Power Ups: Overlapping Admissions Counselors and Classic Nintendo Games with Teege Mettille

This episode features author, Teege Metille, and discusses his new book titled The Admissions Counselor Malaise: Addressing the Staff Morale Crisis in College Admissions.

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Who is Teege Mettille?

Teege Mettille is a recognized leader in enrollment management. He is currently the Director of Enrollment Access at Enroll ML and author of the new book, “The Admissions Counselor Malaise: Addressing the staff morale crisis in college admissions.”

In this Episode

Teege Mettille, the Director of Enrollment Access at Enroll ML and author of the new book The Admissions Counselor Malaise: Addressing the staff morale crisis in college admissions, joins FYI host Gil Rogers to talk about all things admissions, but first Gil and Teege take a trip down Nintendo Memory Lane and dive into a fun discussion of games from their childhood. From Mario to Zelda, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Mike Tyson, the nostalgia hits several classic titles.

Then shifting gears, Teege and Gil tackle a much more sobering topic: the morale crisis plaguing admissions counselors. Teege offers a deep dive into how the pandemic didn’t cause, but really exacerbated longstanding issues already in the field. Gil and Teege scrutinize the mounting pressure on counselors to prioritize data management and revenue generation over their true calling—helping students find their educational path.

They also confront the complex dance between financial necessity and institutional mission in college admissions. Through Gil’s inspiring story of a student from Ohio achieving a PhD, he highlights the long-term impact of admissions work. Yet, also acknowledges the immediate pressures to meet net tuition revenue goals. Tune in to catch this thought-provoking conversation that blends nostalgia with a critical look at the current challenges facing admissions professionals.

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Episode Transcript

Power Ups: Overlapping Admissions Counselors and Classic Nintendo Games with Teege Mettille

Publishing Date: July 16, 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 a longtime colleague, as well as past FYI guest, Teege Mettille. Teege is the author of the new book, The Admissions Counselor Malaise: Addressing the staff morale crisis in college admissions. We talk about the book, as well as our favorite video games and a number of other topics. Let’s listen in.

Happy Friday!

[00:00:35] Teege: Happy Friday! Oh, my gosh! Oh, look at, look at that book on your back, on your bookshelf.

[00:00:42] Gil: And look! It’s not a virtual background. It’s real. Nice. My son’s downstairs playing on the Nintendo Wii, because we still have one of those. And he’s fighting with Mario Kart.

[00:00:56] Teege: Oh, man.

[00:00:57] Gil: So good

[00:00:57] Teege: And how old’s your son?

[00:01:00] Gil: He is nine.

[00:01:01] Teege: Nine. Okay. All right, Mario Kart is still a wild world.

[00:01:05] Gil: Yes, yes, it is. And I don’t play against them because I would destroy them every single time because I’m that good at Mario Kart. We have a Wii that, you know, used to be able to download old games on it and stuff. And we have original Super Mario Brothers and I beat it in, like, 12 minutes every time we play because I’m like, “Let me show you how to, let me show you… how it’s done, kid.” Like, the original Super Mario Brothers like…

[00:01:25] Teege: Don’t you know where the extra lives are?

[00:01:27] Gil: Exactly. Warp zones, coins, fire power, like, come on, kids, let’s get… And so, they’re always amazing. Of course, Super Mario three, I get to the last world and I’m, like, I forget how to beat this. I have

[00:01:39] Teege: Never got here before.

[00:01:40] Gil: Yeah. Legend of Zelda. We have Legend of Zelda on there. The original Legend of Zelda.

[00:01:45] Teege: Okay, yeah, yeah.

[00:01:46] Gil: That was fun, like, I, I never beat it as a kid and I looked up, there’s, like, a math guide on the internet of, like, what to do, get to every whatever. And it’s, like, that’s the way you do it. Is you just. That’s the only way to beat Legend of Zelda.

[00:02:04] Teege: The real question, Gil, is Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. Have you downloaded that?

[00:02:08] Gil: I don’t and you can’t download them anymore. I should have but, like, the Wii store is closed. Because it’s a Wii. I don’t make Wii games anymore.

