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The HigherEdJobs Podcast is dedicated to helping higher education professionals find fulfillment in their careers and be the change agents that higher education needs in today's world. Join hosts Andrew Hibel and Kelly Cherwin, along with guest experts, as they examine job search strategies and break down the latest news and trends in higher education.
Andy Hibel 0:03
Welcome to the High Ed Jobs podcast. I'm Andy, Hibel the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEd Jobs.
Kelly Cherwin 0:09
And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy. So our topic today is intended to speak to those campus staff members, faculty, administrators and others who may not directly work in admissions or enrollment management. We are delighted to be joined by Brennan Barnard and Rick Clark. Brennan is the director of College Counseling and External Affairs at Con School Network California. He's also the college admissions program advisor with the Making Caring Common, a project the Harvard Graduate School of Education and director of College Counseling for the College Guidance Network. Rick is the assistant Vice provost and executive Director of undergraduate admission at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Thanks, guys, for joining us today.
Rick Clark 0:46
Thanks for having us.
Brennan Barnard 0:46
For having us.
Kelly Cherwin 0:47
So before we get into the meat of the topic today, I want to highlight, in addition to your role, as I just mentioned, you are also the co-authors of the book The Truth About College Admissions A Family Guide to Getting In and Staying Together, which is published by Johns Hopkins.
MW 1:02
Thanks for joining us for the conclusion of our sit down with Richard Clarke and Brennan Bernard.
Andy Hibel 1:08
It seems like asking an obvious question, but do people really like having to click again on Amazon to reveal the price, or do they just want to see the price on the first screen? I mean, are there students and families who who are working through this process, or are. Ricker their admissions professionals who love this? How do people like this? And maybe more importantly. Why are we here?
Rick Clark 1:34
And that is a huge question. Honestly. I mean, your metaphor I started going so many ways in my head. First of all, of course, I was doing Forrest Gump with Life is like a box of chocolates. And maybe, you know, college is like a box of chocolates. The other thing is you don't even have to leave the store, right? Because you go up to the register and pay $42 and the guy behind you all of a sudden gets charged 78 and the person behind them is 31. Like, this is part of why there's such criticism and skepticism from the left and the right and everything in between about college and American higher education. Right. Because there is almost zero price transparency. And that any time we feel like there's like some kind of veil over things, we get skeptical rightly so. And that is only adding to the consternation around the crosshairs that higher education kind of currently finds itself in.
Brennan Barnard 2:28
Well, and when you're senior, right. When you're senior is offered a quote unquote, merit scholarship, they feel special, don't they? When all of a sudden your senior got $30,000 taken off their tuition aid because of them being a strong applicant? Man, that's a pretty powerful. Come on.
Andy Hibel 2:49
Absolutely. And going to kind of where we started with this, that is a great thing to validate that their first 18 years was successful and that that that that does help at that point. No ifs, ands or buts.
Kelly Cherwin 3:01
Had.
Brennan Barnard 3:02
Well and and I just want to I want to put a pin in the athletic piece. You mentioned athletics and that's just a whole nother. I mean we could we could do a whole nother show on that. And I mean I mean, when you look at back to the early decision thing, when you look at some schools, some small liberal arts colleges, especially, that are taking a third of their class who are recruiting athletes, it changes the dynamic or the Ivy League schools that are taking, you know, a fifth of their class or recruited athletes. Right. Like that's that's significant and it changes the dynamic of admission.
Andy Hibel 3:36
Yeah. And I have a little bit of a bias growing up in Appleton, Wisconsin, for my high school years. You had Lawrence there and Lawrence Lawrence is a great school. Wonderful school. Appleton's a special place, but I've never really seen Lawrence Athletics be something that there's the talk of the town. But you go on campus on a Saturday, there's a football game, but it's not necessarily about the athletics. To clarify my reflection, but your spot on as you look at the schools, so many kids I know no Kelly's son is going to participate in athletics when when he starts on campus next fall. It's a big part of that experience is a big part of the high school experience. And it's interesting how colleges have found ways to meet the demand for it.
Brennan Barnard 4:21
Yeah, my daughter recruited athletes. Same thing.
