? At the end of the day, we hire enrollment counselors and mission counselors to go out and be personable, be high energy, right? And go out and make relationships, develop relationships with students, school counselors, parents, their families, everyone, right? That’s what we hire these individuals to do. And to weave in, kind of, the two topics that you mentioned coming up, right, technology has gone to a point where it almost has shifted that, right?

So, we’re trying to be very intentional about keeping them focused on that relationship building and letting that technology work for them in the background, right? So, we are going to make sure they know how to build a query and pull information of our CRM and things along those lines, but we don’t want that to be the bulk of their job, right? That’s the responsibility of myself, of my directors, of my data team, right, to really be able to go in and understand what’s happening, where those staff members who we’ve hired to go out and be energetic and effervescent and really engaging with students, that’s what we want them to focus on.

So, that’s what we’ve really worked towards here, is making sure that they are focused on the engagement piece and going out and really driving that. And that seems to be working a little bit, right? We’ve had continued to have some turnover, right? But I feel like we’re, kind of, leveling out, especially with that team, because we’re really ensuring that they can focus in on what they want to do, right?

And there are, definitely, ways that technology can assist us with that. And one of the pieces we’re doing, we’re going through a CRM implementation right now to bring on something new to hopefully help with that process, as well as we are actively as an institution utilizing Microsoft Copilot to try and figure out what, like, where AI can fit into our day-to-day work to make things a little bit easier. Can it help us with some analysis? Can it help us find ways to streamline processes? Can it help us research new opportunities and initiatives in a different fashion than we may have before?

So, we’re really trying to bring all of that together. And really, like I said, again, let staff do what we hire them to do instead of what we feel like we need them to do to make some other things happen.

[00:11:01] Gil: Yeah. I think you sound like you’ve read or, at least, are aware of the book, The Admissions Officer Malaise, by Teege Mettille. I re-listened to the podcast I had him on this morning, actually, because I’d been traveling and had fell a little behind. He was the last episode before our summer break. And I think that there’s a lot of lessons. We’ll put a link to that episode in the episode notes, so that when you’re done listening to this awesome conversation, you can go listen to that awesome conversation and then just spend your day with us here on FYI.

But I feel like that’s the key, right? And you’ve been in this space for a long time and you’ve worked in enrollment management and you’ve led teams. And I think there’s this certain challenge that we have of part of the driver of that is this need to continue to always do more. And yet, what I hear in conversations with a lot of institutions over the past nine months or so, and, you know, we want to blame the FAFSA fiasco on, and that’s a contributing factor, you know, there’s diminishing demographics, there’s all these outside influencers. But at the end of the day, I hear a lot of institutions saying that “we’re up in applications, we’re up and admits, and we’re up in completed applications,” all these awesome middle and top of the funnel metrics, “but we’re flat in enrollment,” right? And so, it’s like you’re… basically, you’re working double or triple to get the same net result.

In the past, that would be okay because we’re hitting enrollment goal. That’s it. But that’s not enough anymore, right? We have to hit the enrollment goal. We also have to make sure that we have the staff here next year to hit that enrollment goal again, right?

And so, what are your some of thoughts on that paradox, right, where it’s like, “we’re doing everything we can and we’re getting the same result, but we’re getting the same result because of the things that we’re doing,” right? It’s a challenging, kind of, vicious cycle that we’re working into.

[00:12:46] John: Yeah,I agree, right? It is an absolute vicious cycle. I’m very familiar with the work that Teege has done. He and I go back, probably a little bit even longer than you and I, Gil. And we’ve talked about this a lot. And I think one of the pieces that we have to ensure is, ensure that we’re putting the right things in front of staff to be able to do their job effectively, right? Instead of making them have to comb through mounds and mounds of data, which is important, but that’s not going to be everyone’s skill set. I got interested in data, so I did that digging, but I had plenty of staff members at other institutions, and here, frankly, that don’t want to do that. That they want to just be engaging with the students.

And so, I think we have to recognize that, first and foremost, is, like, let’s lean into that skill set and that desire for those staff members that have it and lean away from it for those that don’t, right, and provide them the tools to quickly access that information but not make them have to like dig through and figure out how to get at that information.