[00:02:16] Teege: I went through that Gen X phase where I got the old original Nintendo and Super Nintendos right up here actually. And I had phase after I moved back to Milwaukee, like, I worked through Zelda. And I, at first I was like, “I’m not going to use that map.” And then after, like, four, five hours trying to find one screen, I was like, “Where’s that freaking map? I am not doing this.”

[00:02:37] Gil: Yep. Because it’s, like, and I still have the tab open on my phone. It’s saved as a, like, I haven’t bookmarked it. It’s literally just the tabs left open. Because I know I can just search for it on Google again. I don’t need to bookmark it. but it’s one of those, like, you know, it’s bulleted.

It’s, like, go right three squares, go up two, go left, one, burn the bush that’s on the right-hand side to get to a wizard, like, okay, because I would’ve known that.

[00:03:03] Teege: Remember how much time we spend burning bushes?

[00:03:06] Gil: Yeah.

[00:03:07] Teege: Leave the screen, come back, leave the screen, come back. And then when we found the blue candle and we could just burn incessantly? Yeah, we were not environmentalists in that.

[00:03:16] Gil: Can we start a new podcast where we just talk about ‘90s Nintendo games, like, forget the admissions counselor malaise, like, this is what people want to hear, right?

[00:03:26] Teege: If you want to pull a profession back from the deepest morale crisis it’s been in, The Legend of Zelda is not a bad place to start.

[00:03:35] Gil: No, it’s not. It’s not. How long do you wander around in The Legend of Zelda? Before you cheat on the map now, right, like, if you think about it, my daughter and I, we started at day one. Cause I pulled the Wii out of the attic and, like, plugged it in and, like, introduced video games to my children, which is a mistake in and of itself, but it’s also a lovely bonding experience for us.

And it was, like, legitimately when we went to Legend of Zelda, it had, like, the stored records from when we were playing it 10 years ago and gave up. And so, now it’s, like, when do we start, like, just start over? And so, we did, we started from start to finish. Original Link walking around and it probably took us, like, a week and a half, two weeks to beat the game because we would play it in chunks because I’m not going to beat it all in one sitting with her.

And then of course meet the final boss, which I would have never been able to do without cheating, like, no frigging way. We fought, we beat it. She jumps up. She goes to, like, tell mom about beating Zelda and she trips over one of her brother’s toys right into a table. And, like, that’s the experience.

That’s, like, the memory, like, “Oh, I tripped over Gil’s crack.” It’s like, why do I want to make a positive memory?

[00:04:43] Teege: That’s the way it goes.

[00:04:44] Gil: Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. So, number one, punch out. Any other, what’s your, is that your top video game? Or do you have another?

[00:04:54] Teege: I would say that’s the one most burned in my memory. From the ‘80s, of course, it’s Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. It’s the original Mario Brothers. And then there’s just something powerful about Mario Brothers, too. It’s not a fun game. It’s not good, but I just can’t quit it, you know,

[00:05:09] Gil: That introduced the, like, floating peach character, right, like, that was the memory of me of Mario 2 was, like, yeah, it wasn’t a great, like, you get to the end and it’s, like, Oh, by the way, it’s, kind of, like, the Marvel multiverse now, like, none of this matters because this game was a dream.

[00:05:25] Teege: This was all a dream.

[00:05:27] Gil: Mario three was, like, legit. that was the one that came with the Nintendo I got as a kid, like, you bought the Nintendo entertainment system, and I feel, like, I got a Nintendo, like, the month before super Nintendo came out. That’s how long it took us to get unintentional. It was like I got two out of three. This is great. And then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That game was legit. Swimming underwater and getting electrocuted by all the things and, like, you have to get, you have to turn off all, it was, oh, that was, and you cheat by switching your turtle halfway through.

It’s like, in what universe would that work? But it works in video games. So, that was a good game. That was a good game. X Men the arcade game too. That was a good one. The only reason that one is, like, top of mind is when NACAC was in Columbus a few years ago, more than a few years ago at this point, but a number of years ago when I

[00:06:20] Teege: I think seven, Gil.

[00:06:21] Gil: There was, ugh, we’ve been around long enough where we’re repeating cities now, so it’s, like, which time when you were in Houston?

