The Staff Morale Crisis in College Admissions with Teege Mettille

Speaker 1  0:00  
You're listening to Filling Seats, the state of enrollment marketing in Higher Ed, hosted by StudentBridge. In this podcast, you'll learn what's working to grow, shape and sustain enrollment at colleges and universities directly from fellow enrollment marketers, thought leaders and Ed Tech innovators.

Host  0:18  
Hello and welcome to today's episode of filling seats, Episode 48 of our webcast or Videocast series. Today, I'm joined by very special guest, Teege Mettille, where we talk about the staff morale crisis in college admissions. And Teege is very up to speed on this, as he's begun well before we even get into it. Teege, tell us about yourself, and I know you're an author of fantastic book. Give us a little bit of background of who Teege is, please.

Teege Mettille  0:42  
Oh, man, thank you for saying that about the book. Yeah, my name is Teege Mettille. I am the Director of Enrollment Success at 'enroll ml'. It's an ed tech company that helps admissions counselors identify the right students to connect with. And in that work, I did research and started to understand a different perspective on what was zapping the morale or the joy out of the admissions profession, specifically for admissions counselors, and through a series of odd connections and thoughts, it ended with a book The Admissions Counselor Malaise, really zeroing in on what's gone wrong in our profession to create the morale crisis that we are experiencing now. My background is entirely in admissions. I should add right on the college campus, I was an Admissions Counselor, you know, Assistant Director, Associate Director, Director, Dean, Vice President, the whole nine yards before I stepped over to this role.

Host  1:33  
So which side's the dark side?

Teege Mettille  1:37  
That is a really fair question. I gotta tell you, from a calendaring perspective, it's definitely the college campus side.

Host  1:44  
Well, good luck teach. Thank you for taking the time today. So talk about staff morale seems to be a global issue. I know that you and I have spoken in pre production about some notes on this and some talking points. Staff morale overall seems down in most industries, most businesses. Is this a bigger program in education than you see in other industries? Or you just, you just living and breathing education?

Teege Mettille  2:09  
That's a really good question, because that was the first thought I had. Is something different happening here? And I think there is, you know, there are global trends that are happening that are impacting higher education the same way they are. Everybody else, work from home, policies, work life, balance, income inequality, all of those things are hitting us the same way everybody else. But there are some acute challenges, specifically as it relates to the mission driven folks that are attracted to our profession, and the changing focus and changing priorities of the institutions.

Host  2:44  
Now we've we get StudentBridge have also been helping University colleges, been really kind of involved in the industry since 2006 we've seen a lot of change. We've been through the the mortgage crisis, the housing crisis, then, then the pandemic. We see this look a lot of a lot of industries, they go work from home, and they decide, I'm an accountant, I can actually do this all right, from home. But with universities, there's that, you know, universities make a big investment into their into their facilities, their buildings, their campus. They're, they're proud of all those facilities, buildings and campus and so and then, of course, you know, we long heard, hey, we can get the student here. We can enroll them so that the importance of face to face as far as to their customer, which we're not allowed to say, but customer being the student. And then when, when the kind of work from home kind of came back to the return to Office, the RTO mandates schools were very soon, I mean, very early, getting people back in restaurant, restaurants and schools or colleges, universities. And you saw the problem with restaurants, well, we don't have staff. Sorry, we can't get the staff. And you had this the same thing. Have you seen that play out in education, where literally just people were forced to come back in. And I'm not saying forces. It's probably right for the business. I'm not saying it's not right for the business, but the mandate was there to come back in. And they just like, You know what? I spent six months out and so I don't want to go back into an office. I want to put my I don't mind dressing tightly from the waist up for a zoom call, but I want to wear shorts and a Fluffy, fluffy bear of bunny slivers. I mean, where, where do you feel that some of us morales kind of come in globally, as well as an education.

