Speaker 1 (00:04): In terms of opportunity for vocational schools. I think this, this area has been a frustrating one and it's historically been the, probably the one place we get our lunch handed to us by traditional ed, you know, the four year programs, um, high school recruiting has, I think, been a perceived as an for of us, but we haven't been able to actualize a, a, a program that's really effective and could be counted on as a source of enrollments. So that's why we're very excited to have a guest today. Lee Doubleday, Leah's the director of operations at the imagine America foundation. And Leah's an expert in and high school recruiting Lee, welcome to the enrollment resources webinar. Speaker 2 (00:51): Yeah, thanks for having me Shane. Speaker 1 (00:53): So how big is this opportunity for us? Speaker 2 (00:58): This opportunity is huge and it's a growing one, and that's what I'm prepared to talk to you all about today. It's just sort of the trend in education and where things are going as far as the high school market is concerned and where career and technical education fits. Speaker 1 (01:13): Awesome. And so you've, I know you have a little presentation you're gonna share with us. Let's, we'll get to it in a sec. Um, from my lens, the there's been a pretty big shift and COVID kind of was a cat part of the catalyst and absolutely it's got two things COVID and what we could view as maybe a cultural divide where a portion of the population views traditional education is, is kind of not serving their cultural interests, is that yeah, Speaker 2 (01:42): A hundred percent Speaker 1 (01:43): Are reading that. Speaker 2 (01:43): Right. Absolutely. And, you know, Mike row is a celebrity and one that's gaining popularity for a reason because his message is talking about essential careers and career focus education, and it seems to be resonating with the generation Z, uh, which is what I'm gonna be talking about in my presentation today. Speaker 1 (02:02): Okay. Well, okay. Why don't we get to that, Dan? I don't wanna steal your thunder in your presentation. Sure. So you're gonna, you are gonna give us a kind of an overview of imagine America. What, what, how you guys look at it, and then we're gonna have a chat afterwards. And if there's time, I'm gonna show, uh, one of the tools that we use to in our virtual advisor platform to help schools, um, kind of connect, uh, with prospective high school students. Speaker 2 (02:27): Yeah. Sure. All right. Let's uh, let's go ahead and get started this, uh, you know, I'm not going to, um, bore anybody to death, hopefully. So, uh, this should be, uh, relatively quick, um, little bit about myself. My name is Lee double day, and as Shane had mentioned, I've been in higher education for over 10 years now. I'm the director of operations here at the imagine America foundation. Um, and I went the tradit school route, uh, even though fun fact about me, my father is a high school culinary arts teacher at the local, uh, high school here in Northern Virginia. And so I grew up in the career and technical education space, uh, but even I was unaware of the types of opportunities that were out there when I was going through high school only 15 or so years ago, only 15 or so years ago. Speaker 2 (03:16): Um, today I want to talk to you about out who the high school student is and how they're influenced. I want to talk to you about why you should care about high school recruiting. And I want to talk to you about how to create a strategy for high school recruitment and innovative ways to create partnerships with high schools. Um, and then at the end, I have a little bit of a golden nugget for you. Uh, if you're looking to tap into this, this market. So to start off, I wanna talk about who the high school student is. Now, when we're talking about high school students, most of the colleges that I work with that recruit high school students are interested obviously in getting in front of juniors and seniors at the high school level, which have put them at around 16 to 18 years old. Speaker 2 (03:57): And part of the generation Z, these students. Um, now the majority of them have taken at least one course in a career in technical education, uh, in their high school level, 77% of them have taken at least one course. So they're relatively familiar with that. And that's something that has changed in the last 10, 12 years. More and more students are actually taking CTE courses as a requirement while they're in high school, uh, that they were not, uh, even when I was in going through high school, they weren't doing, and 40% of that population is male, 33% female. Um, and this student is most likely a member of a student led organization like skills, USA, DECA, future farmers of, uh, of America. These are all student led organizations that at the end of my presentation, I will talk about a little bit about establishing partnerships with organizations like this, to help you navigate the high school market. Speaker 2 (04:56): Uh, but again, these students are maybe more, uh, prefer more hands on learning in the classroom environ. And there's one major influencer on a high school student's decision on where they want to go to school. And it is not a celebrity. It's not tiger woods. It's not Dwayne, the rock Johnson. Uh, it is their high school counselor, uh, their high school counselor. You know, as you can think back to when you were in high school, it's the same story. You, you may meet with this counselor to talk about post-secondary options. And when you're speaking to this counselor, you're writing down some notes and then you go back and you talk to your family and friends about what the counselor had told you, what might be good for you, and you get the opinions of your family and friends. And then you may go back to your counselor and say, okay, here's the direction after taking all of this in, and this consideration of where I think I want to go, which is why relationships with counselors is vitally important to your high school recruitment strategy. Speaker 2 (05:53): Okay. So why should you care about relationships with high school counselors and recruiting high school students? Um, and in a minute, I'm gonna go through some statistics, but in general high school, seniors have seen the generations before them go to traditional colleges and graduate with either no job prospects, um, or going into working at waiting tables like I did. Uh, and they, that being taken away from you potentially because of COVID, which is what Shane was saying earlier, and then being left with heavy student loans now more than ever, the demand for skilled workers is dramatically increasing while at the same time, as I'm sure all of you are aware, the baby boomer generation is starting to retire, which has also been, uh, put forth even more so because of COVID, which leaves a really good opportunity for this younger generation and not to mentor an increased interest in career and technical education. Uh, and to what Shane was saying earlier, this is some statistics that were, that I pulled from ECMC, uh, only 48% of the high school students