Interview by Leah Thayer
Heather Hoerle is executive director of The Enrollment Management Association (formerly known as SSATB), which provides professional development, research, training, testing services and other resources to help independent schools optimize enrollment outcomes. She joined the organization in 2011 after more than 20 years with the National Association of Independent Schools and previous positions as an independent school administrator, student advisor and teacher. A graduate and former board member of Westtown School, she is currently on the board of NBOA, Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart and the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools.
Learn more about the Enrollment Management Association at enrollment.org.
1
The organization known for 59 years as SSATB officially became The Enrollment Management Association on August 1. Congratulations! How has the reception been?
We couldn’t be more pleased. When we wrote our strategic plan in 2012, we knew then that our name and identity didn’t support who we were as an organization. The rebranding effort was a 15-month process, so of course we were nervous before the launch — I don’t think I slept at all on July 31! But the response from our members has been really positive — almost anticlimactic in a good way.
The key to the successful rollout, besides our amazing marketing director, was the terrific support and guidance we received from a company called Mission Minded, a San Francisco branding firm that works only with nonprofits. They did a lot of research with members, board members, staff and others in the independent school community. They also facilitated a deep dive with internal staff and board members allowing our team to work together to build buy-in for the name change and everything associated with it, including our new visual identity, the language for communicating the change, and a “brand book” that reinforces our brand values, positioning, personality and promise.
At the heart of all of this was research that confirmed our anecdotal sense that our old name didn’t reflect the strategic importance of enrollment management within independent schools. Mission Minded also found that many people were confused by our name — there was a sense we existed mainly to sell tests, and even that we were a for-profit company. That was a punch in the stomach. Basically, the acronym had zero connection to who we are in 2016.
2
A powerful statement runs through the rebranding: “We believe that admission practices of the past will not sustain independent schools of the future.” Please elaborate.
Well into the 1990s, the independent school world rode a wave of good times. We experienced tremendous growth, and the money was easier to come by. Some admission professionals were considered cruise directors in a way — friendly gatekeepers who took as many families as possible on tours to keep the pipeline full.
When the economic crisis hit in 2008, along with the growth in home-schooling and charter schools and online learning, and shifting demographics, we realized that admission had to evolve — as it already had in colleges — to embrace the concept of strategic enrollment. According to NAIS DASL data, tuition and fees generate 92.4 percent of all revenue for day schools and 69.4 percent of revenue for boarding schools. That money comes in through what I refer to as the “chief revenue officer” — the admission leader and his or her office. These “chief revenue officers” and their teams can no longer rely on just a great reputation to enroll students when external factors are becoming more and more challenging.
To compound this situation, in 2013 we published our first State of the Independent School Admission Industry report and found that many admission professionals felt they weren't valued or given leadership opportunities in their schools. Similarly, we found that many were seeking professional development and training in the areas of data/finance, marketing, leadership and assessment to succeed in this challenging environment.
Today’s enrollment management professionals need to use all the levers available to them. They need to be able to articulate their school’s value proposition versus similar or less costly alternatives, forecast and prepare for demographic shifts, analyze data, communicate outcomes-based research, and source and recruit and of course retain students. We want them to take advantage of the science, research and training we offer so their schools can compete in the new landscape.
3
What can independent schools learn from the evolving competition?
The majority of schools are going to have to innovate and change the way they operate. Some of the worst situations come from a rush to get kids into schools without properly considering whether they’re a good fit. When students and families aren’t a good fit, faculty morale suffers and then of course students suffer.
If a school’s natural audience is in decline, a better question might be whether you should be a smaller and more focused school. It’s critical for schools to know their value proposition, how to strengthen it and how to articulate it. When you look at the new competition they can easily articulate their value and differentiating factors in one sentence.
Many of these schools offer personalized, project or online learning. School leadership should be in discussions about whether they can compete with these styles or perhaps innovate with these styles. So many of these answers hinge on a close examination of your mission and market and the important nuances within each market. Cleveland is so different from Philadelphia, which is so different from Boston or Seattle.
4
What schools have gotten ahead of the trends?