Teege Mettille  4:19  
Jonathan, it's perfect that you ask that, because I'm wearing sweatpants right now, although I am a suit and tie or, you know, button up shirt with a tie up top. Very tidy. Yeah. Well, so here's the thing, this is a perfect example of how it's impacting education differently. Because, yes, the pandemic happened. Everybody got used to work from home, and you singled out restaurants and education as the first to come back. And, of course, retail stores as well. You know, there are others, but here's what was different for education. You know, wait staff at restaurants were not told during the pandemic. Wow, you're doing such great work at home. It's amazing. The impact you're able to make from your kitchen, the fact that you can do this work from your living room, while juggling kids being home. Is so impressive, and we're so proud of you, but that is what college campus staff were told that we were, I think, desolate, in order to keep us motivated during the pandemic. But we did find that we were able to do our work from home, right? So when the return to Office mandates came out, and they were mandates, otherwise we wouldn't have come back to the we wouldn't have come back, right? So when those came back, it was a little more acute for college campuses than elsewhere, because we were among the first, and we had felt like we could do our work from home, and we're told that by our leadership. But the other thing that I think is important to note, and this is why we were among the first to get return to Office. Institutions didn't just build, you know, the buildings and the grounds and the environment. They built community that they were really proud of. And you cannot, no matter what anyone says, You cannot have that community by Zoom, and I'll stand by that to to the the strongest advocate for work from home policy. So I, I don't disagree with the return to Office, mandate, but it did hit differently for education. 

Host  6:04  
Funny say about the man being a mandate. So I remember, it was March. I just come back from Europe, actually, where COVID is already hitting and it hadn't hit the US yet. So we're about a week ahead and a week before. My colleagues in the UK said it's bad. You need to do something. So I go to our team, I say, team, look because it's not impending pandemic, incoming pandemic. You can all work from home. Car screech out. The people left so quickly. I mean, I don't think I've finished my sentence the day we said, like, months late. So we proved we're early when we're a week before it's declared a pandemic. We, we we said to everyone, work from home. When we said, hey, we're going to start easing our way back in, it wasn't met with the same enthusiasm. So I totally understand that. Look, you know that I think the employee tried for a big culture shift, using the pandemic as the catalyst for that big work style shift, but so look, why is it coming to the fore now, look, we're talking about this today, 2024 it's November, 2024 not to age our podcast, but you're allowed to do that. And so November 2024 Why is, why is this kind of still going on with staff morale? Why? Why? Look, we adjusted to the new normal of working from home within 25 minutes? Why are we not adjusting to this, like, exactly three years later? Yep,

Teege Mettille  7:16  
Because, and this is, this is the theory that I put forward in the book, and the speeches I give about this, in the in the presentations, the morale challenge is not from the pandemic. The pandemic just revealed it right. It was almost like the tide washed out, and we saw what was under the water. And we don't like what is left behind. So when we were able to work from home, we had much more autonomy. We were connecting with students in new and different ways, and we felt like we were making a difference and making an impact in a way that had slowly been kind of receding away from us. You know, when we came back from the pandemic, everybody felt the morale challenge, and we had a few different explanations, right? You know, at first when everybody came back and, you know, you know, the mood everywhere, right? It was, was not good for anybody, anywhere.

Host  8:09  
Road rage, air rage, every rage, crazy, right? Yeah

Teege Mettille  8:13  
Zoom rage, every time that Microsoft Teams dance started. Oh, yeah, yeah, I know, yeah, I broke so many laptops against the wall because of that team. But when we came back college campuses first, the explanation for what was wrong was just that. It was the pandemic. There was nothing wrong with the work environment, with campus culture, the campus community. It was just people are unhappy at work because they're unhappy everywhere, and this will go away, but it didn't. So then, as that became clear, campus leadership said, You know what? What really is the problem is laundry and other work from home, things. People got used to being able to do their laundry in between meetings or even during meetings if they don't have their camera on, right? How do I know you're not folding your laundry while you're sitting in staff meeting? The people got used to taking their kids to the doctor without taking the day off, things like that and that, until they get used to being back in the office, they're going to be frustrated. Well, that didn't explain it, either. And then came the the final explanation, which I think is the most offensive, which is just and you've heard this, Jonathan, the the statement that nobody wants to work anymore. That's the problem. Nobody wants to work anymore. It's a work ethic problem

Host  9:20  
and I may have even been guilty of saying that at times. I have, I have said it too. Yes, that's like sitting in traffic complaining about the traffic. You know, you are kind of part of the problem at that point. And so, yeah, I I think that I've questioned morale and work ethic and work morals and everything else, and the EQ compass at the office. I mean, I've questioned all that stuff. But I agree. Look, I think that it's, we're a big believer, actually, when we, when we consult with our, with our partner, institutions, about finding the root cause. And quite often, as humans, we rush to pointing a problem that actually isn't the true problem. It's like, so like you say, it's the fact you've said pandemic, the launch, doing the laundry, work ethic. So, so what is the problem? I mean, I know you said. A problem, but it has no name. Talk about it.