Rick Clark 4:23
Yeah. I mean, this is like Pandora's box athletics, right? Yeah, because, I mean, first of all, it's a whole nother is a whole separate admission process. And it's funny because while so much of admission kind of gets criticized and there's all this kind of suspicion of bias or, you know, what's really happening behind the scenes, most people actually somehow seem okay with the athletic stuff. I mean, like I've gone into pretty big public high schools where you might have 230 kids applying to Georgia Tech or the University of Georgia. And like everybody kind of knows that, you know, there could be a Division one blue chip prospect, who now, of course, is going to make possibly $1,000,000 a year or two N. I L we're not even getting into that whole conversation. Right. And they're sort of fine with knowing like that's going to be a whole different admission process and the way that kid how somehow signed as a junior. Right. And they've all known for a year this kid is going to X school or Y a school you know is is its own thing but that is impacting schools right now. I'll tell you the other interesting thing that's happening is the transfer portal. You know, because you take a Lawrence, I mean, I don't know, but the fact that, you know, enrollment at some of these places around the country is is so valuable to your point. They're not all just sort of an abundance of riches. And now these kids, if they're proving themselves at a division three level or a lower, you know, a mid-tier division, one level, they're getting actually pulled in by, you know, some of these larger schools and quote better sports programs that actually is also having an impact on enrollment because many of those schools have never been in the transfer game themselves. So their retention is actually getting kind of picked off, even ones and twos. Right. That actually is also having implications for them. And they don't have a really good mechanism for replacing it. They're not pulling out of the transfer portal, nor do they necessarily typically enroll transfer students. And so this whole again, it is an ecosystem. And maybe if there's nothing else that people take away from this from a faculty member or an administrator is like nothing is happening in a vacuum. Every single piece that we've been discussing is impacted by your competitor set.
Brennan Barnard 6:40
And I'll just add that, I mean, that's the reason that Rick's title is enrollment management and not admission. Right. I mean, it is not just I think that's what's most important for folks across campus to know that it's not just bringing kids in, it's the retention piece, it's the student success piece. It's the the whole ecosystem, the whole cradle to grave approach of a college degree.
Kelly Cherwin 7:04
Actually, that sets the stage for the question I have regarding the staff and faculty and asking, Rick, you mentioned that, you know, a lot of them come to you with questions and they might have assumptions. So I guess in this would be a whole episode. But are there certain myths that you've encountered or questions that you received? You're like, Oh my gosh, that that's so not right. Like, you know, kind of assuming that it just they made you made the decision because you have to check this box and that's it. So either one of you guys want to talk to any, any myths.
Rick Clark 7:35
I'm happy to take a crack at maybe one or two. One of the things that is sort of a running joke that you'll usually hear at like bars, at conferences, you know, and hotels when admission enrollment people get together is like, oh, how many faculty have come up to you this year and suggest maybe you should go visit high schools like we do that, you know? But so I don't know if it's like, you know, I wouldn't call that a myth necessarily, but it is sort of a funny misconception. Like um, yeah that is a good place.
Brennan Barnard 8:06
What a great
Rick Clark 8:07
We do do that. Yeah. Oh, I'll tell you something that I guess is a a myth or a misconception or maybe a misunderstanding, you know, is with faculty and others on campus who understandably this isn't the world and are doing their thing and doing it well. And only occasionally do they think about admission enrollment. Someone like myself, you know, an AVP, a VP of an enrollment or a director or dean of admission. Like we we don't set the enrollment goals. They are set for us. And so oftentimes, you know, you might be in a conversation with someone who's who's wanting either more or less of something, right? They're wanting more of this major or wondering, you know, why we have so many kids from this state or not from this other place. Right. These decisions, again, are not made in a vacuum. It's not like the admissions director said, you know what? I think we'll go for 280 kids this year and half of them will not be from our state. All of that, all those institutional priorities are set. You know, it varies of the school, right? At some schools that's going to be a board, at some schools that's going to be like an executive leadership team. But I can tell you with 100% certainty, it's never just like one guy, you know, sitting, sitting in the admissions office going, oh, we're going to just like not enroll as many economics students this year, you know? And so I think that that's important for people to understand is like it is a high level conversation that is taking into consideration the mission of the institution and then also certainly the sort of fiscal reality of what they're trying to accomplish. And and that is always a, um, joint decision and never something that's just like made in isolation.
Brennan Barnard 9:48
I would add to that that that Rick and his colleagues, I wouldn't want the job to be totally honest. Right. I mean, like they're in the hot seat and they they're getting it from all different directions. The mandate is coming down from boards and presidents and things like that. And they're hearing it from college counselors, high school counselors, parents. They can do no right in a lot of ways. I mean, they can't serve everyone. And so I think that those pressures I think are real and they are dealing with with trying to thread the needle. And it's not not easy.
MW 10:27
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Andy Hibel 11:05
From an editorial perspective we here at higher ed jobs were kind of surprised back in 2023 that our single most popular piece of editorial content by far was related to the changes in the FAFSA for this year. What do folks on campus. need to know about the FAFSA in general and how it's changing. And I guess the fact that it's delayed this year, what are the pertinent informations that when somebody asks them about, they need to know?