Which time when you were in San Diego? But across the street from the convention center, there was a arcade bar that was, like, upstairs, and so long as you were either drinking a beer or eating pizza, you could play the video games, and there was no putting in quarters, you could just keep starting.

And that’s when I learned that, like, when there are no consequences in one of these games, then you can literally just fight Magneto.

[00:06:50] Teege: Renew, renew, renew.

[00:06:51] Gil: Removes the, you know, you have to have a stack of players and run out of those quarters and be proud of how far you’ve got, not just keep playing until you beat the game. That’s just not, It’s not fun. So, it was cool to say I finally beat X Men, the arcade game, at the ripe old age of, what, 33? But, it finally happened.

[00:07:11] Teege: Do you know what could be helpful for the because we have the Garkade in Milwaukee. It’s a old arcade. Everything’s on free play and you just pay an entrance fee and you can stay all day, right? But you’re right, there’s no stakes. But even if they just track, like, you beat the game, would have cost you 18 in quarters, right? Like, just track it for us. and then I’m in. then I feel invested again, because then I know, I want to know how much money did I save with this wristband, you know.

[00:07:35] Gil: That’s smart. And it probably would have cost me way more than 18 to beat X Men, the arcade game, quarter at a time. That was a long time. So, you wrote a book.

[00:07:46] Teege: I did.

[00:07:47] Gil: You did write a book. Tell us about the book.

[00:07:49] Teege: Well, the Admissions Counselor Malaise, Gil, I was so excited to, like, pull it together. It’s doing two things. It’s trying to conceptualize the challenge of staff morale in college admissions offices that has been so intractable since the pandemic. And what helped me understand it better, and this is what the book tries to do, is I linked it to,the challenge of 1950s suburban housewives. So, a natural connection to make between ‘50s suburban housewives. Was it June Cleaver? Was that her name? Beaver’s mother? Ms. Cleaver.

[00:08:22] Gil: Cleaver! There we go!

[00:08:24] Teege: And college admissions counselors. And what I try and, kind of, elucidate is the challenge of the staff morale crisis is not because of the pandemic. It’s just aligned with the timing of the pandemic.

But the actual challenge runs much deeper in how our profession has been changing over the course of a generation. And I use this rhetorical trick of touching back to, post World War II era Americana.

[00:08:50] Gil: I think you make a great point that a lot of this, we like to think of the world in pre pandemic and post pandemic right now, and one of these days that’ll stop, hopefully. But pre-pandemic, there were still overworked admissions counselors, challenged admissions counselors, dealing with being asked to do more with less, being asked to travel while also reading applications.

And I think what we did post COVID for a little while there is we added in. You can no longer take a nap in your car between high school visits because now you have to be responding to virtual chats and sessions and whatnot. took out that little bit of, I don’t want to say glamour, because sleeping in your car in a high school parking lot isn’t really glamorous.

But, it’s one of those, like, rites of passage type things that admissions officers, kind of, Take pride in of, how much they’re doing when they’re traveling and how and, kind of, fitting in of that little bit of balance. this is a total aside, but this is a tip, a travel tip for admissions counselors out there.

this fall if you’re heading out for your first year of travel. What I did one year because I would just wanted to see if I could do it is during my breaks in the afternoon between my visits and fares, I would find a local Barnes and Noble and I would go to that Barnes and Noble and I would find a book and I would pick up a book.

It was, like, the first Harry Potter book because I’d never read them because I’m a dork and so I would read it for the hour that I’m there, the 40 minutes that I’m there and then I have to leave to go to my next thing. The next town I’m in two days later, completely different Barnes and Noble, I would go to the Barnes and Noble, find the Harry Potter book.

Pick it up, keep reading it. And that’s how I, you read a whole book during travel season without having to buy the book. Now, some people go to things called libraries to do this kind of stuff, but there was a certain, like, rebel component of going to the Barnes and Noble and reading the book in the Starbucks area without, like, paying for it right now.

So, now, all these people are going to be, like, yeah, I’m dealing, got a copy state in a book in Trenton, New Jersey or something, but no, I was careful to treat that thing.

[00:10:38] Teege: Sticking with that admissions tip, host your coffee shop interviews at Barnes Noble so when the student no shows, you can keep thieving your

[00:10:46] Gil: I prefer the term liberating the book, not thieving the book, but thank you.