that were graduating in 2020. We're interested in a four year university path that was down 23% from just earlier that same year, uh, of students that are contemplating a traditional university, route 74% of those individuals said that a career based education made more sense in today's economy. And 63% said that the top place to learn is in a hands on lab. Speaker 1 (07:25): Kate Lee, can I interrupt for a second? Sure. And if you go back to that previous slide, Speaker 2 (07:30): Yep. Speaker 1 (07:31): Why, why is this, why is, this is a pretty massive shift in perception. Why do, why do you think this has happened? Speaker 2 (07:38): I think that a lot of these individuals have older brothers or sisters that went through the traditional path and went to a traditional college, graduated and were left. Like I said earlier, same thing that kind of happened with me. They were waiting tables or doing something else as they tried to get their foot in the door to different company or do something and then COVID hit and they were left, left, uh, going back to their parents' house and they had student loan debt. And I think, you know, you kind of, can't really talk about all of this without mentioning the student loan debt crisis and where this is coming from. And then on top of that, you know, the jobs and, you know, that's something that our career colleges are really good at, which is placing students in jobs Speaker 1 (08:18): And have true colleges kind of price them out of the price themselves out of the market in a way. Speaker 2 (08:24): Yeah. I would definitely say that that is something that we're seeing, whereas, you know, more and more students that are applying for a scholarship through my organization, which I didn't really talk too much about today, but a lot of students that apply for a scholarship to go to any one of our partner institutions, career colleges across the United States are telling us that they're doing so because traditional colleges are way too expensive. I mean, I, uh, I actually have a son he's one years old, but I'm looking at establishing a 5 29 for him. And they're telling me I'm gonna need close to $200,000 for my son to go to school in state, in Virginia, in state. I mean, are you kidding me? How is anybody gonna afford this? Speaker 1 (09:03): That's not so, Speaker 2 (09:05): Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 (09:06): Okay. Interesting. So, so the, the, the, the, the, the Jim, whatever, the one before Jim. Yeah. The one before that, they're the cautionary tale that the current, the current crop. Speaker 2 (09:18): Yeah. The millennials, Speaker 1 (09:19): All seniors are noticing. Speaker 2 (09:21): Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The millennials, they sort of paved the path and they're all coming to find out that it wasn't what they were told, you know? And so the generation behind them are hearing their older brothers and sisters are cousins, and they went through and saying this, the, the generation Z is a lot more practical in the way that they think about things. And they're looking at that situation and saying, I don't think so, but there's still a divide and an opportunity to educate not only this generation Z, but also counselors. So according to a study done by big rents, only 16% of the generation Z students believed that an education and skilled trades can lead to high paying jobs. And as we all know, uh, that's just simply not true. Um, so there's definitely an opportunity to educate this next generation. That's going through high school about the truth of career and technical education, but not just to educate the students. Speaker 2 (10:13): You know, we also need to educate the counselors and like mentioned earlier, that's vitally important to a high school, a recruitment strategy. And I didn't pull any hard statistics on this, and I, I might be able to find it afterwards and send it to anybody who's interested, but something that we're seeing here at the imagine America foundation. So part of our scholarship application requires a high school counselor to nominate a student. It, um, what we have found is that there has been a large Exodus of, uh, high school counselors post COVID that decided to retire maybe a little early, which leaves a lot more younger, uh, maybe fresh outta college counselors that are coming in that are unfamiliar with current technical education, or, uh, do not have, uh, preconceived notions of career and technical education, which leaves a very interesting opportunity for our schools to educate and get their foot in the door and talking about who you are and what you do, um, in hopes that this will, you know, articulate. So it Speaker 1 (11:15): Just keeps getting better and better Lee. Speaker 2 (11:18): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly it really, I think it's a very good time. It's a very unique opportunity, um, to establish relationships with high schools and recruit high school students. It's not easy. I'm not, I'm not here to tell you that it's easy. Um, I've put together a five set strategy to help you, uh, start to, to establish a relationship with your high schools that are around your campuses. Um, but I will tell you that you're not gonna be able to do this without partnerships. You're gonna need partnerships in order to do this. Uh, and I'm gonna talk about it again and again, but the main reason is it's one thing for you to talk about your school, but it's another thing for a partner that you work with to talk about your school, which I'm gonna get to in just a minute. Speaker 1 (12:05): But if we think about the terms of kind of ROI or value for the institution, putting forth the effort, um, given it's a little bit hard would also represent a competitive advantage. Speaker 2 (12:20): Yeah, absolutely. So think about it this way. Um, let's say that you get invited through either, you know, this network or you you're following this five step tra strategy, and you now get invited to the two to three high schools every single year, and talk to classrooms of 60 plus students that you're now able to recruit, uh, from those high schools, you've established a relationship with these counselors and teachers, and you're, uh, making a name for yourself inside of the high school. If you can recruit just one to two students every year from all three of those schools. I mean, think about the return on investment that that would be, especially for a lot of the things that I'm gonna talk about here. There may be some relatively inexpensive ways to get started. Um, and so I wanna talk about the five step strategy really quickly, uh, Shane, and then kind of go into partnerships and how enrollment resources may be able to help you as well. Speaker 2 (13:13): Um, the first step. So this strategy is obviously to do your research, uh, and just start with the areas you recruit students from. So whether that's 30 miles from around around your campus location, or if you have housing or something along those lines, maybe you could start a little more nationally. Uh, but I would recommend just starting nearby