Rick Clark 11:31
Well, I mean, I think that the latter part of your question is probably the biggest thing. I was literally right before this conversation in a meeting with our financial aid folks, because as many people know, I think it's been pretty well chronicled and discussed, you know, with the federal government making changes to theoretically simplify the FAFSA. Not only were there like big changes made to formatting and questions and streamlining, but also there was a huge delay on and build up of a system, a new kind of system for this. Many were joking that it was going to be released on December 32nd and it was pretty darn close to that. I mean, we were talking about the very day the promise was it would be available in 2023. And so the letter of the law, it was, but it was closed. I mean, at the very end
Brennan Barnard 12:19
And it was still only a soft launch. It wasn't really the final product either.
Rick Clark 12:23
True. And so a level set like that's normally I mean, that's two months over two months later and so a lot of what we've been talking about today is competition and the need of colleges to be able to give compelling offers to students. Some of that is when and through what programming pathway like early decision, etc.. Some of that is how much and an acknowledgment of who you're competing with. The delay of the FAFSA is a huge deal, and it's really a huge deal for pretty much every school in the country, because what it means is that right now, while many schools would already have that information and be packaging students and getting good financial aid offers on the table to, you know, make their case that this is the place the student should pick, we're talking about a lot of that not being received. We were optimistic it might be late January. Now we're looking at possibly even early to mid February to where we're really able to actually receive it. It's one thing for a kid to be able to do it and submit it. It's a whole different thing for the federal government then to transmit it and transfer it to the institutions. Right. So what Brennan was talking about earlier about front loading some of the admissions side of things through early decision, this is going to be a crazy and never seen before. Compacting of the back end where kids aren't getting as much information, families aren't getting as much information until much later in the process, and then it's going to be coming in a huge kind of time crunch wave on this. And it's a big deal for colleges because they either have to take a lot of risk by putting out money. They don't necessarily know that the student might qualify for or waiting and then thinking, what is the rest of my competition going to be doing, possibly with some preliminary packaging, etc.? And all of that is going to be happening with a lack of information and a very tight time frame. This is FUBAR, to say the absolute least.
Brennan Barnard 14:20
Right? Like students have weird documents earlier, students have made binding admission decisions and missed deadlines to apply to other schools because they were in some early decision and might not know whether they can truly afford that. And then I would just add in terms of kind of the human resources aspect of things, what I'm hearing and Rick and I were at a conference recently together, and what we're hearing there is there are a lot of offices and schools across the country that are looking for financial aid leaders because it's just not a job that a lot of people want right now. I mean, why would you take that job in a year like this? And so there's a huge crunch there, too. So it's going to be it's going to be an interesting few months.
Rick Clark 15:04
Yeah.
Kelly Cherwin 15:05
Like college presidents and admissions officers. Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Clark 15:08
Right. Yes. Yes, for sure. You know what we were talking earlier about? Again, faculty administrators listening and, you know, how can they support the work of their enrollment management teams? And, you know, this year in particular are based on a lot of what we're talking about, you know, their involvement in the yield efforts when they're called upon by admission enrollment management. I would argue this year, maybe more than ever, is going to be so critical because once that student does have the offer of admission, once they do have the financial package and again, as we said earlier, in expectation of the years to come yield this year is really just so critical. I can't underscore that enough. And so I had written down before this like, what do we need from campus partners? Three "S"es right Stories. You know, the more that we can tell the stories of our students that we get from faculty and other administrators on the ground around campus, this huge Support, especially this year, you know, and just being involved and then Synergy, you know, looking for opportunities where, you know, we can work together to do recruitment, work together, to do work yield together, to tell the bigger story. You know, I think that's really ultimately, you know, as an enrollment leader on a college campus, like what I am looking to my campus for
Brennan Barnard 16:21
And again, yield being getting students who have been admitted to attend. Right. There's there's offers that have been extended. Getting those students to choose your school
Kelly Cherwin 16:31
and stay.
Rick Clark 16:33
Yes.
Andy Hibel 16:34
We're not going to put you guys on the line to start talking about college rankings and how to solve them. We actually had Colin Diver who wrote Breaking Ranks on a previous podcast. Actually, I think it was a a double episode. It was it was fantastic. And if you're interested, learn there. But I think it really goes to that question about admissions priorities and putting these classes together. Obviously, we know now it's not the enrollment management folks who are who are setting the goals. They're the ones who are who are tasked with implementing them. But how much within those goals are the thoughts about rankings creeping in to what institutions want to do?
Rick Clark 17:12
Mm hmm. Brendan, this is your soapbox. So you are like,
Brennan Barnard 17:16
Man, I mean, I could go on forever. I mean, I have been really critical in my writing and in my speaking about the rankings and not only from the, the kind of damage it does to students and communities and and the whole kind of educational process, but just the the kind of industrialization of education. And there's an article recently in The New York Times around the badging from U.S. News and World Report and just how much money colleges are paying to be able to use their official badges from U.S. News to say, you know, where the 29th school and entrepreneurship or whatever it is and it's just the amount of money that's being thrown around and the amount of kind of perceived credibility or value that's being given to this is just just in my opinion, just insane.