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[00:11:44] Gil: so, One of the things I know we’ve talked about a lot over the years is that challenge of balance for admissions counselors and, I think we live in a world where, again, pre COVID, people were in, you know,pre COVID, there was a lot more, kind of, face to face interaction with people, in person type of things.

And obviously COVID has a, an isolated thing with, like, isolation was a big part of it. And now, with the advent of technology and CRM platforms and, the more and more of a look at data as a driver of decisions, we’re putting, kind of, these people, between a rock and a hard place sometimes, right?

We’re asking them to do things that maybe they’re not hardwired to do. take the Enneagram personalities test or take whatever my Briggs, or whatever it is. Right, you’re asking people to be data people, and they’re not always data people. They like to do the work.

So, how do admissions counselors today adapt to that expectation? Oh, but also how do you think leaders need to make adjustments to, kind of, accommodate for that misalignment?

[00:12:48] Teege: Yeah, Gil, that’s great. And there were two questions there. How do admissions counselors adapt and what can admissions leaders do? The first part, how do admissions counselors adapt? not well is the answer, right? That’s our challenge. It’s just the staff morale crisis continues and while All of society had a reckoning with our relationship to work after the pandemic.

The problem is persisting uniquely, not just on college campuses, but in admissions offices a different way. I do an annual survey of professionals out there. The morale crisis, we’re getting used to it, but it’s not getting better. The numbers haven’t changed in the last year significantly. But admissions counselors, as more and more of their time is spent chasing through data spreadsheets.

In search of revenue for the institution, they’re getting more and more removed from what gives them life and power, like, what they love about this job, which is seeing the impact they’re making on students’ lives. It’s the intrinsic reward that drew them to this work.so how are admissions counselors adapting?

They’re struggling. They’re unhappy. Many of them are leaving, looking for different ways to, kind of, fill that need. Well, what admissions leaders can do, there’s two things, right? I really think it is an either/or situation. You either find ways to alleviate the data diving you’re asking every admissions counselor to do.

I don’t think every admissions counselor needs to know how to do a simple join, right? I don’t think we all need to know how to really dig into the tables behind your CRM data structure. Someone does, but the admissions counselors don’t. So, you either need to find ways to take that off of their daily to do list, or. You need to hire different people. You need to hire data minded people if you’ve created a data minded job. The challenge I think we have, and what I was trying to draw attention to in the book, is the job has slowly changed. 20 years ago, when NACAC was in Milwaukee, right here in Wisconsin, Admissions counselors weren’t spending this much time on spreadsheets and in CRM data, and now they are.

but there was never a moment where we went from not doing it to doing it this much. It has just been a slow evolution that I think, kind of, snuck up on us. The pandemic didn’t cause the problem. The pandemic helped us realize what was wrong, kind of, put some attention to it. We’ve been trying to solve the problems as though the pandemic was the cause. The pandemic wasn’t the cause. That was just the moment of realization.

[00:15:04] Gil: Yeah, I think that’s a great point, and to, kind of, put a bow on the pandemic component to all this, right, is All I did was compound the issue and accelerate the issue in a lot of ways. So, it felt, like, overnight we went from being in front of people all the time to being data jockeys, right.

Or spreadsheet jockeys, but realistically that isn’t the case. I mean, again, I remember as an admissions counselor back in the day, we started adding things, like, social media. We started really implementing CRM platforms in earnest, right. This was pretty slate, and even CRM platforms that are as “impactful” as Slate still take management and support and coding and effort, right? And so, you’re really talking about a training issue, but you don’t, again, it, kind of, goes to that point where do you force people to learn new skills for a job that they didn’t, Really want or need to make adjustments to your hiring practices.

And I think we’re in an interesting time now, right? Where you have this great resignation, and you have aftermath of that, at that, kind of, middle and junior level for many institutions. Cause I talked to so many schools, they’re, like, yeah, we’ve had this position open for a year and a half and they keep the position open, but.

Realistically, we’re not understanding the why behind why it’s not being filled. But then on top of that, and we were talking, mentioned earlier about what leadership can and should do, there’s a lot of turnover at the leadership level as well, right? President to VP of Enrollment to Director of Admission, those leadership roles are having changes also.