your campus, how many high schools are in your area. You want to know that I, how many are public and private? Uh, you may wanna start with just trying to, uh, do the best you can to reach public institutions. A lot of our schools have found better success that way. Uh, how many of these public institutions are offering CTE courses or academy classes? So there's different lingo there. You may need to familiarize yourself some high schools call it ANCA academy, where they offer career in technical education. Speaker 2 (13:58): Um, you know, some call it something else, but, uh, you may need to just familiarize yourself with the area I know in New York, they call Boes and there's so many other different names for, uh, what we're talking about. And then obviously what are the student demographics of these areas, maybe taking a look internally at your student demographics and try trying to find on public websites, the high schools that have similar demographics, it might be a good place to start. And then, uh, finding the right person to talk to, you know, is it the teacher? Is it a counselor? If they have a career in tech ed center, maybe the career in tech, ed center's, uh, department chair might be the best place to start and trying to find where they go, uh, which I'm gonna get to in, in just a minute. So you're gonna wanna establish partnerships, which is what I'm calling step two. Speaker 2 (14:45): And I don't just mean partnerships with high schools. I also mean partnerships with organizations that will help you create relationships with those high schools. But to start, I just wanna talk about the goals of each of these, um, the goal of creating a, a relationship with a high school is obviously to be able to come in and speak to classrooms of students so that you can recruit year after year at that high school, um, that from their graduating class, and you also want to create relationships with organizations and these goals may be different. They may be to exhibit or attend shows where, you know, the educators and teachers that you're trying to get in front of are gonna be, or to build a database of high school counselors and educators. If you go to a state counselor association meeting and you exhibit there, you may get a list of attendees that you can use to start help you, uh, you know, create a database of these counselors to be able to reach out to them and, and offer something. Um, Speaker 1 (15:41): Lee, can you expand on the type of organizations you mean in this, is that Speaker 2 (15:44): Yes. And I Speaker 1 (15:45): About employers? Speaker 2 (15:46): Uh, yeah, absolutely. Employers may be a really good way. Um, if I wasn't actually to talk about employers, but, um, you know, part of what my presentation is, is going to talk about on the next slide, as different organizations, uh, that you may be able to partner with that work with high school counselors and teachers, but you can see at the bottom, I put this pro tip, uh, you wanna make sure that you're offering something before you ask for any. And so, um, you know, that may mean that if you do get a chance to speak to educators or students, maybe that means you bring in, uh, an employer that you partner with to kind of give gravity to what you're talking about. And if your presentation is talking about, um, not just your school, uh, but about the importance of what your teaches and the career opportunities and the programs that your school teaches. And you have an employer there with you that can, uh, you know, again, bring, bring some gravity to what you're talking about. That may be a very, uh, good way to partner with the employers and to, and to give them exposure. Speaker 2 (16:51): So what I mean by pro provide, uh, value first before you ask, uh, what are some different ways that you can do that? Some of our schools, uh, that we partner with have offered, uh, FSO assistance. This is just an example, but they offer, uh, to sponsor a FAFSA night at the high school. And basically what it is is that the financial aid officer at the school goes in and help student fill out a FAFSA and the students bring their parents. They're there, they're filling out FAFSA forms. They can ask questions. And the majority of those students may not be interested in going to your school, uh, at that time. Uh, but the, the, the idea is that you are offering something to the high school, to the counselor, that counselor's able to talk about the value they're providing students and parents, and you're helping that counselor. Speaker 2 (17:39): And you're establishing a relationship with that counselor so that you can get invited to talk to students about your programs at a later point. But this is an example of what some of our schools that are successful with this would do, um, to host a FAFSA night. And one of the things that I've found interesting that comes from this is that the, the colleges are telling me Lee, I have students that filled out a FAFSA to go to a completely different school. And how many, I don't need to tell you all how many times this happens, but somebody goes to a community college doesn't work out. They come to your school, they go to the local state school. It doesn't work out. They come to your school. Uh, and what, uh, what that college had told me was by holding these FAFSA nights, it's a really great way to start offering something to students, and then getting your foot in the door with them, uh, and getting your brand in your logo and your name in front of them. Um, and they remember you as providing value to them. So they end up coming back to the school waiter. So it's Speaker 1 (18:37): Important. So it's important for the school not to have a, a kind of Meile view of this, right. It's yeah, of course. It's not a, it's not a lead generation tactic necessarily. It's a relationship PR kind of a tactic. Speaker 2 (18:48): Exactly. Yeah. I would say the schools that do the best job of high school recruitment are more relationship oriented with their high school partners, um, which obviously ends up articulating into lead generation and, and everything else that comes with that. But another couple of ways that you could provide value to the high school counselor is providing informational packets. I mean, all of you have statistics on the different programs that you teach and the career outlooks and what those look like providing packets and mailing them to the local high school with your business card or your logo, or even laminating pieces, uh, of, uh, resources and sending that in so that they have it on their desk, or they hang it up in their office and it has your logo want it. That's a really great way to get your foot in the door. And then obviously offering a scholarship program to their students would be a really good way, uh, to do that. Speaker 2 (19:40): And you can either, you know, partner with a group like ours, or offer your own high school scholarship or partner with, uh, groups like skills USA and host scholarship competitions at your campus location, which is another way that, uh, that a lot of schools utilize partnerships with organizations