Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 7-5-2018 Sell Yourself: Building a Foundational Structure Around an Institution's Position in the College Application Process Brock Thomas Adams Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, brockadams1@weber.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Interpersonal and Small Group Communication Commons Recommended Citation Adams, Brock Thomas, "Sell Yourself: Building a Foundational Structure Around an Institution's Position in the College Application Process" (2018). LSU Doctoral Dissertations.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4666 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contactgradetd@lsu.
SELL YOURSELF: BUILDING A FOUNDATIONAL STRUCTURE AROUND AN INSTITUTION’S POSITION IN THE COLLEGE APPLICATION PROCESS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Communication Studies by Brock Thomas Adams B., Dixie State University, 2009 M., Southern Utah University, 2012 August 2018 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It’s not what you know, it’s who you know is a phrase that could be engraved on my tombstone as the foundational repetition describing my take on life. That saying is certainly exemplified in the construct of this paper as there are multiple people to whom I am absolutely indebted, who undoubtedly deserve more than just a two-page summary of acknowledgements. First, to my wife Brooke, or my better 9/10 ths. These past three years have been without question the best years of my life.
Yes, it was crazy to get married and move 1,300 miles across the country, but looking back there is no one who I would rather make that leap with than you. You were the driving force behind both this paper, and this degree; and I will forever be grateful for your influence pushing me to be a better person. Second, my advisor and committee chair, Dr. Loretta Pecchioni, who has been one of the most influential academic figures of my graduate career.
Thank you for your insight, your perspective, and your direction during my time at LSU, and through our long-distance correspondence of this paper. You certainly have enlightened my appreciation of Blanche and Rose. To my committee members, Dr. Graham Bodie, Dr.
Renee Edwards, and Dr. I will always look back on my oral defense as one of the most critical points of my scholastic career, in that you pushed me to raise my standards in the realm of academia. Thank you for your analysis, for your authenticity, and your impact on who I am today. To Weber State University, specifically Dr.
David Ferro, and Dr. Thank you for taking a chance on me last spring. Ten years from now I feel a man in a dark trench coat will ask for my soul in return for the incredible opportunity I have been given in the ii Professional Sales program at Weber State. Thank you for figuratively, and literally saving my life.
This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of Admissions Directors Katie Jo Nielsen, Scott Teichert, Dr. Mateo Remsburg, Brandon Wright, Chris Taylor, and Brett Schwartz. Thank you for being as open as you were in this process, and going out of your way to accommodate my data collection. I am always grateful for the women in my life.
For my mother, my sisters, and my grandmother. Thank you for being the beautiful women that you are. There is no question I am the man that I am today because of the impression you have made on me over the years. To my pseudo-father Jonathan Morrell.
Without your advice and your black-hat perspective, there is no way I ever would have walked down this path. Thank you for taking a chance on a punk 17-year old kid. To the man who made me everything that I am, my Grandfather. Everything I know and everything I will know in this life I attribute you to you teaching me to push myself and always improve on a daily basis.
I will continually try to be half the man you were in your life. Finally, to my daughter Sloan, who at this very moment is standing next to me, trying to pull the power cord out of the laptop. You are the greatest thing I will accomplish in my life. Having you here with us has helped me understand that in the grand scheme of things, life is not about ourselves, it’s about others.
You are what my life will be about. Thank you for being that blessing to me. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements. ii List of Tables.
vii List of Figures. ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION. 1 Higher Education Priority. 3 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE.
11 College Selection Process. 11 Communication and Marketing. 21 Higher Education Recruiting. 40 Financial Value and Affordability.
46 Engaging Student Life. 51 Customer Flexibility and Personalization. 60 5 UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY. 64 Categorical Message Content.
76 iv 6 WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY. 79 Categorical Message Content. 91 7 THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH. 94 Categorical Message Content.
106 8 SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY. 110 Categorical Message Content. 122 9 DIXIE STATE UNIVERSITY. 127 Categorical Message Content.
141 Comparison and Contrast. 155 College Selection Process. 167 Limitations and Future Research. CODEBOOK FOR GATHERED DATA.
IRB APPROVAL FORM. 200 vi LIST OF TABLES 1.1 For-Profit Schools Driving Student Loan Debt .1 Observed Presentations of Participating Institutions. 41 vii LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Tuition Growth Has Vastly Outpaced Gains.2 Tuition Has Increased Sharply at Public Colleges and Universities.3 State Funding for Higher Education Remains Far Below Pre-Recession Levels in Most States .1 Perna’s model of student college choice. 17 viii ABSTRACT The act of persuasion, specifically in the context of higher education recruiting, lacks both a breadth and depth of research.