So, there’s I don’t want to call it a crisis, but it’s almost crisis of the vacuum of leadership that institutions are facing right now. And so, aside from reading your book, what are things that we should do? But what are some things that tactical, tangible, actionable steps that people should take to really address this issue?

[00:17:04] Teege: Yeah, this is a great question, and I put a lot of thought into it, because I knew, any of us can identify, like, look at this problem over here, but inevitably the next thing is, like, okay, but so what, right? What do we do? And I think, We have to find ways to address the daily tasks we’re asking admissions counselors to do, which we’ve talked a little bit about that problem.

But the other thing we need to do is return the sense of purpose to the position. The turnover at the president, the VP, and even the director level, I think has also created a, a crisis in, intentionality and purpose for this work. And here’s what I mean. Because the normal process, or the historically normal, right, the traditional process of elevation to leadership roles, was accelerated with this turnover, things changed a little bit. As colleges are becoming more and more desperate for tuition revenue, and that was a significant change during the pandemic. Before those federal relief programs came in, it was existential for many institutions once they started sending students away and housing revenue back, etc. So, get where it happened, but that was a moment of sudden change, where all of a sudden, institutional revenue needs were much more critical than they had been even six months prior.

And the new leadership, kind of, class, I think, has down some of the historical berms or barriers between Institutional revenue needs and admissions counselors, right? I think the VPs of the past and even directors would, kind of, bear that burden, the, like, net revenue crunch, so that admissions counselors didn’t need to think of students as net revenue dollar amounts.

You know, in the work that I do in a couple different ways, Gil, I’ve had one director ask if we can show admissions counselors the net revenue for each individual student in their CRM, right, like, put the dollar amount that this would bring to the institution, which It’s a terrible idea if you ask me, right?

Like, I think that is the worst thing. And because not only did we hire admissions counselors who are energetic, effervescent people, and set them in front of spreadsheets. We’ve also hired folks who are mission driven. They’re not here to meet sales quotas or revenue targets. They’re here to help students.

And the two problems admissions leaders need to solve, based on your question, which I think I got to in a roundabout way, is how do you change the daily tasks and return the purpose to admissions counselors? You change the task by taking that data mining process off of an admissions counselor’s caseload and give that to someone who is really good at it and likes it.

They will be happier, your counselors will be happier, and the outcomes will be better, right? That’s one thing. And there’s a number of ways to do that. There’s vendors, there’s AI, there’s all sorts of, kind of, processes you can get there, but you can’t ask admissions counselors to be just as good at spreadsheets and CRM data tables as they are working individually with families, because those are different skill sets.

The other thing is admissions leaders need to find ways to celebrate moments of success with admissions counselors that have nothing to do with numbers. Nothing to do with revenue, nothing to do with targets. So, the way I ask it is, think for an admissions leader, think of any of your admissions counselors.

Can they be wildly successful this year if they come in 20 percent under their recruiting goal? can they still have done great work? And if your answer is no, then you’ve got to think differently about who you’re hiring because you’re probably not lining with the, kind of, ethical underpinning of most traditional admissions counselors.

They’re not waking up every day thinking, how can I improve the budgeting situation for the political science department over the next three fiscal years, right? They’re waking up every day thinking of students that they get to help and admissions directors there’s some superficial things they can do, starting every one on one by asking about some really cool students they’ve been recruiting or touching back to students who are already there that counselor recruited two years ago. But just finding ways to be sure that the metric of success isn’t only money And student numbers.

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[00:21:48] Gil: I love the point you made about sales quotas and putting the dollar sign in front. Because if it’s a salesperson at a for profit company, they’re probably motivated by that indicator because salespeople like to see, where can I make my quota and get my commissions the fastest, right? But that’s, that is not how admissions offices are compensated, or otherwise you would be hiring salespeople to work in these roles. the challenge is that when we start using vernacular, like, Leeds, and we start looking at things, like, conversion metrics, you’re ultimately creating a sales job without those incentives of a salesperson.