The other piece is I think we have to think about search differently. And we’re not going to be able to continue to rely on ACT and SAT and these vendors who are providing these names forever, right? The shifting demographics are in front of us that we’re going to have to start thinking outside the box of how we engage with students.

So, there’s a few things that we’ve tried to work on here that I think can lead to some interesting pieces, right? We’re doing a lot of experimentation right now with digital marketing, digital advertising. There’s all sorts of different platforms that are popping up that allow us to look at students in a different fashion. And we’re trying to really get our heads around what could search look like if we’re not buying names, right? Which might be a little bit of a jarring thing for some people in my chairs to think about. But what does search look like if we don’t buy names? Can we do it? Can we achieve what we need to do?

So, I think the other thing that’s happening is, yeah, we’re up on apps. We’re up on admins. And we are here, too, and we’re flat on enrollments. That’s really, kind of, where we’re at right now. We’re doing really well on the retention side. We’ve increased a little bit on new students. But one of the reasons why we’re up in those first two categories but not in the third is because students are just applying to more institutions. All right, I think I saw something from Common App that said there’s 1.2 million students on their platform, but they have filled out over 7 million applications, right? Quick math says that every single one of those students is filling out at least 7 applications on average. And I would imagine that those who are filling it out on Common App are also filling out other applications that are not on Common App, right?

So, that means that, yeah, our apps are going to go up for sure. Our admins are going to go up for sure because we’re making it easier. We’re reducing barriers to allow students into the pipeline more, but of course, our enrollments are going to be flat because our yield is off and we’re casting potentially too wide of a net for students.

And that’s one of the things that, within my experience, I hear at WCTC have very small area to work in in terms of recruiting students. In fact, I joked for about the first year and a half, hey, we have to think inside of the box for search because our district lines are quite literally a box. And for those who are unfamiliar with community colleges, you typically have a certain geographic region you can work from because you have to play well with the system that you’re in, right? So, technically, we’re supposed to just recruit within our district bounds.

So, that means we have to be really tailored and specific with where we’re looking. But I think, institutionally, when you’re looking at, say, a school like Bellin College or another institution along those smaller private lines, is you’ve got to be working on getting the right students into your pipeline, right? Because if you can bring the right students and who are specifically interested in your institution, you can raise yield and really focus in on those students who are interested in your institution and are going to have a high propensity to enroll.

So, one of the pieces that I think we as an industry need to really think about is upending how we’re doing search to make sure that we are reaching the right students. And I have a theory that velocity for application, from application to enrollment or application deposit, whatever metric you’re going to utilize, can lead us into knowing who that right student is. So, we get about 40% of our applications in the months of June and July for a fall start, right? So, before classes are starting, I get most my apps, my busiest 2 months in the 2 months preceding the start of classes.

And what we see is those students have a high velocity through the process, and they have a high conversion rate because they’re really committed at that point, right? They’re making this decision later for whatever reason. Maybe their four-year plan fell through. Now, they’re finding us. Maybe they’re a returning adult who woke up and said, “Hey, instead of seeing Deadpool and Wolverine, I’m going to go and apply to college today.” And we have research that shows sometimes it is that level of a decision of, “Hey, I’ve decided I’m going to apply to college. If I don’t do this, I’m going to go see a movie, right?” It literally is that. And we’ve seen that in research that we’ve gotten from a partner vendor.

[00:17:45] Gil: I think that’s really interesting. First of all, there shouldn’t be a choice between seeing Deadpool and Wolverine and applying to college. You can do both. I give you permission, folks, to do both. But apply to college first, and then as your reward, go and see Deadpool and Wolverine.

[00:18:00] John: Correct.

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[00:18:44] Gil: I feel like, you know, one of the things you mentioned is about, like, the challenge is always we’re being told to do more with less. Well, what if we did less with less, right?

