One would think that there would be few, if any, admissions or enrollment professionals who deny the importance of the web in student recruitment. But I keep being reminded that, in fact, there is still lingering resistance to embracing the web. Just last week, I spoke in a PRSA-sponsored teleconference and one of the participants-from a major state university-asked how he could convince the people in admissions in his institution that the web is important.
I didn’t have any magic solutions to offer—though would you at least agree that you don’t have to look very hard for evidence to support the overwhelming importance of the web in the lives of teens? Here’s another datapoint, from the Chronicle of Higher Ed Wired Campus blog: 89 percent of the students who applied for early decision at UVA did so online. So, if they applied online, maybe they were also using the web to find information to help them make their decision? Or am I stretching things here?
Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?