Teege Mettille  10:02  
Yes. Well, so Jonathan, this is one of the few cases where my undergraduate degree in women's studies is coming tangibly in hand, right when I let

Host  10:11  
me tell you, however, say that again, your undergraduate degree was in women's

Teege Mettille  10:15  
studies, okay, currently kind of conceptualized as gender studies on most campuses. Okay, let me tell you, Jonathan, as a first generation college student, having to call your mom to say, I'm changing from pre law to women's studies, which was quite a call to make, right?

Host  10:29  
But I'm sure she was actually very proud. But the world doesn't need another lawyer, correct?

Teege Mettille  10:38  
So in during in my Women's Studies curriculum, I was assigned to read the book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan . And while I was assigned it in college, I read it for the first time, very recently. And in that book, Feminine Mystique, it is rightly credited as kind of kicking off the second wave of the feminist movement, or what we think of in the US in the 60s, right? But what that book did is it identified 1950s suburban housewives. Okay, a subset of the population at the time had a a problem. They were unhappy with their life, even though they had all the conveniences they were supposed to have, right? They had the house in the suburbs. They had the grocery budget. They had all of the modern tools and conveniences. They had the best CRMs and and texting platforms or whatever their versions is, right? They had everything they were supposed to have, just like admissions counselors do today, but they just weren't happy. And they weren't happy because there was a challenge. There was a problem that was fairly universal, but no one talked about it. It was a problem that has no name, and that conceptualization really stuck with me, that admissions counselors, that's where I made the leap from Betty Friedan to admissions counselors. We're all having this problem, this kind of gnawing sense that something's not quite right, that something's missing, but we're not talking about it. We're not identifying it correctly. We're focusing on whether or not you're working from home, as opposed to whether or not your work has value and meaning like it used to. And so that, that was the admissions counselor malaise. The problem that has no name is that our job has lost its meaning, and that's what we have to address. We don't we don't have to address laundry during the work day. That's not the issue that won't solve it, that didn't cause it. The cause is deeper. Like, like you said, Jonathan, there's a deeper root cause.

Host  12:28  
What I'm as an employer of a great team. And you know, we haven't always got it right, and we've had our own, our own kind of staff retention issues, if you want to call it that, at times. But like, there's, there's this thing though, that, look, what I do believe that if you're hitting your numbers and doing great work, I don't care if you are on the moon, right? I don't care. Reality is, reality is, that's the, that's the textbook perfect Utopia world, right? Where, where we are, everyone can be trusted to do and I use the word Trust, everyone could be relied upon to do their best at all times or or not at all times just get the job done. I think the the element of of that kind of putting that responsibility on everyone to know where the guardrails are when they work from home was almost, it's almost, almost like putting a jar of candy in front of the kid, and it's like, okay, you can't tell the kid off. You put a jar of candy in front of them, because them. Can you tell the kid off? Because could the kid have known not to dig in there? It's like the temptation, like, Hey, you you sit at home, you see a dirty piece of laundry on the floor, you're going to deal with it, right? Because it's in your mind at the office, it wouldn't be in your mind. You just, I know, I think that, to me, is more about that. I mean, I really believe in the power of collaboration. I really believe in the power of serendipity. I love walking through and just grabbing someone grabs me five minutes someone today just jumped up. From there we were in an open space office, and he jumped up said, Hey, do you have a good dry cleaner around here? Well, he wouldn't have done that over zoom, just quick zoom call, who's got a good dry cleaner and so, so basically, just, there's a certain part, but yeah, I agree, like, I think that there's we focus too much on the wrong things. That's human, human, human nature, I guess. But let's talk about the pressure the university is under, like enrollment pressure. So then you've got this we've got these resources, the employer ease that we've hired to try and help build the business and do something with the business. You've got external forces. Demographic clears less funding, and they meet in the middle where the leadership's Ah, they're living that. They're living the problem. And then so talk a minute about that. Like, how have you seen the the enrollment pressure of recent years changing as well, that the extra pressure to succeed leading into your morale crisis?