I was at a conference a number of years ago, the presenter, she prefaced her statement with, “This is going to be very controversial and you’re going to get mad at me, but you’re traveling too much,” right, is what she said to the… and this was pre-COVID, like, COVID wasn’t even thought of at this point, right? But it’s one of those things like, “No, we have to be traveling more. We have to have boots on the ground. We have to be in every high school.” I think being in every high school in your local market makes a lot of sense, right? Because you need to own your backyard. You need to have that just visibility. And it’s also the cheapest because it’s just, it’s your own market, right? You’re not paying for hotels. You’re not doing all this other crazy stuff. So, you can be a little bit more impactful. You can go in the spring and the fall. There’s opportunities there.

I think the other, like you mentioned, name purchasing is another one. I said this at the conference. I was just at it. I said to this group of small colleges, like, “I think you’re buying too many names.” And I think that’s a very unpopular opinion, particularly when you’re speaking at a conference run by a marketing agency that’s leading buying names. But I work there. So, whatever, but I think there’s a certain level of, you need to be more focused with the names that you’re buying.

And what I was speaking on was specifically things like direct admission. And direct admission, as a strategy, has its challenges, because the reality is, is that the best way that direct admission works is when it’s focused on your localized market and students within your surrounding area, because they already know your brand. They already have an affinity for it. They’re going to come to campus quicker. The velocity of their application through the process, it’s going to be faster anyway.

So, then it’s one of those chicken and egg scenarios where, would they have applied anyway? Did we have to do direct admission to these students? But at the end of the day, you’re removing a barrier and making it easier for the students so it does have the positive impacts. When you’re doing direct admission to every student in Wisconsin that has above a 3.2 GPA and above a 1100 SAT, that’s glorified search at that point. And it’s just a really expensive method of doing search because the keynote speaker at the conference I was at, Matt, was, from Princeton Review. They do their national survey on student stressors every year. I’ll put a link in the episode notes to Princeton Review’s survey students and parent fears in the college search process.

But one of the biggest drivers of their decision making is feeling a fit. Well, how do you facilitate feeling a fit? It’s by having a conversation with that student, sharing personalized information, tailored follow-up. That’s not a blind offer of admission to a student because they meet your standard minimum admission criteria. Just because, yeah, they will get admitted when they apply with that because you know they will. All of these things are now creating, we said this at the beginning, there’s this pressure to always do more and more and more, but we can’t keep stacking these things on top of each other because we don’t have unlimited budgets, we don’t have unlimited time, we don’t have unlimited mindshare, and we don’t have unlimited attention for students, right? And so, something’s got to give in this process. So, John, what is going to give? Help us.

[00:21:46] John: So, you want me to solve the problem?

[00:21:47] Gil: Solve the problems. That’s what we’re supposed to do here, all of higher ed’s problems.

[00:21:52] John: Perfect. I think what has to give, first off, the concept of direct admit does make me chuckle. I think there’s some ways that are going to be really well done, right? But it does make me chuckle a little bit because community colleges have been doing direct admit forever, right? We can walk into a high school and say, “You, Gil, can get into WCTC, right? We just got to find a way to place you, right? And by the way, we’ll give you multiple measures of which to do that, right? You can submit test scores. You can do this. You can do that, right? You can do all of these different things.” But I think what has to give is we have to make sure technology is working for us and not the other way around. We have to make sure that we are being really thoughtful with how we travel, right?

I remember there was a time at Alabama and us who were there look back at this point as, like, oh, my gosh, we did that, which was crazy. We were… you’re, kind of, given a charge to do 160 visits in the fall. That’s a lot. If you do the math, that is three months of four visits a day for all week, right? And one of the pieces that we did learn in that, though, a happy accident, was where our message was actually resonating, where our students actually were. And so, we’re able to really tailor that down from there and get to a point where we were really tailored to say doing the 80, 90 most impactful visits for that institution, right?

And so, I do think we have to look critically at how much we’re doing and if it’s getting left, right? And perhaps, one of the pieces that we need to shift in our mentality is not worrying just about RFTE, not just worrying about our net tuition revenue, but worrying about the college going rate in our communities, right? So, if we worry about that, specifically, if we all take this mindset of we’re a public good, right, and we’re going to serve our communities, we’re going to increase the college knowledge, and we’re going to increase the conversation around the fit of an institution and what that’s going to look like for students, right?