Rick Clark 18:10
We talk extensively in the book about rankings, and really we use them to say to students, never take one number at face value. Ask the question beyond the the number. And I think that's just so critical, right? Because, you know, I look at Georgia Tech, I mean, we have we've gone all over the map. I mean, there was there was a year for many years, we were ranked number seven for public universities in the country. One year we went to five. And I think the very next year we went to 15. And you're thinking, all right, you know, if a student is drawing like a draconian line of some kind, a ten or 50 or 100, or you pick your number and just ruling schools out, I mean, I think it's just really short selling. Like, as we said earlier, this willingness to look in themselves and who they are and kind of what they're what they're looking for and what might be a good match. And and the truth is that, you know, schools are not all of them, but I would say the vast majority of schools are as a friend of mine who works in an institutional research office around the country, says forensic about the methodology and how they can utilize their own statistics in order to move up in that methodology. So as an example, you know, looking at faculty student ratios, as I'm looking at alumni giving, looking at well, obviously the reputations and rankings piece and then all the ways that, you know, schools. I mean, every day I receive something from another school because I'm technically a voter in the U.S. News and World Report ranking system, you know trying to influence your opinion of those particular schools and so for, whether it be a very measurable, quantifiable piece of the methodology or the more qualitative side of the opinion and reputation perception side of things. I think his description of schools getting forensic about essentially manipulating the methodology of is is very accurate and far more so than most schools would probably care to admit.
Brennan Barnard 20:17
Well, it drives I mean, just to bring this whole conversation to full circle, it drives policy and practice across the institution in admission and across the institution. I mean, it's it's the reason that some schools lean heavier into early decision, right? Because it increases their yield and that's going to increase their rankings. And when you start tracing, like Rick said, the methodology, when you start tracing that back, it is informing policy in ways that I think is really harmful.
Rick Clark 20:48
Yeah, And what's unfortunate because students and parents are oftentimes the one who too are looking at these, buying these, buying into these and using these. So they don't know, of course, all of that right. Kind of underbelly of what's really happening. And, you know, I think that that's really unfortunate. I mean, because at the end of the day, like even something like counting applications is not uniform. Some schools, even if you don't have a complete application right, you'll still count it because you submitted some sort of what we would call like a snap app quick app or like the part one, part A right. And then they'll also, you know, who they count as an admit. You know, you have schools who when they get to the waitlist right then intentionally short their class. Right. They know their predictive yield models from from history. They intentionally short their class so they can go one for one off the waitlist. And therefore that's you know, they put out fewer admits and their yield goes up. Well, not all schools are playing that game and doing that. And that, again, impact where schools might fall out in the rankings. So, you know by perception that is ranking correlates or admit rate correlates to quality and then, you know, when you really understand what's happening and how is not happening uniformly across the country, you realize like how ill informed and how unfortunate it is that students or families would make that determination. And we hear that all the time. I mean, I've been told before my parents said I can only apply to a school that's in the top ten or I'm making this decision because this school is ranked higher, right. Period. And then knowing the back end of that is just maddening. But as maddening is about as maddening as Brennan gets about it. But I'm getting there.
Kelly Cherwin 22:33
You know, I understand that a number is is there's way more than just a number. And I think what we've had the conversation our house is fit the word fit. So yeah
Andy Hibel 22:44
so guys we we wish we had another chunk of time to spend with you. I think we could have talked for a good portion of the rest of the day. But if one of our listeners wants to have an even larger dose of what we've just experienced with you guys, where can they find you out on the Internet and what's the best way to reach you or listen to you or see you published?
Brennan Barnard 23:06
I guess I would start with just pointing them to our website, which is the "truthaboutcollegeadmission.com" and that has a link to our podcast on there and our speaking engagements and to our book and our Twitter. I'm at Barnard, Brennan and Rick is at Clark, the number two college. So those are some good ways to get in touch with us. Great.
Rick Clark 23:27
I also write a blog here at Georgia Tech. So if people were to go just to the admission page, they could find our blog. I'm the primary writer, but we have plenty of guest writers as well.
Brennan Barnard 23:39
And if you go to Forbes, I'm a contributing writer for Forbes, so if you just go to Forbes and type in Brennan Barnard, you'll get my articles.
Andy Hibel 23:47
Thank you guys both so much. Really appreciate you being here. And if you have any questions or thoughts or anything else about this podcast, please feel free to reach out to us @higheredcareers on Twitter or please feel free to email us at podcast@higheredjobs.com. Maybe we'll get some questions from some listeners before them. Do you guys and see if you have some additional fantastic answers for us.
Rick Clark 24:12
So thanks for having us. Yeah, forward those right to Rick Clark.
All 24:16
(Murmuring talk fading out)