Teege Mettille  14:41  
It's interesting because the the demographic slide, or the cliff, or the, you know, the devolution, whatever you want to, want to say it's real. We've seen it coming since 2008 it's it's no surprise, right? Whole books have been written about this. Whole conferences have been built around it. And yet, for most institutions, it's just kind of been sneaking up. Because we've become used to operating one year out right, and just thinking about, what do we need to do to meet next year's budget? How do we recruit the class? And thinking 5 10, years out is not it's not well suited to the current demands facing college,

Host  15:16  
not the way we're programmed, right? Is what you're saying kind of in the Yeah, so, yep, yep

Teege Mettille  15:20  
Correct. And that's because, in part, we are, we're mission driven organizations. And so if what a smart thing to do, I think would have been 15 years ago to say, wow, we're living in good times. Now. It's not always going to be this way. Let's not spend every dollar fulfilling the mission. Let's, let's set some aside for for rainy days, and we would have been better able to handle things. But that's not how we're programmed. That's not how we think, right? If, if there's an extra $1,000 in the budget this year, we do have $1,000 of services we can give students, right? And if there's 10,000 we we can think of 10,000 right? There's no end there to ways we can better serve students, so that puts us in a tough spot as a decline is coming. 

Host  16:06  
So look, you talk about the core prioritization of higher ed. Oh yes, I do. Yes, that's something that we'd love to talk about. And I thought this is, like, really unique, like when I when I was reading and doing some of the kind of early notes with yourself, but it's actually a really interesting take that I hadn't thought of before. You've got a mission. People that have come into a role as a mission. Maybe they even were a student at the university. They did some internship in the enrollment office, maybe some college tours. They did something then, then a job opening, opened up. They never even left the college university. They're mission based, and all of a sudden it's a business. Talk to me a little about that, how you've seen that make a difference. 

Teege Mettille  16:44  
You're spot on to the challenge, right? And this is what I think we have to wrestle with. The solution may not be immediate, evident or clear, or even comfortable for us, but I think this is what's really going on when we recruit admissions counselors to take the shop. When we were recruited to be admissions counselors, we were not brought in to sit, you know, with excitement of like, if you take this job, wow, you're going to do such a you're going to make such an impact helping the Political Science Department reduce their budget pressure in 2027 by $252 per per student, right? That's not what is getting people up. Meeting net revenue targets is not driving your admissions counselors. They're aware of it. We understand it's there. But what's driving admissions counselors and how we're recruiting them into the job, is the promise to make a difference. You're going to make a difference in the lives of students. Yeah, so

Host  17:36  
let's talk about that difference of like, kind of empathy, different roles,

Teege Mettille  17:40  
uh huh,

Host  17:41  
the boards, the presidents, that's all I'm thinking of, isn't it?

Teege Mettille  17:44  
So it's all they're thinking and all they should be thinking of, right? Like that's exactly correct and and we could, we could hire admissions counselors who don't have this mindset. We won't. Could we do? I mean, we don't want admissions counselors who are not mission driven. I think that's kind of at the end of the day, the VPS for enrollment don't want that. We could post these roles as sales jobs. We could, and we would get a different set of people, and we would not like the outcome. So, oh, go ahead.

Host  18:17  
No no. So you met you as you speak. I love speaking to you. It makes you it makes me smile, because about six years ago, a vendor at a at an industry trade event for higher ed, it was an ed tech company. Wasn't us. I put in, like, the the the Educate higher ed, swearboard, the swear word board, yeah, it was like customers business selling something, and it was the idea of, like, all these terms, they make people uncomfortable and mission based, because you don't want to think you're selling want to think you're selling something to a customers, but, but at the end of the day, you're selling education, someone's about to spend a lot of money buying it. It's one of the few. It's probably the biggest, actually, I think the biggest purchase you can make without any form of guarantee. There's no money back guaranteed education. It's like you make a commitment. So there is a lot of there's a lot of mission behind it, but at the same time this is they're selling big ticket numbers. So how do they bridge the gap between being so mission driven? But I tell you what say another way you gotta be in business to be in business, so you can have all the mission you want. But if the school's not open because you haven't yet your goals, you haven't got a platform from which to preach your mission. I have