Because by doing that, even if students are going to apply to more institutions, they’re going to narrow that list down pretty quickly, right? Because they’re going to start to see, “Oh, yeah, this institution, not the best fit for me, right? This really isn’t going to be the best spot for me.”

So, I think one of the things it has to give is we have to shift our perception, right? Higher ed has become a commodity. It absolutely is a commodity now, right? Whether we want to accept it or not, that’s what we’ve done. But what we can do, the way we can adjust it, is if we flip our mindset and become really good partners with our local schools, not just in the sense of getting them to be a pipeline for us, but in the sense of helping alleviate some of the burden on school counselors, right, and providing them services that they wish they could do but they don’t have the time or resources or bandwidth to do, right. When they’re working with caseloads of on average 500 students, I think that was the most recent metric I saw, that we can not only elevate our own brands and our own institutions, but we can provide that resource to them so that students understand what that is.

So, I think we have to shift how we’re doing recruitment, too. And that is not only talking about our institutions, which we absolutely should do, but we need to also be providing something else of value in that process to students, right? And that’s going to be a win across the board, right? A rising tide raises all ships.

[00:25:12] Gil: Yeah, I think you hit a really good point there, you know, higher ed being a commodity, but it’s also, in many respects, a luxury brand, right?

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[00:26:15] Gil: That’s a weird spot to be in because it’s a commodity in a sense that there’s access to it across many different forms and places, but it’s a luxury brand, which specifically, when you’re talking about the four-year private institution, Ivy League and state, but yeah, honestly, state flagship publics, in a lot of ways, are, especially if you’re going out of state, a luxury brand. And so, we have a responsibility in this industry to get students in the right place that’s a right fit for them, which is not always going to be the flagship public and it’s not always going to be the super selective or highly rejective Ivy League institution, which are, I think I heard them called a hedge fund the other day, more than a college.

And so, I haven’t had someone from the Ivy League on it yet. I think that’s the guests I have on… you talked about earlier about not being divisive. I’m waiting for a call from one of them, but I feel like that’s the linchpin of the whole thing, right? And to take it back to the start of the conversation around the morale of the admissions team and the work that they’re doing, and I’ll steal from Teege and the book, is these people are not necessarily motivated by being revenue drivers for the institution. They’re motivated by, is the higher calling and the helping students get access to education.

This is my last aside and then I’ll ask you for a response, is, I was in the exhibit hall talking to my buddy, because you know the work I do outside of hosting FYI is I consult with ed tech companies on helping them with making sure they’re building the right products for colleges and universities with my big picture. My big picture is helping to make sure that they’re building things that schools actually need and will actually support student success, right? That’s my parameter for if I will work with a company or not, right?

And so, I was talking to a couple of different folks in the exhibit hall and we were all lamenting how slow change happens in higher education and how challenging it is when you have all these outside drivers, like the FAFSA. All they say is, like, “All you need to do is just do X and Y will be better.” And I said to one of those, like, you know what, though, what’s great about all of this is that if there’s any industry that’s worth putting up with this crap for and pushing people through and helping to make better, it’s higher education, right? If I’m a sales person at XYZ software platform over here, I could be selling used cars, right? And at the end of the day, you’re not changing the world selling used cars, right?

And so, I think we are in an industry that has an opportunity to change lives and improve lives for the better. And if we hold that as our true north and our why, then I think that helps us with, ideally, with that morale piece, but the outlier to it, and I’d love your thoughts, is that’s in the context of still respecting the team’s work-life balance, their effort and output, and, you know, their income and their livelihood. Because at the end of the day, they’re still humans that have families and lives of their own, right?

[00:29:10] John: Absolutely. And that’s one of the things that I’m proud of here, at least for the time being, is we don’t do a ton of weekend events, right? We don’t ask for a ton of that protected time, right? We do. We have our events, right? One of our marquee events runs from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. We’re out of there by 8:00 after cleanup and things like that. And then the event that we’re doing today, we’ll probably have staff here till 6:00 or 6:30, right? But that’s it. And we’re not asking for a ton on that weekend time because we do respect that, right? Like, I’ve got two kids, they’re four and two. So, I, I very concretely looked at my VP. And, luckily, she was very understanding. I was like, “I got to leave at a certain time each day so I’m home for dinner,” right?

