A descriptive study of enrollment marketing strategies for four -year public colleges and universities

Choosing a college education is only one of many choices a student has for post-secondary education or training. The current change in the university campus environment is creating a change in the marketing environment. A higher education institution must continually adapt its marketing efforts to keep pace with the changing needs of its constituency---the students. The institution must know its public and its market to be able to attract adequate resources and convert them into services for its public. The nature and function of higher educational institutions is changing due to changes in the attitudes of the consumer. Higher education administrators must think in the same terms as the private sector business world; Higher education institutions are faced with declining enrollments, mounting financial pressures, diminishing public confidence, and an increasing member of nontraditional students and studies. Due to these and other factors, enrollment management strategies including strategies from marketing have been established to evaluate recruitment; The purpose of this study is to utilize examples of selected Western regional four-year public higher education institutions for effective marketing programs for enrollment. The institutions studied were four-year public higher education institutions in the 15 Western United States as defined by U.S. News & World Report: America\u27s Best Colleges 1999. (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.) The intent of the study was to determine the use of marketing strategies for four-year public higher education institutions; The primary data-gathering instrument was a questionnaire developed to collect data and was administered to those who manage the responsibility for enrollment management and/or marketing. The selected marketing elements used as a basis for the questionnaire were: competitive environment, demographics, market, marketing, marketing mix, marketing segmentation, marketing strategy, media plan and psychographics. The study was a descriptive, mixed-methodology research design. Regarding strategic marketing efforts, items of the study included: the differences in marketing efforts and the development of strategies, funding between institutions, differences in undergraduate enrollment of the institution, and the size of the institutions surrounding community. The results from this study have helped to clarify the what marketing strategies are used in public higher education Western region institutions. And which strategies are used for enrollment marketing