Digital Swag and College Students: Exploring 21st Century Digital Admissions, Recruitment, and Yield Collateral
The United States’ college-going population is approaching a “looming enrollment cliff” in 2025 (Kline 2019, para. 3), owed in part to the United States’ declining birth rate, largely due to the 2008 Great Recession. Economists forecast that the number of college students will fall by more than 15% after the year 2025, with the sharpest declines in the Midwest (WI, IL, IN, Ohio) and North Atlantic (NY, MA, PA) (Kline 2019) regions. Moreover, the entire globe is amidst an ongoing technological revolution akin to the Dot Com boom in the 1990s, led by advances in computer processors, physical memory storage, lithium metal batteries, and graphics card speed (Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2021). These technological advances have helped facilitate higher education’s mass movement toward online learning and virtual reality education environments (Marks and Thomas 2022). Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused considerable strain to humanity, and neither institutions nor students are or have been exempt from this strain. Nearly one million fewer students enrolled in higher education as of the Spring 2022 semester from when the pandemic began in March 2020 (Whitford 2022). On the institution side, from 2020 to 2021, colleges and universities cut 650,000 jobs, representing nearly 13% of the overall postsecondary workforce in the United States (Bauman 2021). As of 2022, many institutions across the country are still not operating at full capacity and are suffering through both budget cuts and lost positions in addition to a hypercompetitive labor market (Wadhwani 2022).
Ultimately, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed how enrollment management offices recruit prospective students, especially given declines in enrollment. Subsequently, many recruitment and yield budgets may have been trimmed, resulting in less physical “swag” for students (an acronym for “stuff we all get,” including physical items such as pennants, posters, t-shirts, notebooks, and more), known to be an important tool for yielding students and spreading institutional brand awareness (Selingo 2020). Given the challenges facing enrollment managers across the country, perhaps these managers could consider a 21st century marketing strategy that has revolutionized many other facets of society and could help recruit and yield college students: digital swag.
As early as 2006, several colleges and universities created “digital swag” for both prospective and current student audiences. This digital swag has included digital stickers and gifs signaling an admitted students’ anticipated graduation year, desktop wallpapers, branded Zoom backgrounds, and customized Snapchat and Instagram filters. Of the earliest adopters of “digital swag,” the University of Notre Dame, Cal State-Long Beach, and the College of William & Mary all publish extensive collections of digital swag on their websites. For the College of William & Mary, their digital swag is so their students can say “You made it! Share the good news and deck out your phone” (William & Mary 2022, para. 1).
Ultimately, in the past decade, the rise of cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have proven evidence that society is quickly moving many aspects of their lives into the digital realm. Now, people can exchange digital currency for digital goods from anywhere in the world, and recently, the University of Pennsylvania began accepting cryptocurrency as a form of tuition payment (Mulligan 2021). Moreover, NFT philanthropy is on the rise, as dozens of institutions across the country have created and sold NFTs to raise funds for capital projects, scholarships, and more (Whitford 2022). Given these population and technological shift, coupled with the challenges facing higher education and enrollment management budgets, an exploration into digital swag seems important.
Which one or two theme(s) best describe the presentation? Enterprise and Technology Systems , Enrollment and Student Services
What Professional Application does this sessions apply to? What other institutions are creating for 'digital swag' and how to adopt similar approaches at their institution.
Presentation Begins:
Tuesday, July 12, 2022 at 12:10 PM Eastern Time
Presented By:
Zach Taylor, University of Southern Mississippi