And that’s… the fact of the matter is every single person on my staff, whether they have children or not, there’s something that they want to get home and do, right? So, at the end of the day, we all love this mission, we all love the work, but it’s not also our sole encompassing motivation, right? And so, we have to make sure we’re allowing for that, giving time back when possible, right? I looked at some of the members of my team last week, and I said, “You guys got to take your time back, right? You were here till 6:30 last night. You’re going to be here till 6:30 next week. You got to take some of that time back, right? Whether it’s today, whether it’s next week, whether it’s in September when things slow down just a titch, right? Like, make sure you’re taking this time back.”

And I do think that one of the pieces, you mentioned the higher calling and the mission of higher ed, and I love that. I do think we have to, as leaders, be very careful with that language so it doesn’t become admission tax, right? So, there is an admission tax that’s associated to our staff, because that’s part of it, right? And that’s a little bit of our philosophy of trying to provide a service through our recruitment team, where they’re going out and providing sessions on college fit, on financial preparedness, on a few things along those lines related to the college search. Because that’s the stuff that they like. They like being that counselor for students and elevating it, right?

I’ve been saying for a long time, we have to retain the counselor part of admission counselor, right? We have to retain that. And we have gotten a little bit of ways from that. And that’s what Teege speaks to, that’s what a few colleagues of mine and I always talk about, is putting the counselor back into the job, because at the end of the day, that’s what students need. They need an education-based approach. They need someone to walk alongside them to help them understand this process. We’ve done a really good job of making it seem like it’s complex, right? I’m going to say that one more time for everyone in the back, right? We have done a really good job of making an admissions process seem complex for the sake of prestige, for the sake of vanity or whatever it is, right? We’ve done a really good job of that.

And that doesn’t serve us. That doesn’t serve our industry. That doesn’t serve our students, right? So, if we are going to say that we are student-focused, we need to design our systems and our processes to be student-focused. And if we do have complex systems, like, for instance, my admission standards are governed by the state legislature in the state of Wisconsin, that makes things a little bit more challenging, right, to remove some barriers.

But what we can do is ensure that our staff is walking alongside students to help them navigate this process and understand it, right, and let them know what an SAI is, right? Because it’s new, and that’s a student aid index, right? Let them know what these things are, because we also know that, with the demographic shift, the largest growth is going to be in first-generation students. And they’re not going to understand what FAFSA means. They’re not going to understand what some of these are. And it’s not that they can’t learn it, they absolutely can, but we have to approach it from an educator’s mindset so that they can understand it more concretely.

[00:32:44] Gil: Yep, I’ll wrap up my thoughts and then I’ll let you have the last word, aside from when I thank everybody, ha, I get the last word. But what you mentioned about giving people their time back, that is part one, right? And I feel like there’s, from an output perspective, you get more by giving more sometimes. And I, I remember, this was years ago, when I was running the admission staff at a liberal arts private school in Connecticut, we would, you know, if you were going to be staying late, making phone calls, come in late and take the morning to do errands or just sleep in or whatever. If we’re going to have a Sunday open house, take a comp day on Thursday or the Friday the following week, because sometimes it’s tricky because it’s like, “I don’t want a random Wednesday. Like, what am I going to do on a random Wednesday because I gave up a Sunday, which is part of my weekend, right?” And so, you know, make it Friday or make it the following Monday or whatever it is. I think these are easy things that we can do. And sure, there might be HR rules and things you have to navigate around, but you can, for sure, figure that piece out.

I mean, we were lucky enough that the institution had just opened a new recreation center across the street from our admissions building, and they had free passes for staff to be able to use the recreation center. And, like, if we were staying late making calls, when the office closed at 4:30, we would go to the gym for an hour and then come back and make calls. And that way, we would… it’s like going running so you can eat and drink whatever you want.

[00:34:11] John: Exactly.