Teege Mettille 19:21  
to tell you, yeah, that's correct. But I also, I've seen institutions. I've been at institutions on the brink, and not everybody that works there would would do anything other than continue to deliver on the mission as long as possible, right? So the the the thought process I have right is, if you want folks to operate as though this is a sales job, then just hire salespeople. They are going to be different people, right? But colleges and universities don't want to be represented that way, in part because they don't want to compensate these people, like you would compensate salespeople, right? So, like, that's part of it. And so we say you. You know what take a low salary. I wouldn't even say lower. I would just say a low salary with very high expectations and hours. But you're going to feel good about it, because you're making a difference in the lives of students. But

Host  20:13  
the role is actually positioned in a way to encourage that behavior correct, and then yet, when you're hired, the business needs are actually different to the behavior you've been hired

Teege Mettille  20:23  
Correct, correct. And that's the disconnect that we have to solve for you know, I always like to point to a quote. This is a longer quote, but if I can read it, it's from Kenneth Mason, who is the president of Quaker Oats in the late 70s. So I'm sure all of your listeners, they probably got a Kenneth Mason quote on their wall somewhere, right, like on their keychain, but this is the one that I love. He said back then, making a profit is no more the purpose of a corporation than getting enough to eat is the purpose of life. Getting enough to eat is a requirement of life, but life's purpose, one would hope, is somewhat broader and more challenging. And I think that applies to colleges and net tuition revenue counselors know that the net tuition revenue drive is real. It's a necessary component, but that is not their purpose. That is not their drive, but that's what they've become to be measured in, and that's what they've come to see the institution values more than anything, and that is the disconnect that's driving morale down.

Host  21:21  
And you, you've said previously that, that you've witnessed enrollment professionals being okay with missing a target as long as they felt they Oh yeah, student.

Teege Mettille  21:33  
Oh for sure, yeah. You know, I'm sorry. My Midwest accident just came out with a Oh for sure. Listen, I think if you ask most admissions counselors today if they feel they were successful last year, their answer would not be dependent on whether or not they've met enrollment targets. In fact, there are many institutions, small liberal arts institutions, that are not giving their counselors goals because they don't want them to feel that they have goals right? Because they don't want them to feel like they're being they've been measured on numbers. So I think admissions counselors feel they've done a good job if they help students make good choices, even if not enough of them choose to come to your institution,

Host  22:12  
right? Right now, StudentBridge definitely experiences that often. Yeah, we're going we try and position ourselves unashamed. We're trying to settle something. We're trying to sell you a solution, but we're trying to help you. We're very mission based ourselves, but when you say, Hey, we can help you hit your enrollment goals, sometimes gets less of an impact, and we're going to help you, help students make the right decision. Oh, that's interesting. So So absolutely, we see that. So let's, let's move that. So you've got this kind of natural, kind of contention between the board, the president, the provost, are looking at Net Revenue retention. You got people hired as a as mission based, but now they've been asked to make so you lead to councilor burnout. So talk a bit about that. I mean, is this a real thing? Councilor burnout, is it like, Zoom burnout? Is it like, is it just burnout? Are they? Are they going to recover? I mean, what, where? Where's the counselor burnout right now,

Teege Mettille  23:00  
counselor burnout. It's real problematic. It used to be. And now you know this is anecdotal, or anecdote, if you will. It used to be counselors. It would be fairly uncommon for them to leave in the middle of a cycle. Now it's not uncommon for them to leave in the middle of October, the middle of January, right? And to just leave it like it's any other job, and fine, it is any other job, right? But what is happening is admissions counselors. You know, I did a time study for enroll them out where we measured the actual time spent by an admissions counselor on various tasks, and on average, they're expected to spend up to a third of their time in spreadsheets, in the CRM, building queries, doing data work.