This could be due to economic trends inevitably promoting college attendance for high school seniors. With the recent influx of both online education, as well as for-profit institutions, there has been a shift in the approach to recruiting potential students to enroll at affiliated institutions each year. This study took a qualitative, grounded theory approach to understand both the intended persuasive strategies conceived by participating four-year Universities in the state of Utah, as well as the actual messages delivered to prospective students. Data was gathered through observation and interviewing.
Results showed five themes based on message content: (a) financial value and affordability, (b) academic resilience, (c) engaging student life, (d) optimal location, (e) customer flexibility and personalization, as well as three categories based on message form: (a) narrative, (b) reputational esteem, (c) and fear appeals. The central theoretical idea emerging from the results indicated the narrative paradigm (Fisher, 1984, 1985, 1987) the theoretical backing for this research, with narratives being the most commonly used and shared strategy by the participating institutions. This study is a preliminary approach to help understand the effectiveness of persuasion tactics in the context of recruiting students to pursue an education at the college level. INTRODUCTION Immediately following the completion of my undergraduate degree, I was hired to work for a state institution as a full-time regional recruiter.
My primary focus was to travel across the western United States and convince students they should come pursue an education at a quality institution. At the time of my hiring, the admissions office was undergoing both a hierarchical restructuring, as well as a brand identity crisis. Both factors motivated our office to create our own strategic recruiting plan for prospective students. Our strategic plan began by us asking questions: • How do we convince students that we are the best option for them post-high school? • What are the core messages we want to send in our recruiting presentations? • How can elevate our pitch over other regional competitors? • What segment of the population should we target to ensure the most productive use of our time? In the beginning, we failed to come up with definite answers, or at least answers that could guarantee success.
Consequently, the first few years of our recruiting campaign appeared more trial-and-error, than execution from a definitive set of principles. We tended to use situational data to formulate our own charter and institutional campaign. And we saw success: Within five years, we recruited and retained some of the highest enrollment numbers ever recorded at our institution. We attributed much of that success to three factors: (1) recognition of the niche populations most likely impacted by our institutional offerings, (2) discovery of the core persuasive messages that clicked with our target audience, and (3) tremendous growth in our recruiting skills.
1 In hindsight, the enrollment success potentially influenced the levels of narcissism in my own personal schema. When I stepped away to pursue my doctorate degree in the summer of 2015, I assumed my contributions to the enrollment numbers would drastically decline. My replacement was a young, untested graduate student with no previous recruiting experience. At the time of my departure, they would later unveil a brand-new Customer Relations Management (CRM) software to connect digitally with students.
I felt, however, that recruiting battles were won on the ground through personal interactions with students. My presence on the recruiting trail would be greatly missed. In a shocking fashion, I was not that powerful of a recruiting force, as admissions numbers went through the roof the following year, increasing by an astonishing 317%. Perhaps my presence on the recruiting trail was not as impactful as I once imagined.
This outrageous spike in numbers caused me to question the approach we forged in the previous five years. Are students persuaded to attend a specific institution more by the number of e-mails, text messages and digital connections they make through an expensive software and not by the relationships they make with recruiters? The silver lining to my ego came when I learned the following fall that although admissions numbers had skyrocketed, enrollment numbers had plateaued. They were nearly identical to reported enrollment numbers the previous summer and were slightly lower than two previous years’ enrollment. These trends caused me and my former colleagues to question the validity of the persuasive recruiting tactics we had used and the implementation of the new software.
Was there really no method to our madness? Is it all just pure luck? Is there no correlation with enrollment counts and the persuasive ability of college recruiters? Is there a formulaic approach to achieving success in higher education 2 recruitment, or are enrollment numbers out of the hands of admissions offices? These questions are not unique to our situation, but have been repeatedly asked as admissions offices and social researchers deliberate over the driving factors that push a student to attend their institution. In this study, I will examine strategies used by various universities in the state of Utah who have similar traits and target similar markets. I will observe presentations delivered by several recruiters and look to uncover consistent themes and patterns existing in their assigned content. Additionally, I will look to understand whether communication theories can be applied to the influence of higher education recruiting, and whether universities can use these theories to center a competitive advantage.
During my time as an admissions officer, we would repeatedly pilot different approaches to decipher the most effective influential strategy. While we saw success with some of our efforts, there was never a uniform core strategy we felt we could rely on in our delivery. The purpose of this study is to gain a macro-perception of higher education strategies in the state of Utah by taking hands-on content being delivered to current high school students, and understand whether there is a theoretical backdrop to which it can be placed.