[00:34:11] Gil: We would go to the gym so that we could order pizza while we’re doing phone call nights, right? And, like, just that hour of blowing off steam before doing the extra work, thinking about how you balance that type of stuff for your staff is critical. And I think sometimes we just, like you said, like, we, we think, well, just because they’re mission-driven doesn’t mean they’re going to work unlimited for the mission. We got to make a balance.

The other is the counseling piece, like you mentioned as well, being a place where, you know, the high school visit from, in my opinion, has been broken for decades, right? The idea of a “counselor” walking into the guidance office and if and when they do meet with students, doing a 15-minute sales pitch about the school and then answering questions and handing out inquiry cards is not nearly as valuable and impactful as offering to run an essay writing workshop or offering to run an application workshop or advising and supporting students.

You’re going to get more students to come to one of those things because then the parents hear about them and say, “Oh, you need to go to that,” versus, “Oh, Waukesha is going to be there next Thursday. Oh, we can just go, we can go talk to them whenever we want, right?”

And I think there’s a value in adding value that we miss sometimes when we just, kind of, jump to the sales pitch side of things. People can find all the information they want about us. They don’t need our admissions counselor doing their pitch four times a day as they drive around to visit high schools. It needs a little bit more value-add than that.

[00:35:35] John: Yeah, and the biggest thing I’ll say is, if we authentically and recklessly care about our students, that’s going to be our competitive advantage, right? If we can do that piece better, that’s going to be our advantage. And also, we’re going to help students at that point know if we’re a good fit or not. And that’s going to reduce that problem where we have all these extra applications at the top of the funnel, right? It’s going to have a measurable impact on yield and persistence.

And I’ll tell a quick story to illustrate this. I was doing a coffee visit a number of years ago, and I was working with a family and we got to the conversation about cost. And I said, “Well, realistically, like, what are you thinking about that you can afford for college, right?” Because I was working for an institution that was a little bit more expensive and I wanted to make sure that it was going to be feasible for them. And they’re like, “Well, we thought we were going to get this scholarship, but we only got this one. And I really don’t think we can make that work.”

And I said, okay. So, I pushed the, literally pushed the new book and said, “Okay, let’s talk about some options, right? I know you’re interested in physical therapy. It’s clear to me from what you’re telling me that this institution might not be an option.” They were saying, “Yep, we’re feeling that.” I said, “Okay, so let’s not talk about this school. Let’s sit here and talk about what some options might be for you.” And I was able to give them a list of two or three different institutions, right, that they could look at inconceivably from what they told me about their budget, from what I knew about the student’s profile, right, what scholarships they might be able to get at that school, to achieve this dream of their student becoming a physical therapist. Because that’s not just four years of high school, right? That’s another three years to get a DPT, and then you have to sit for a national exam. So, there’s a lot more that goes into that.

And from that conversation, they were able to find an institution that worked well for them. And the next year, I had seven different families refer to that family telling them that they needed to come talk to me. Whether or not they’re going to enroll in my institution, they needed to come talk to me, right? Because I was willing to take that time, walk alongside the student and provide them sound advice, right, and be that counselor.

And the fact of the matter is, the more we can do that, the more we can care for our students, we’re going to have success. We’re also going to solve that problem of having too many students on the top of the funnel. Because we’re going to help them understand and see what is unique about our institution, what’s similar to other schools, and help them narrow down that, yep, this is a place I want to go.

[00:37:55] Gil: Absolutely. Well, John, I appreciate all of your input, your thoughts, your candor. This is one of the most insightful conversations we’ve had on the podcast. And I appreciate every minute you put into it. It’s always great to connect. For folks who want to get connected with you and continue this conversation, what are the best ways for them to do that?

[00:38:15] John: Yeah, best way would be to find me on LinkedIn. I’m John McGreal, out of greater Milwaukee, or they can email me at jmcgreal@wctc.edu.

[00:38:25] Gil: Awesome. Well, John, I appreciate your time, once again. And for our listeners, I appreciate you. We’ll put all the links to amazing stuff we talked about in the episode notes, and we will see you all next time on FYI. Bye-bye!

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