Host  23:46  
So imagine as professionals, put a third of their time in the systems,

Teege Mettille  23:51  
in the data systems, because there's too many applications, so they've gotta sort through them somehow. They have to pin down who to connect with, and that can only be done through data, which means they have to record the data in order to evaluate the data and be trained on the data. So you've got these energetic, gregarious, outgoing people who love working with students, and they're spending way too much time in spreadsheets, mastering Excel and feeling like they're being measured, not based on the impact they make for students lives, but the financial impact they make for the institution, right, right? And so that's, that's the break, and that's what's leading to the burnout there. The the job never had the extrinsic rewards of high salary and, you know, great benefits and all that. Well, maybe benefits, but, you know, you get the point, yeah, yeah. But your intrinsic reward was there and that's gone away.

Host  24:42  
Unhappy counselors, burnt out councils, has an impact on the students and retention too, right? I mean, I saw data point that 33% of students who leave college for graduating second like lack of personal connection or engagement as a prime reason. Now that's obviously maybe more matriculated student potentially than than the in the enrollment process. But we see this all the time. We work very much in the enrollment admissions area, and it's like, if you're not building a connection and relationship with a student, and you're in competition with three to four other institutions. Or look, the average American looks at 30 universities online. They go to 10 applications, maybe through the common app, they visit three or four. So you're in competition, then it's that connection. So you're seeing that have a real impact right down to the student,

Teege Mettille  25:26  
yeah, because admissions counselors are not building the the level of relationship that they need, or that they should, or that they used to with students. And this is, you know, they're overwhelmed by applications. This is the kind of the point here. If you go back 20 years, and let's just presume an average admission counselor at 250 applications, 250 Okay, yep, if that went up 5% from one year to the next, well, now they have 267 Okay, and then another 5% the year after that. Now we're up to 276 and then it just keeps going up, and it doesn't take long before compounding interest, which is good for your savings account, but not good for your application, growth is just overwhelming. Counselors, maybe they can absorb 5% increase from one year to the next, but at some point they have to either dilute the level of relationship they have with their with all of their students, or pick and choose some students to build a relationship with and ignore the rest. And admissions counselors are not wired to ignore anybody, and so they've come to view their job not as engaging directly with individual students, but crafting an email to send out to 500 and seeing who replies and that Well, time effective and efficient from that perspective, that overwhelm with applications is driving down the connection they have with students.

Host  26:46  
Well, I guess it's one on top of the other, isn't it? You've got, you've got 33% of the data in the systems now. You've got another you've got more applications to get through, which is more admin work. So it's just more and more and more on top of more. And like you say, at a time when staff numbers are probably stagnated, if not reduced. You we talked we had 10 people in the office of enrollment admissions. Now they got six. I mean 40% decrease, or 20 down to 16. I mean 20% discount. But this reduction big, big numbers, right? I mean it's a lot, and what we see is it being asked to do more with less. Is how we really summarize it all, being us, do more with less,

Teege Mettille  27:23  
Always the case, and again, maybe from one year to the next, that makes sense and it's manageable. Maybe there was some fluff in the system, but that can't, that can't keep consistently happening without something breaking. And what's breaking is the council around

Host  27:36  
The person, yeah, because we're just, don't worry, we're breaking the person. So technology, I mean, obviously, you know, student, bridge, enroll, ml, we have all this great technology. Are they kind of suffering as well? Like, from something we see is they're not, they're not. They were not hired to be great technology buyers. They were again hired to interface with students. Now they've got multiple platforms, but there should be platforms that you chuck AI platform, you chuck all these applications in, it does the initial filter, and comes back and said, speak to these 50 people. This is happening. But are they? Are they not getting behind technology in the right way to make their role, because that's kind of giving them time back to do the bit they love, right? Learn how to man handle technology to do so you don't work for technology. It works for you. You put stuff through it, and then you get more time back in your day to go and do the bits you enjoy that. Again, self fulfilling, because hopefully that leads to better outcomes, because you have better relationships. So what's happening on the technology front?

Teege Mettille  28:32  
Well, I mean, it's a there's a wide range of responses from colleges and universities as far as the technology front, right? You see that too, some early adopters, some are there. Some are kind of being dragged along. I think the best case scenario, though, is when an institution is using a technology platform and not expecting counselors to become an expert in it, but to just be able to use it and kind of move on from there. You're right that, as you said, that the bits that they love, the more we can get counselors connected with students, the better it will be for students, for counselors, for the institution, and I think big picture right, for the society overall.