like skills USA. So for example, I mentioned earlier, my dad is a culinary arts teacher, and every year, uh, his students qualify to, uh, compete, uh, at the local state level and a regional level. And at the state level, they go to the culinary Institute of Virginia, which is an E C P I university school and E C P I university partners with skills USA to be able to offer the competition at their campus. And they use their kitchen there, uh, for this competition that gets, I don't know, 30, 40 students who are interested in culinary that end up flocking to their school and using their kitchen and their teachers in count answers. And parents I'll come to this, uh, to this meeting. So I would just highly suggest that you look into local events that you may be able to, to sponsor or, um, run scholarship competitions at your school, uh, through groups like, like skills USA. Speaker 1 (20:49): Well, and that builds on this, you know, the career schools, one of our core strengths is we're community based. Yeah. The most part. Right. And that, that connection to community is part of the differentiation of the sector. Speaker 2 (21:02): Absolutely. Uh, I couldn't agree with you more, um, you know, whether that's their employers or your high schools, or, you know, the jobs for America's graduates that are near you or workforce boards, um, you know, the importance of connecting with the community is what I'm trying to, to talk about here. And then what do you do after you do establish a relationship with the high school? Let's say, you, you get in touch with, uh, Mr. Jones is the senior, your counselor there at the local high school near you, or you attend to show that, uh, that gives you an exhibit or a, uh, attendee list. And you have a list of 20, 30 high schools that are near you. And those counselors contact information. I would say, you know, you, you want to establish, um, ways to stay in touch with them, whether that be through drip campaigns, which is a fan a way of saying automated email, uh, campaigns. Speaker 2 (21:51): You may also want to promote your events. So, um, you wanna stay in constant communication with them, and you could be promoting events that you either hold at your own institution or offer virtual, uh, presentations or onsite presentations to these counselors and give them the opportunity to speak with you about different things that you might be able to come in and talk to students about. Um, but you wanna maintain these relationships and the importance here is that in the high school market counselors, a lot of times switch off roles. So the senior counselor might be Mr. Jones this year. Uh, but next year is Mrs. Shortz, who moves on to who, uh, who is a junior counselor, is now the senior counselor. So maintaining these relationships of the databases that you're building is vitally important, uh, to making sure that you have a current list, uh, and that you are, uh, constantly promoting your schools. Speaker 2 (22:44): I would also suggest looking at the state associations, uh, the, uh, the council state associations in your state, a lot of these, and I can put you in touch with the person who handles exhibiting for those shows. Um, a lot of these are a relatively inexpensive way to, uh, to attend shows like this, to talk about, you know, stem careers that don't require bachelor's degree. Uh, that might be a really great, uh, signage that you could have at your booth. And, and to talk to counselors about the overlook value of certificate and associate programs, uh, in career and technical education institutions. Um, so I would just suggest looking at ASCA. Um, and then also the student led organizations, like I mentioned earlier, skills USA is one, uh, future farmers of America is another there's DECA. Um, and there are others, uh, that you may be able to find online, but I would suggest reaching out to groups like that that have a high database of high school counselors, teachers, and students Speaker 1 (23:46): Lee, how important to the counselors is, um, or our, our graduation outcomes. Speaker 2 (23:55): It's funny that you mentioned that I, you know, did you see these slides before I, uh, Speaker 1 (23:59): No, I didn't. That's it's well, cause well, there was some data that just came out, I think it was from, and, and basically the graduation rates on, um, four year programs are atrocious Speaker 2 (24:11): Abyssal Speaker 1 (24:12): And, and they poorly tracked, and it's a kind of a, a thing they've been in a way hiding for years, right? Yeah. So there's a lens on that, on the, the career education sector, but, uh, four, you guys are brutal. Speaker 2 (24:24): Yeah, yeah. No Speaker 1 (24:25): Knows. Right. It's it's like an, unknown's a dirty secret in the education. Speaker 2 (24:31): Yeah. And I think, you know, uh, to talk about that a little further, the high school student and the high school counselor are probably looking at that a little bit more than they used to at this point. And so one of the ways that if you do get a chance to talk about your school and your programs, eventually at any presentation that you're offering, you want to talk about what differentiates your school from any other schools. And the most important thing that I see schools do is they talk about graduation rates and employer relationships. Those are the biggest things, because what you're, what you're really talking about is ROI on the student side, it's, you know, what is it, uh, that the student is gonna get, that they can't get at any other institution, either because those institutions have failed students. And like we're talking about now with graduation rates being low, but there also may be employer relationship issues and, you know, traditional colleges, they don't have the same, um, responsibility, I guess you could say to, uh, help students become employed like our schools do. Speaker 2 (25:35): Um, and so this is, this is again a, you know, another way to kind of differentiate your school would be to talk about employer relationships, graduation rates, and then obviously your length of program, uh, which is another huge, huge ROI for students. They can get in graduate faster than they would at alternative options for them and start working right away and explaining that to, uh, counselors like again that are maybe coming outta college and may not be no, not have any, uh, preconceived notions of our space, or may not know much about our space talking to them about that ROI for their students will go a long way, uh, in establishing a relationship. Speaker 1 (26:17): Interesting. I, I, I don't know if the, I agree with you that the, um, for your programs don't have a responsibility for outcomes. I don't think they know how to get them. Speaker 2 (26:28): Yeah, right. Yeah. I, I, I think that, uh, our schools do a much better job of that, but, um, and then finally, I wanna leave you with this, uh, about sponsoring events and how important sponsoring events either, you know, hosting events at your campus or sponsoring events outside of your own campus, uh, can be either, you know, like I mentioned earlier, skills, USA