Why students keep flunking school sites [Reality Check!]

09 Nov

Posted by Sam Jackson as Admissions, Internets, Teenagers, marketing

College websites were rated worse this year than the last–I’m not surprised that this is the ninth straight year of decline, and you shouldn’t be either.

TargetX is generally pretty spot-on with their weekly e-mail minute (though not always) and a few weeks ago they wrote about a survey of 100,000+ college-bound students polled by the National Research Center for College & University Admissions. I don’t know much about the NRCCUA and I know little about the methodology or criteria of this survey because I don’t care to pay $1000 to find out. Point notwithstanding, their ‘enrollment power index’ purports to show approval ratings of college websites dropping year over year.

How ugly were the results? “Only 140 A’s, along with 713 B’s, 1,369 C’s, 635 D’s and 230 F’s. No sites scored in the 90’s or 80’s on the 100-point scale, only 16 scored in the 70’s, and nearly one third of the schools earned scores in the 50’s or 60’s.” Still, minimalism aside, it’s a bizarre methodology which has Lawrence University’s website as the #1 website. It’s not bad, it’s just… not great.

As I see it this is because of two things:

Continual failure of college websites to meet basic needs, and
The increased scope of demands made by students as consumers of this web content.

For the first, let me relate a story that I told at the college board forum and have repeated elsewhere: when I was filling out applications and getting teacher recommendation envelopes together, it took me essentially an entire weekend to find the addresses of ten school admissions offices because of inconsistencies across sites and with the common app listings. Unacceptable! For the second point–things like “the ability to apply online” should be givens, really, in 2007. From carbon footprints to student stress to student outreach, anything less is untenable.

College websites have to serve a lot of different audiences in very distinct ways, but so many need not fail the grade as much as they do. Hopefully we’ll see some more positive developments, though I have to ask–please don’t model them off Lawrence University! Let’s try for something a little more innovative.

3 Responses

Zach

November 9th, 2007 at 10:50 am
1

How did they get any As if nobody scored 90s or 80s? Some sort of twisted curve?
higher ed marketing » Friday Five: not that you asked, but…

November 9th, 2007 at 11:55 am
2

[...] web designers and managers: Sam Jackson’s take on why college and university web sites don’t make the [...]
Ryan Kellett

November 9th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
3

This is such an accurate description of how higher ed websites are flawed. From my perspective, Middlebury is particularly behind the times and doesn’t really even recognize the overwhelming needs of students who are increasingly bypassing on-campus technology by forwarding their email, using Google calendars, etc. My big push is convincing the administration that even though students are more “busy” online than before and don’t necessarily have more schoolwork, students are finding themselves burdened by the inefficiency of navigating of online educational bureaucracy. Every time a student receives an unnecessary email or every time a student can’t find that one critical scrap of thesis requirement info or every time a student spends time trying to schedule a meeting is time wasted and creates stressed students overloaded with simply existing in higher education.

RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI

Who is Sam Jackson?

I'm currently a sophomore at Yale University and I've been blogging about college admissions and higher education marketing trends since I began my college application process in 2005. I now also write about my experience here at Yale, and am an official Yale blogger. Click here to read my 'about' page.

Kind words about my blog:

Andrew Careaga calls it “a service to all of us in the higher ed marketing business.”

Christian Long says it has “dramatically inspired college admissions folks to take notice”

Bob Johnson says “I like [it] because I agree with so much of what he says.” and that “Paying attention what Sam writes will let you focus more closely on students who will actually attend your school.”

Karine Joly says my witty and fresh style “offers a rare glimpse at the mind of our elusive prospective students”

and TargetX calls my blog “good reading” and me “wise-beyond-my-years.”