Host  29:13  
Got it. So what do we need to do? Let's start talking some solutions here. I mean, yeah, yeah, absolutely,

Teege Mettille  29:18  
Because, because it's great to recognize the problems, right? But what great do about them?

Host  29:23  
What are we gonna do about this? We're gonna watch you have no Yes.

Teege Mettille  29:26  
See, there's two questions. I would encourage any admissions leaders or presidents board members who are listening to this to ask themselves one question, would you consider a counselor to be wildly successful if they regularly recruit an awesome class of students, but consistent, consistently missed their enrollment target by 25% and if your answer is no, then you've got it. You are part of the disconnect, because your counselors would probably say yes. The other question to ask is, if a student deposits today, right now? One of your counselors territory. Does it matter to you who the student is? Because it definitely matters to the counselors, right? So those are, I think, the two questions admissions leaders can think about. And maybe go back to your early years as an admissions counselor yourself, and remember how excited you were about some of these things, and use that to better engage and connect with your counseling team, right? Absolutely.

Host  30:25  
So, so, okay, so that's good questions. Hey, on this, on the wildly sets where they recruit an awesome class, how do you measure what an awesome class is that retention to graduation? Is that kind of what you mean? What's awesome about them? They're great fun at the holiday party. I mean, what's also, yeah, that's

Teege Mettille  30:41  
A good question. Well, I would say, you know, I'm not here to suggest there's a right answer or wrong answer. I'm here to suggest your admissions counselors have an answer and there's no number attached to it at all. There's no net revenue, there's no retention rate, there's none of that. It's who are the students, what are their stories that they're bringing to campus, right? So it's a sentiment for sentiment. Are Is it a is it a diverse class, an exciting class, an intriguing class that's going to enrich the campus environment? We used to talk about that a lot in admissions. We don't much anymore, right? Like, are they enriching the campus community? But that's what counselors were told to expect on the way in. That's what they get excited about.

Host  31:21  
So let's jump to this kind of we have a problem. What are the solutions? AI, machine learning could help counselors focus more the spoke with technology. What? What tech resources can help? I mean, talk, talk to them about how what you've seen working, the adoption of, you know, the adoption has always been rather slow in education, what's what's going was it was working.

Teege Mettille  31:42  
Let me, let me start with, I don't think of robot, emailing your students for you is quite the right answer. Yet, I also, you know, sure, like there's some streamlining technologies that AI can do, as far as like speeding up the application review process, but where I think the power comes is when we're able to find tools to get counselors back in front of students and families with a with greater frequency and more knowledge on the students that they're working with. Anytime you find something like that, you're onto it right? Like that's kind of where we're at. The sooner we can identify for a counselor, the students who are in, the students who are in the students who are not the students who are in the middle that need counseling, the better the impact is going to be on students and on the institution.

Host  32:28  
Hate to say it, but it's like sales. I mean, you know, if you've got a close in enterprise sales, you have a close rate of maybe 10 to 20% your job of a salesperson is really to qualify. These people aren't the right people for us. Let's not you. Let's not put up. I mean, waste our time. Let's not invest our time with these people. Let's invest our time into people that and the 10% they're already coming with you. Good job. Let's invest our time to be on the fence that we actually really want, that we've failed to, we fail to to convince a bad word, but fail to present our our case, that we're the right institutional choice for them. So no, I agree. Like it's all about so everything points back to getting these counselors back in front of students, getting tools that allow them to make better decisions quickly without bogging them down with analysis paralysis. You said about AI is not the answer. I agree. I'm actually in the middle of my first argument with ChatGBT. It's been going on for about 10 days. My ChatGPT and I having an argument about something it just fails to be able to do constantly, fails to provide me a spreadsheet, which I thought was really easy, and and, and it keeps apologizing to me, saying, Sorry, I'm letting you down. And I'm like, well, just, just give me what you got. And it has problems. So look, AI, exactly. AI, is there to give us a framework right now, over the next three to five years and get better 10 years but, but right now we can, we can smell aim r away, right? It uses a lot of big words and superfluous adjectives. And we need to. We need the human touch. And

Teege Mettille  33:53  
I want to be precise, the the large language learning models that you're talking about, the like ChatGPT operating it with a human voice. You're right. Everybody sees it. That's why all these chat bots on college websites are clearly labeled as robots, because if they could pass as human, they would pretend they're human, right? We all know they're not, but there are things that the AI technology can do to create streamlines and efficiencies. It is just not pretending to be an admissions counselor. I don't think that's the way to go,

Host  34:21  
Right? Yeah, power of AI. I'm Inside Higher Ed September 2023 so a year ago, over you go reports eight and 10 colleges would use AI in the admissions cycle for 2024 so, you know, I'm quite impressed that college universities are that are already like trying to embrace a technology that could cause fear in a lot of people. I agree with you. Let's look forward a bit.