needs hosts for state and regional competitions, and I'm not a spokesperson for them. Uh, I would just suggest reaching out to them. I think they do a really great job, seemed to be ahead of the curve. They had Mike row as their keynote speaker for a couple years in a row, starting in 2015, they've been on top of all of this stuff. Um, and then either working with third party groups, like imagine America or the, uh, state association council association to sponsor virtual events with the counselors and teachers might be a really great way to get started. Speaker 2 (27:26): And then, uh, I wanna leave you with a little nugget, uh, here that, uh, some of our schools have seen a lot of really great success in which is exhibiting at homeschool association meetings. There is a, uh, a lot of students that are, that are, you know, considering homeschool or going into homeschool situations. There's no counselor layer there at those homeschool association meetings. You're talking directly with students and parents about your programs and your schools. And the beauty of it is there's hardly any career college competitions, but at least this is the reports that I'm getting back from. Some of my school rules is that they're really the only career college option there. They put up a banner that says five grade stem careers that don't require a bachelor's degree and are flooded with students and parents that are coming up and speaking to them, the beauty of that is that you're dealing directly with a lead right there at your exhibit booth, uh, with a student that is interested in learning bit more about not having to go the traditional route. Um, so that could be a really great inexpensive way to get your foot, uh, or just dip your toe in the water if you will. Um, I don't know what it costs to exhibit at your state home, uh, you know, homeschool association meetings, but from what I've seen anywhere between yeah. 750 bucks, or, you know, something like that a little bit of your time, Speaker 1 (28:47): Lee, how big is that revolution? Right. Cause because certainly in the media, there's a massive amount of, um, I know parent revolts against education boards. Right. Which is big time, my understanding driving interest in homeschooling or charter schools or absolutely. Speaker 2 (29:05): Yeah, absolutely. That, um, I don't have any hard statistics to tell you right now and I didn't look it up, but I will tell you this, that we have seen a large increase in the number of scholarship applications that we're getting on our end, uh, from homeschool associations that we were not seeing last year or maybe two years ago. Um, so I don't know the real numbers on that, but it definitely, like you said, you can tell in the news, there's definitely a movement towards, uh, homeschool education, uh, for students. And there's maybe less resources for those individuals on career and college education than there would be at maybe a traditional high school option where the counselor at least has some material around, uh, about college, uh, you know, career and technical education options. I would suggest looking into the homeschool association meetings with that, Shane, I I'll turn it over to you because like I mentioned earlier, partnerships is the key, uh, to all of this, you, you can't do it alone. Um, because you know, it's one thing to talk about your own school yourself, but it's another to work with partners that can help you. And, um, I will, I'll turn it over to you now. Uh, Shane, Speaker 1 (30:20): I just want to continue the conversation. This is fantastic. I, I did forget to mention in the beginning of this, that if you do have questions, there's a chat box at the bottom of your screen. Uh, please feel free to ask a question there and we'll do our best to, to get to the, uh, close to the end of this, uh, webinar. Okay. Speaker 2 (30:40): Oh, Jack. I, to, Speaker 1 (30:43): There we go. The first question, whose job is this in the organization? Right. So it's a lot of work. It's a, it's a sales and marketing campaign and it's not a, it's not a advertising get a result. It's kind of a, Speaker 2 (30:57): Yeah. Speaker 1 (30:58): Can be doing this. Speaker 2 (30:59): Good, great question. Uh, a lot of our schools that don't have, have an established high school admissions reps, obvi it's in admissions, uh, and a lot of schools that don't have an established high school admissions rep will use, uh, the admissions rep that they have to help them start virtually, uh, and then move into doing presentations at the school because they only have so much time. Uh, and so there's easier ways to get started through the, the use of third party groups and partnerships, like I mentioned earlier, that, uh, that can help you get started. Um, if you don't already have the staff on, Speaker 1 (31:38): But this is almost more of a, like a B2B sales process. Sure. And because it's not responding to student inquiries, this is initiating relationships, nurturing them over time, um, supporting them with, uh, things that are of interest to the, that high school counselors, the gatekeeper to the whole deal. Speaker 2 (31:57): Yeah. Speaker 1 (31:57): That's a, a different skillset than the typical admissions person. Is that a fair way to think about it? Speaker 2 (32:04): Yeah, I would, yeah. I would say that, um, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, uh, discredit, uh, the admission staff. I think they are definitely, uh, able to speak to all of this and, and they're a good way. Look, they're the front of the house for a reason. Right. Uh, they, they're the ones that talk about the school, they know what they're talking about. And so I, I would feel comfortable, you know, suggesting that it missions are the ones that talk to these counselors. And, and on the case of a lot of our schools that is who talks to the counselors and may be somebody and they have support from marketing. Uh, but, uh, it's typically the admissions reps and like, um, Jack came on, uh, and asked the question earlier, he's, he's a big time admissions guy. He's a high school admissions guy, but yeah, that, he's the one who creates and establishes the relationships in the high schools as well. Speaker 1 (32:48): That boy Jack. Okay. Um, what are realistic goals on for the school? So if I'm, if I'm planning my marketing campaign, I'm doing my budget, my enrollment budget, trying to sort out, you know, where who's gonna come from where Speaker 2 (33:03): Yeah. Speaker 1 (33:04): Why can I budget to this? Speaker 2 (33:05): Yeah, I, I would say, um, number one, I would look at attending, uh, the homeschool association, uh, pres you know, the event, uh, wherever that is. And like I said, I think it's like $500, $700 to attend or exhibit at, uh, something like that. I would use that as a way to gauge interest in your school and programs, um, at the high school student level. And then I would start to invest a little bit more into, uh, state counselor association meetings, uh, or, uh, through the use of third party organizations to, uh, reach out virtually, uh, to these high schools that are