One school that took note early is Episcopal Academy, in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. In the 1990s the school was more than 200 years old and in a position of immense strength, with high demand among families and beloved by alumni. But they were working with a marketing expert named Jeff Wack, who at the time was on the Yale faculty. He was among the few people who basically said independent schools would be following the cycle of the economy, and that the tech bubble would pop and stop the free flow of money.
Thankfully, the Episcopal Board was willing to dig in and look to the future to secure their success over the long term. With great leadership, they looked 10 years out and saw that they would be in a much more competitive landscape that would require them to either downsize or relocate to meet a different, high-growth demographic market. They made a hard decision and chose to physically move their campus off Philadelphia’s main line out to where the growth was expected. As a result, the school was incredibly successful in the market because of the strength of their brand and program.
We’ve seen other schools be similarly proactive by looking into merging two schools together, exploring partnerships with schools in other parts of the world, and generally just being willing to think differently about how they head into the future. Another example is Miss Porter’s School, which created a brilliant program focused on building leadership in middle school girls. There are leadership weekends and summer programs and a microsite, and overall, it’s been an amazing feeder for the school.
5
Do you see the competitive challenges as so profound that no independent school can rest on its laurels?
Yes. Even the strongest institutions need to do a better job of getting in front of families. I think the work of the next few years is to be a lot smarter about sourcing and wooing students who may not know about your school. We’ve found that families are stealthy in how they research schools. They do a lot of online searching and often won’t present themselves until they’re ready.
One thing we’re doing at the Enrollment Management Association is trying to “catch” families when they come to us for the SSAT. Besides offering resources to help them learn more about the process, we also seek to learn more about them and what they’re looking for, and then, with their permission, provide our schools with lists so they can contact families that might be a good match. We want to do for independent schools what the PSAT does for colleges. Essentially, we want to serve as a goldmine for sourcing students.
6
What else can independent schools learn from the college application process?
The Common Application for colleges and universities might not be perfect, but it’s important to appreciate its exponential growth and the potential it represents for streamlining the application process and making it easier for students to apply to more schools. What we put families through — the byzantine process of having to complete multiple, different applications — is ridiculous.
Likewise, a number of small colleges have been wonderfully innovative. Southern New Hampshire University has more than quadrupled in size by developing online certification programs for the growing numbers of older students going into second careers. They chose to make a different appeal to a different kind of clientele. And schools like Middlebury College and Elon University, well-respected colleges with mostly regional reputations, developed strategic sourcing programs that have helped them develop into more competitive national and even international institutions.
When the school application process is confusing, we create barriers to educational opportunity. Simplifying the application process allows enrollment leaders to focus on making the right match between school and applicant. Similar to the Common App, we offer our members the Standard Application Online to ease the application process for students and schools. It allows families to use a single website to submit applications to a variety of independent schools that align with their interests, while also allowing schools to collect biographic information, teacher recommendations and transcripts online with the opportunity to customize the application. Nearly 500 schools accept the SAO, and on average users find a 20 percent increase in applications the first year. Even more so for those schools that use the service exclusively. That tells me that families see the need to simplify the process.
7
What’s your hope for the greater coalition of independent schools?
We need to do a better job with messaging as an industry. I feel strongly that we’re more independent than collaborative. That confuses parents who are new to us — who don’t understand our story as independent schools, or how to access us. Compare this to a model like GEMS World Academy, where a single website tells the story of branches in Chicago as well as the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe. Well, what is the story of independent schools? What is our promise, what are the outcomes we provide? We know on average that our kids score higher on standardized tests, and are happier and do better, but we need to coalesce all this data in a powerful way to tell the independent
school story.
Some organizations are doing a good job with this. The Association of Boarding Schools has been looking at trend lines for boarding schools, where there’s been a significant decline of domestic boarders and an increase in international full-pay families. They convened a group of experts to create The North American Boarding Initiative, and developed a series of recommendations and marketing initiatives aimed at domestic families, including a program aimed at attracting 2,020 new boarding school families to independent boarding schools by 2020. What NABI is doing for boarding schools, we need to do with all independent schools.