Teege Mettille  34:44  
Yes, is

Host  34:45  
this problem going away?

Teege Mettille  34:46  
Nope, nope. Because, because, here's the thing, and this is what I think is the core challenge. We talk a lot. We've talked about it today, about, you know, is this sales? Is this a business? Are they customers, etc. It's fine. We can have that. We could you and I could debate that for 18 days if we want. However, there are things that colleges and universities can and should learn from the world of business. I stand behind that 100% but the much like kind of qualifying your sales leads is like qualifying your applicants, right? Like, that's a good example of something we can learn from the world of business or the world of sales. However as long as we are hiring the people we're hiring to be admissions counselors and recruiting them how we're recruiting them, we should not learn the lessons of sales measurement as job performance measurement that we shouldn't lean on sales for, that we shouldn't be measuring admissions counselors on enrollment targets, net revenue targets, etc, if we're recruiting them in under different pretenses. And the middle management, the admissions directors, the deans and even the VPS stand as the bulwark there. The institution has revenue goals, and the dean needs to find a way to handle that. The admissions counselors will not accept revenue goals. They just won't. And what we've learned the last couple of years is they'll walk away, they'll quit, right? So the admissions Deans needs to find different ways to motivate admissions counselors to meet those enrollment targets.

Host  36:14  
Again, it all resonates one of our one of our terms we like when we're speaking to prospective schools to work with is better retention through better recruitment. If you're open and honest about the experience that once they're in the door day one, whether it be a student, whether it be a counselor, anyone you're recruiting, whether to work for you or to come and recruit a student, it's key that, like you say that if you're setting them up to be mission based, you've got to protect them to be mission based. If the industry needs to move into more of a revenue and business like model, they need to recruit differently and or multi, multi faceted people, right? You have some people that are more on the on the kind of soft side, soft skill side. You got some people on the hard skill side. You can, you can, you can use it as a team approach. Look, we're going to run out of time today. If I could talk to you for two hours, I think Teege, but let's, let's leave. We were one, one. Last top tip. I mean, anything else you say, look, if I can just hear this, hear this, what would it be? Hear this.

Teege Mettille  37:12  
Admissions leaders, you should never, ever, ever say to an admissions counselor that they need to remember their why that is nothing is more grading than being told, remember your why from someone who isn't a leadership role. That's my last final tip.

Host  37:30  
So don't tell them, remember your why. 

Teege Mettille  37:33  
Yeah, they might need to do that. They might need to tell themselves that. They might need to be told that. But coming from someone in the supervisor role. It the discourse seems to be suggesting that it's perceived as you need to accept low salaries because of the motivation. You need to accept this thing you're not happy about because of your why, and it feels like a little bit of a three card monte. So you asked for a final tip. That's what I have no love.

Host  37:56  
It powerful, powerful. Well, that's all we have time for today. Teege, thank you so much for joining us and really, really enjoyed meeting you. Follow Teege on LinkedIn, hear him as a co host on the admissions directors lunch cast and, of course, find 'The Admissions Counselor Malaise' only on Amazon, available on Amazon with Teege as the author. For more great content, please visit our website, www.studentbridge.com, search the archives for other webinar content pieces like webinars, podcasts and great guests that we've had. Please subscribe if you don't miss anything with that Teege, thanks again. See you all soon.

Speaker 1  38:33  
This is the Filling Seats podcast hosted by StudentBridge, where we help enrollment teams achieve more by fusing authentic storytelling with industry leading technology and personalized digital experiences to connect with this episode's guests, check out the show notes. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a rating and review and don't forget to subscribe. For more information about StudentBridge and this podcast, go to studentbridge.com/podcast