near you. And you may even be able to partner with a group, like imagine America to help you establish which high schools that would be the best fit for you to start with and, and try to get into those high schools. Uh, virtually first it's a little less expensive that way. Um, and then, you know, be able to grow that and scale that after you've made a couple of the relationships and you've done some presentations and you've, uh, you're getting money in, in the, uh, in, through okay. Speaker 1 (34:15): Admission. I'm gonna follow up. I'm gonna ask it in a different way. The, the schools that are doing the success. Sure. Just ballpark as a percentage of total enrollment. Speaker 2 (34:26): Oh, that's a, that's a very hard question to answer. And the reason why is it depends on, uh, your program offers? Sure. You know, so, Speaker 1 (34:33): So someone who's best case scenario, I'm killing it. I've, I've got a high school program that is rocking. I got programs that suit it, you know, is it 10%? Is it 30%? Is Speaker 2 (34:45): It no, I would say it's higher. I mean, TA you can probably speak to this too, cuz you, uh, spent some time at one of our, um, the groups that I would say does it really, really well. Uh, and I would say it's probably what, 40 50%. I mean it's a lot of high school depends on the program and, Speaker 1 (35:00): And Speaker 3 (35:00): It depends on the start you're talking about, but over, over an annual basis, it was in the mid thirties. It was just over one 30. Speaker 1 (35:07): Okay. So this is realistic, you know, assuming you have programs that are suited to this kind of market and there's, um, channels to go market it through in wherever you are. Yeah. This could, this could be up to 30 ish percent of total enrollment. Um, and this is a thing that's not, that's, that's less subject to the fluctuations in marketing, right? Like sort of related, we're seeing kind of a decline sort of a lead flow decline in general. Right. And there's sort of a, a COVID boom for people looking to change careers. It's it's I would say winding down a little bit. And so as schools get used to kind of abundance and it starts Dwayne at edgy and are looking for other ways to augment that. Speaker 2 (35:59): Right. Speaker 1 (36:00): Seems to me this is a trend you identified. It's a fantastic opportunity. Speaker 2 (36:04): Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Maybe that's a better way to frame the answer to the question because it's gonna be different for every single school. But if you're looking at your student population right now, and you're seeing two to 4% of your student popul, I think this is a really unique opportunity, uh, in our place and time, uh, to maybe move that a couple of percentage points north, Speaker 1 (36:28): You didn't really talk about, imagine, imagine American foundation, what folks do, can you just give us a very quick summary and Speaker 2 (36:34): Sure. Um, Speaker 1 (36:35): You know, who, who would be, who reach out to you after this webinar? Speaker 2 (36:39): Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that. Um, I would like to talk to anyone who would like to increase their high school student recruitment program and, and talk to me. So imagine America foundation partners with 30,000 high schools across the United States, we work with 150 career colleges across the United States. The majority of them are for-profit institutions. So we know this space really well. What we do is three things for those institutions. Uh, number one, we offer a scholarship and award program that we run on behalf of those institutions. So you can think of it as like an outsourced institutional scholarship program that comes with this second part. And third part of what we do, which is community outreach and marketing to high schools, workforce boards, VA offices, as well as organic lead generation. So if you would like to talk to me about any of those things, please reach out. Speaker 1 (37:34): Awesome. Okay. And what we'll do is we'll send a, a, a follow up, uh, with please contact information I know was on the slides, but Speaker 3 (37:42): May I give it, imagine America plug? Speaker 1 (37:43): Yeah, please, please. Speaker 3 (37:45): You're all right with that. All right. So a few things, one is, if you have any challenges with your gap financing and you wanna really soften that, imagine America rocks, and it's not just high school students, you know, they can help you with your adult population as well. And, um, and then in, in that conversation and when a high school student that maybe has a really low GPA gets approved and imagine America's scholarship for a grant, man, can you celebrate that? And boy, can you get referrals off of that pumped up person in his family? And it just, it's, it's really a home run. So, so any of you that want help with some of your gap financing, I would absolutely reach out to that. I wouldn't even limit it to just high school, although it it's a killer way to get in. Speaker 2 (38:34): Thanks for saying that TAs. Yeah. And we do provide certificate and award letters for those students. And those are often presented at awards nights and give some good, uh, publicity for the school that way too. Speaker 1 (38:45): Okay. Um, one question in the chat that I was gonna ask as well is what are some of the typical mistakes or, you know, what are the, Speaker 2 (38:52): That's a great question. I would say the number one mistake is not keeping up with it. Um, it is something that, and to Tasha's point, and he mentioned it a little bit earlier, he said, it depends on what time of the year you're talking about your starts because high school students in their senior year, they may start that in August or September. And that goes all the way to may June. And you're in communication with that student that entire time, or you're trying to establish relationships with these counselors. It's not done overnight. It's not done. Maybe it might take more than a year to establish some really solid relationships where you're able to go in and recruit students. But I'm telling you if you're able to go into a high school and recruit three, four students every single year to 10 high schools around your campus locations, what does that mean for your school? Is that worth the investment? And that's what at the end of a, a year, two years, three years, that's what you'd be looking at. And that's something that, you know, that can carry with you for a long time, that relationships with those counselors and teachers in high schools. Speaker 3 (39:56): So I wanna share this tip, oh, I'm sorry, one quick tip. And if you're really having a challenge, getting into a high school, give away a few fellowships, get some of their teachers instructors, shop instructors, get 'em taken a course on your campus for free. Just give it to 'em, you know, give, give them the field trips trip to teach, uh, treat their handful of students to, you know, food in a super cool experience and pay for all the expenses and, you know, the, the, the bus ride and whatever insurance you need to put on that you will get a