There's a Money Crunch Approaching, and You Need to Understand How It'll Affect You

This is serious.

My dad was an accountant, and a very good one.

His advice was, “Always be looking at what’s really going on around you when it comes to money and the economy.”

Here’s what I’m seeing today:

That’s the news on college campuses. It’s what you’re hearing in conversations with fellow coaches and administrators, usually coming in the form of “yeah I’m not sure we’ll be able to fund that this year, things are getting a little tighter.” Or, “admissions is kind of stressing out because they’re numbers are coming in way lower than they did in the last year or two.”

For the students and athletes colleges are recruiting, it’s equally as stressful. They, like everyone else, are dealing with inflation rates we haven’t seen for 40 years - all while seeing the same annual increases in college tuition rates happen, along with higher interest rates that make borrowing for college much, much more expensive.

Their solution becoming more and more common? Just bypass a college education.

Oh, and on top of all that, we are coming up on a historic shortage of U.S. graduating high school seniors - the Class of 2025, primarily - which is reflective of the 2007-2008 Great Recession, resulting in a sharp fall in birth rates in the country.

Like I said, I’m not an accountant, but it’s not a stretch to see where all this is heading: A changing view of what a college education offers, combined with rising costs and less buying power among consumers and families, resulting in fewer students available for a market that many agree has too many colleges.

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The Problem I See? Campuses Still Using a 1990’s Model of Attracting and Processing Their Prospects

College was different in the 90’s.

But for many campus leaders on today’s campuses around the country, you’d think we were still living in that decade. The processes are, in many ways, the same as they were then: Clunky, confusing and lacking the guidance for the average family going through the process to fully understand.

I’ve been through the college admissions process twice in the past decade with our two daughters, and I can vouch for the fact that even for someone with my knowledge and understanding of the processes in place for being admitted to a college campus, it was unnecessarily cumbersome. There was very little personal guidance offered, and when we had questions, getting a hold of the right people who could offer the right information was challenging to say the least.

This was brought home two separate times this week in our normal work with clients just this past week: First, at a college where we work with all of their coaching staffs in their entire department, coaches were getting calls from prospects they are actively recruiting who received their admissions and financial aid letter, only to be confused as to what the total aid and award amount actually was because of the wording. The result was widespread panic among the coaches (understandably) who were worried about losing their grip on prospects they had worked hard to sell them on. Admissions’ answer was that the information was there, but admitted it was hard to find in the sea of information, website addresses and legal language.

A few days later, I was working with Jeremy Tiers, who is our respected national expert overseeing all of the work we do with admissions departments across the country. We were partnering on a review of financial aid and admissions messaging that a university admissions department client, and the same problem was present: Too much information, very little direction to the reader (i.e., the family that university is wanting to have as a student next fall), resulting in a potential slowing of the process.

College admissions and athletic departments don’t have the luxury to see the process grind to a halt with any prospect today. Each potential enrollment is precious on most campuses, and will be moving forward, as well.

Five Changes Nearly Every College Needs to Make ASAP

The list of challenges, negative news and other self-imposed hurdles could be longer, but you get the picture. Heck, you could add to what I’ve already written with your own stories from campus and some of the outdated approaches and systems in place to try and bring in new students and athletes to your campus.

So, let’s get to some proposed solutions. If I were in charge of bringing in the best and biggest classes to a university or athletic department program, here are five changes I’d want to see happening as soon as possible:

1. Understand how the landscape for college decision making has radically changed for this class of recruits.

College degrees are no longer seen as ‘necessary’ to achieve a successful professional life. Many employers no longer require them, and the financial and student loan burden to get them is increasingly being viewed as a huge negative compared to the perceived value of a college degree a few decades ago. 43% of the most recent graduating class with new college degrees said they left campus with $50,000 or more in student loan debt.

These are just a few of the things that have contributed to a change in the way decision have been made regarding college options recently, and will continue to shape decisions in the months and years to come, minus some kind of shift in how college costs and the loans that finance most of those educations are done.

Translation: If you have the same marketing and sales process for your list of prospects, whether they are traditional students or potential student-athletes, you are going to see it become increasingly harder and harder to get the results you want.

2. Aim to become the one-stop resource for the recruit you are guiding towards a decision.

This is so, so important…