And there are many admissions counselors that get into sales jobs because They ultimately grow into understanding, Oh, I’m good at articulating the value. I’m good at communicating with other people. And why not get a job where I can get more money by doing well for the company, right?

Because that’s by nature of how sales roles are organized. But made a really good point that in admissions, The people that are in these not sales roles are more driven by doing good work, connecting with students, helping them to understand opportunity in front of them. And so, there’s got to be this change in motivation, and I really, like, the suggestion around, Talking for once about something other than the money for the institution.

What about the impact that we’re making? I had a student that enrolled from Ohio one year. It was the one student that enrolled from Ohio and I had gone there three years in a row, so you can ask tons of questions about the ROI on that investment over time and obviously, about that student ended up graduating, ended up being a tour guide and being student ambassador and going on to a PhD program in her field, right? And so, and the fact that now I’m old enough that I know that that student is now a doctor when I recruited her that makes me feel good and bad at the same time. But it’s having that story element.

The hardest part though, and this is where I’ll put my guy that works with ed tech companies and I know salespeople that get so frustrated with Admissions counselors and admissions leaders that are too busy to calls and too busy to change what they’re doing is you do have that pushback of you put in all that effort for that one story about one kid from Ohio.

How many times did I go Ohio and eat bad airport food just to get this one student? Was it worth it? And long tail, it was totally worth it from an impact perspective, but. In the immediate term, when we are focused on net tuition revenue and ROI on our investments, budget, and we don’t have unlimited resources or time, you’ve got to balance that, right?

And so, I think that’s the hardest challenge for me is, how do institutions, kind of, balance that because at the end of the day, you need the net tuition revenue to keep the doors open and pay everybody’s paychecks and pay lights, right? So, how do we really create that sense of balance?

[00:24:49] Teege: There is a sense of balance and admissions counselors need to give a little bit on this one. So, I’ll say that because Gil, what you just said was admissions counselors aren’t motivated by increasing that revenue. I would actually contend, I think sometimes they recoil at the idea that the more revenue a student is bringing, the more value they bring to the institution, right?

Like, that does not sit well. with them. and I think we do need to help them move a little bit on that particular front. But admissions leaders, I would say this, does it matter, like, you have your enrollment targets, does it matter to you who fills those seats or just that you fill the seats?

Because I feel like, professionally, we’ve gotten to the point where, especially the demographic cliff is coming, things are tightening up post pandemic. It is a situation of just fill the seats, and then we’ll figure out the rest from there. And that is not how admissions counselors think. To them, it does matter who is filling the seats.

They don’t think everybody should come to the institution. They think there are a lot of students that would come, that wouldn’t be well served and should go somewhere else. and they worry when they see their admissions leaders focusing and talking about revenue and metrics too much, that is driving the decisions more than students that they can help.

So, how to achieve that balance? There’s a quote, I forget his name, but a former president of Quaker Oats. So, this is an oatmeal reference, but back in the seventies, he said, and I’m paraphrasing only because I don’t have the quote directly in front of me. He said, a corporation needs profit the same way humans need food to live.

Of course, it’s necessary, but you would hope your purpose is bigger than that. Your purpose of living is not to eat, right? Your purpose of being a corporation is not to make profit. You need it to live. But hopefully you’re doing something different. And admissions counselors are living, they’re spending their time in the broader purpose, the bigger purpose.

And we will do better by our admissions counselors if they see their leaders reflecting that purpose back in all aspects of their job as well. The measuring of success, the ongoing monitoring, admissions leaders, the whiteboard of numbers on the wall behind them. That’s good. We do need to watch it.

And admissions counselors are not naive to the fact that we have to hit. Revenue targets or the institution finds itself in a challenging situation. We have a bigger purpose than just that. And I think we’ve not focused on that as much as we used to. And I think that’s what’s causing a lot of the challenges with our staff.

[00:27:13] Gil: I think I could not have put that any better myself, and I feel, like, that is the lasting lesson that, I think we need to impart to our listeners and to the community as a whole. So, Teege, I appreciate you spending the time to be here today, all the work of putting the book together for our YouTube viewers.

I have it awesomely displayed in my background. The book is The Admissions Counselor Malaise. Teege, I appreciate you being here and we will see you next time on FYI.

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