positive ROI on it. And you wanna create ambassadors on that high school for, for your career fields and your education. Speaker 2 (40:39): Great point. Yeah. We didn't even talk about professional development and what you could be doing, uh, to help teachers and counselors a great point. Thanks for mentioning that. Speaker 1 (40:46): So this, if, if I'm thinking from a marketing lens, this is a PR campaign, right? And this is a sustained one. This is a, or a community relations campaign is a subset of PR. Yeah. So this is, um, this is a, a, a strategy that needs to be committed to over multiple years. There needs to, it needs to be resourced. Like somebody has to be in charge of it and have, um, metrics they're trying to meet that are realistic. Sure. This is a, a campaign it's not a sales effort, right? It's Speaker 2 (41:17): Absolutely. Yeah. I think a lot of the, to answer that, person's question about, um, how things fall apart. If you look at it from a traditional lead generation standpoint and you're comparing it to how adult students convert, uh, that come from PPC campaigns, then yet you, you're gonna be upset about it. It's gonna take a little bit of time and yeah, to your point, it's a little bit of PR business development, uh, that, that goes into this. And so it's just a, it's an interesting way of looking at, um, using this. Speaker 1 (41:46): Okay. Can we talk about tools in the toolkit for a sec? Like, you know, just tactics, um, some specific, maybe some takeaways somebody on this webinar could, could implement. Speaker 2 (41:58): When you say tools, you mean, um, Speaker 1 (42:01): I don't know, man. Something, how, how, what, what is something practical? What could I do tomorrow or this afternoon to, to get started? Speaker 2 (42:11): Yeah, I think, I think number one, you should look at the state CA counselor association meetings. I think you should look at the homeschool association meetings. I think you should look at what you currently have within your own building. As far as you have financial aid experts, setting up something or an inviting high schools to attend a FAFSA night and helping students fill out their FAFSA is something that you could probably put together a relatively quickly. And then to Tasha's point, inviting, uh, teachers to come and learn a little bit, bit more about your campus and to come take a look at the, at the school and the different tools that they're using. I think those are all great ways to establish relationships sooner, as opposed to later, that might help you get your foot in the door. Speaker 1 (42:51): Okay. And so in our, in virtual via plug outs for a sec, just take of that. Uh, so in virtual advisor, our software tool, it's got a toolkit of different, I know, lead generation tools, and one of them is a, a high school pathway that's designed to, to contextualize career education against traditional ad. And the idea is that an emissions person or some is presenting in a high school or through a guidance counselor, could give this tool to students as a way to explore whether it's gonna be fit with what they want, possibly use it with their parents as well. Do you have an opinion on whether that as a tool is effective or not? Speaker 2 (43:33): So your question, uh, is about, it would remind me again, this is about comparing, uh, school Speaker 1 (43:42): Options. Can I show you why don't we do that? Speaker 2 (43:43): Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. That might clarify. Yeah. I'm more of a visual person. Speaker 1 (43:47): Yeah. I was looking for a plug lead. I don't know if I Speaker 2 (43:50): I'm sorry. All I recommend enrollment resources. A Speaker 1 (43:55): Yes. Thank you. Yes. So what, what this tool in virtual advice? It, it would be, uh, something that would be sent given away, filled out at a, at a career fair or in a high school presentation for the prospect and the, for the high school student exploring whether career, right? So we'll make Lee, you can be our pro aspect. Speaker 2 (44:18): Fantastic. Speaker 1 (44:19): And I dunno what your email is. So it's gonna make one up and starts to take them through an exploration of, uh, career education compared to other to traditional end. So after high school, how much planning have you done? Oh, not very much. I'm super prepared. Right. And so the student falls in this continuum somewhere, what kind of education are you pursuing or likely to pursue? You know, if, if they're a bachelor's degree person, you know, they're, they're probably not at least now ready for career ed, but if they're a diploma I'm interested finding a apprenticeship, I'm gonna take some time off. I don't know what I want to do. You know, this is the kind of continuum of, um, the, uh, high school students then that opens the door to career researching your career options. What research have you done? I'm just starting talk to family and friends spoken with a admissions person or counselor or whatever line committee, right? Speaker 1 (45:30): Who are the, who are the, who are the supporters, or don't sorry, the supporter, the parents supportive. And, and in our observation, this is the disconnect, right? If, if mom and dad view little Sally, as she's gonna go get a degree and be a lawyer, right. Or be a, a doctor and Sally goes, oh, no, I really don't want to be a hairdresser. There's a pretty broad. And mom and dad are generally not very supportive of that, but if they're, um, aligned in, in their goals for the kid, then it's a much more likely enrollment. Is that a fair way to think about it? Speaker 2 (46:09): Absolutely. And, uh, yeah, this tool, I could see what you're mentioning earlier. What are some tools that could be implemented to help, uh, counselors? And this would be a great resource counselors could use to help students better understand the options that are out there for them, uh, and to see their aptitude for something like this. And, uh, I would agree with your stance on parent and guardian, uh, support being very important. And, uh, I think that we, as, as a sector, need to do a good job of educating those individuals about these different opportunities. Speaker 1 (46:43): We're as this is an aside, but I think it's very interesting. Um, uh, couple weeks, hopefully we're gonna be releasing some research from, uh, virtual advisor. We've taken about 200,000 prospects that have filled out some version of this survey or other ones. And, and the, the question of who are the supporters, right? Who's the main supporter. There was one person that emerged, um, as the dominant supporter across the board. And can you guess who it is? Speaker 2 (47:14): Teacher counselor? No, Speaker 1 (47:18): Mom, mom, mom. We never, it's amazing. It's obvious, right? You think about it. It's of course it's mom. We'd never thought about it that way, but like universally. And if I go back, hopefully this won't mess things up. This is an open-ended field. Like most of the things in, in yeah, sure. Speaker 1 (47:36): Quizzes. We find close, close questions, get a higher response. Right. It keeps them moving. This is one of the few open-ended