I've been referring to a Noel-Levitz study, "Circling Over Enrollment: The E-Expectations of the Parents of College-Bound Students" for a couple months now. Came across it originally on a couple blogs last summer. The blog entries were by people who heard the study's PI speak about it at a conference. Within the last week, I noticed the report was now publicly available on the Noel-Levitz website. The results, I think, are important because they provide a laundry list of the expectations and behaviors of parents of college-bound students.
The study's PI is Stephanie Geyer, associate v-p at Noel-Levitz, and the data is drawn from the responses of 496 parents or guardians who said that they used the Web to help students research colleges and universities. The report details relationships, age, highest education or degree and family household income. Here's a snapshot of the findings.
How involved are parents? 70% stated they were doing at least some of the college research and paperwork for their children and 80% indicated that parent and child would agree upon a particular school together. Assuming (and yes I know what happens when we assume) that this is pretty representative of parents attitudes then parents are quite involved in this important choice.
Social networking as recruiting tools: Maybe you have been part of a discussion asking should the university and/or a college have a site on MySpace and/or Facebook. The UA incidentally, has a very attractive site on Facebook. I am guessing it is managed by External Relations or UA News. You need to log in to your own account on Facebook to see it, so I'm not putting a link in this entry. However, it is interesting to see what UA related sites are in Facebook. If you have an account log in and search on "University of Arizona" to see: University of Arizona hearts are with Virginia Tech, The Human Rights Campaign at The University of Arizona, EEB advising - University of Arizona, The ONE Campaign - University of Arizona Chapter. Back to topic - the survey found largely that parents have not been looking for university information on these sites. A couple thoughts on this. Since you need to have a log in, parents are not able to simply pull these sites up in a browser. We know that many many many students have Facebook accounts so maybe what we need to do is put a parents section on these sites so the children can show them to the parents. Give them a reason. If you build it they will come might actually work for something other than dead baseball players.
What content do parents value? Now remember that this survey focused on websites. Parents ranked their interests this way: academic programs or majors, scholarships, adminissions requirements, tuition and fees, campus safety, financial aid, info for parents of prospective students, accreditation, info for accepted students, visiting campus, payment plan options, housing and residence life, faculty and teaching, graduate rates, student life and activities, job placement rates. A comment suggested that there be a "parents" tab on the website. What a great idea - make it easy for parents, draw them into a space, feed them the info they want, and you might be able then to entice them to get involved in the parents and family association, give to the annual fund, and provide useful feedback.
How should you communicate with parents? Parents showed strong preferences for written communications, both print and electronic. A list shows which topics are of the greatest interest.
Tuition, aid, scholarship info. 94%Additionally, parents expect their main liaisons to the university are admissions counselors and financial aid counselors. However, the survey found that they still expect to hear from other campus personnel during the admissions process.
Dates, deadlines, procedures 84%
Applicaiton status 76%
Residence life details 74%
Visit Opportunities 70%
Academic program details 69%
Location/campus info. 69%
Student life details 65%
Virtual tour/campus views 50%
Mission, vision, values 47%
Religious affinity/campus ministry 38%
Athletic program details 43%
Comments & Ideas This survey looked at parents use of the institution's website to find info, or look for what they wanted. We all know some institutions have not done a very good job at website usability so making a tab for parents on the homepage sounds like a great idea to me. Also, I would not presume that because these parents were not engaged by social networking that we should ignore it. Promoting it and doing a good job with it might give us a competitive advantage. Students are commenting on the UA's Facebook site. This means they are connecting with us - feeling like a Wildcat. I think we have a great opportunity to reach parents using videos and YouTube. We could create short videos addressing the topics that these parents identified for us as the important ones. We can stream them off our webpages (in the parents section) and we can upload them to YouTube - including in a parents playlist in the UA's channel. We can shoot short videos of admissions counselors and financial aid counselors talking directly to parents through the camera. We can have short videos stepping parents through where to find the info they want. Seems a lot more useful than having them get frustrated thumbing virtually through webpages. We can English profs discussing the freshman reading list, why certain books were selected; we can have short videos greeting parents by the President, selected deans, students, the chair of the parents/family association, and maybe the Foundation president. Afterall, if we can make them feel like a Wildcat, what are they more apt to do?
Finally, I've been reading and talking a good bit about helicopter parents these days. Helicopter parents are parents perceived to be overly involved in their student's life. Google it or search The Chronicle. You'll find more negative articles about helicopter parents than positive. The question in my mind is how then can we channel that interest, however zealous it may be? If we can win them over by providing them with the information they need, if we can provide videos of the campus and student life that helps alleviate concerns and uncertainty, then maybe we can make these parents feel like a Wildcat.
Forgot to mention - and perhaps you already know - but the UA Parents & Family Association does have a f/b presence, although as with any web site, it's all about content... I don't believe it's been updated recently:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/University-of-Arizona-Parents-Family-Association/13207194926
Great info, Stuart - appreciate you contextualizing the findings, and your ideas around what we could do to harness this group at the UA. I'm passing on to others so we can hopefully get a dialogue going about the possibilities.