questions. And even as an open-ended question, mom emerged is kind of the, the, the person, right. Who's driving. Who's the part of the buying committee, super interesting. Uh, and then goals, Hey, passion career, I'm making a difference, whatever it is, right. We, we find many people don't have clearly articulated goals. So giving them something to pick from helps, um, ized that as a motivator. And then, uh, in this survey, now this we're, we're trying to contextualize career education against, um, like a more, um, academic education. So the, the typical strengths of career are, you know, focus on a specific career path. I want hands on training compared to lectures. It's important to me, the school helps me with job placement. I want training. I complete in a, less than a year or two. You know, those typically are where the Cru balls win. Um, and then they would of course pick their program, whatever. And, uh, if there's another one they could tell us what it is. And, and it gives them a little score on their, their kind of alignment with career education is an option. Speaker 1 (49:01): So in your experience, would, you know, if, if, if our clients or we are pushing someone like this as a tool to distribute through, um, high school counselors would be, they be a amenable to it. Speaker 2 (49:14): I think so. Yeah. I think that, uh, any resources that could be provided to counselors to help them identify students, it would be a great fit for career and technical education would be a good thing. And I'd be interested to see year over year data, uh, that you've been able to collect that that supports some of the things that we talked about in earlier in this presentation about out students being more interested in a career focused education, uh, that could tell a really compelling message. Speaker 1 (49:40): Well, it's, it's certainly anecdotally there's what a million fewer students that enrolled as freshmen in four year programs this year. Yeah. Speaker 2 (49:48): Right, right. Speaker 1 (49:50): Like those guys are getting murdered. That's a lot. Speaker 2 (49:53): Yeah. Yeah. So, Speaker 1 (49:55): Yeah. Okay. Thank, okay. Great. Uh, let me unshare this. Okay. So we have, uh, a few minutes left and, uh, we'll see if there's any other questions before we wrap up the Lee. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that we should have? Speaker 2 (50:14): I, I think we touched on all lot of the main components, I would say, you know, start as, as easy as you can, um, and can to do, to create these, these types of relationships, um, and try to use as much as the things that you already have in house that you're really good at. And, uh, to start there and then build upon that as you go. And, um, it looks like Ian, you had asked a question about the use of social media. It's funny, you mentioned that, um, you know, obviously social media is very important, uh, to any sort of marketing campaign and in the high school student, maybe more so in the Snapchat and, and TikTok field. And I, I didn't talk about that in this presentation. Um, but it is something worth, worth noting. Uh, most of my presentation is talking about relationships with high school counselors, because I do think that that is vitally important. Um, but if you're gonna start art, social media campaigns, I would recommend Snapchat and TikTok just because that's the demographic that are using those campaigns and less so Facebook, I probably don't need to tell any of you, uh, some of this, uh, information, um, but I would suggest less Facebook, more Snapchat and getting into TikTok if you haven't already Speaker 1 (51:27): Interest. That's an awesome idea. Okay. So let's just summarize, and then we can wrap up if there's no more questions. So what I'm taking away from this is that you, you need to think about high school recruiting as a campaign, and you're, you're really trying to build a community. Um, we have a concept called knowledge community, which is the, this is the idea that you're building, um, a group of influencers, adding value to them in a meaningful way to create a referral network over time. And it's really a version of what schools should be doing at the program level with the employer groups, same model, you're just applying it to high school guidance, counselors and influencers in that area. Speaker 2 (52:13): Yeah. I would say stick with it and use partners, because again, it's, it's one thing for you to talk about your school. It's another thing for someone else to talk about your school and giving that the third party validation that your school deserves. So I would suggest reaching to local organizations or national organizations that can help you do this because it it's tough, but it's, uh, it's something worth doing. Speaker 1 (52:39): And the underpinning to it is really from a, a mission of service kind of perspective, right? We are not coming in asking for stocks. Exactly. Speaker 2 (52:47): That's Speaker 1 (52:47): We come bringing gifts of knowledge. Why somebody just put in the comments, gift bags, swag, t-shirts a, you know, awesome idea. Right. Just everyone likes free stuff. Speaker 2 (52:58): Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I, um, that's, I'll be interested to see what, uh, what typically goes in those gift bags. But, um, one thing that I know just from my time in high school is that they would have these, um, and I can't think of the name of them, but they're the triangle shape to like flags with the school names on it would be a really cool idea because they, uh, they hang places, but yeah, logos on water bottles. Great idea. Uh, coffee mugs, other things of that nature. Good idea. Awesome. Um, Speaker 1 (53:27): Okay. Lee, fantastic content. Thank you so much. This was super helpful. I think, um, everyone on the, uh, webinar learned a lot, um, if they need to get in touch with the burning desire, can't wait to the email. We're gonna send out later. They gotta get in touch with you right now. Where do they go? Speaker 2 (53:44): I'm typing it in the chat right now. Speaker 1 (53:46): Here you go. Leo type it in the chat. Speaker 2 (53:49): There you go. Speaker 1 (53:50): Lee Speaker 2 (53:54): D@imaginedasher.org. That's the one. Um, Speaker 1 (53:56): I've got last question before you Speaker 2 (53:58): Go Speaker 1 (53:58): Ahead. Does your mother call you Lee or Leroy? Speaker 2 (54:01): Depends on whether or not I'm in trouble. Fun facts. Me I'm related inventor of baseball. I dunno if you knew that, uh, a say that again, invented baseball. I'm related to the inventor of baseball. Uh, so I'm as American as they come, baby, uh, Avner double day, uh, invented baseball, Cooperstown, New York. They got a whole field for it, uh, and everything. Yeah. So, wow. I should be a bigger baseball fan. Least I should be rich, but I'm not Speaker 1 (54:30): Lee. Thank you so much. Everyone is attended. Thank you so much. Like I said, we'll be sending out, um, uh, information on Lee and, uh, uh, link to this recording. Have a terrific day. And, uh, thank you for, Speaker 2 (54:44): Thank you all for joining me. It.