Why Students Choose the School They Attend

Host  0:00  
Hello and welcome to Filling Seats. StudentBridge's podcast for the people that are just driving around or watching from their homes or at the office just to learn more about this amazing industry of higher education that we all seem to love and work in with big smiles on our faces, talk about big smiles. I have one of my favorites today. I want to introduce him in a moment. But look, we're back. It's been a small summer break. I hope you missed us. We're happy to be back, and in full swing today we'll be talking about why students pick the schools they choose, and like I said, welcoming back one of our favorite guests who's been on the show a couple of times. Dr. Luke Schultheis, how are you?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  0:37  
Hi, Jonathan. Great to see you doing well. Always exciting as these cycles go by year after year, and to hear people lament or celebrate as to how things have looked like they're starting to settle down.

Host  0:52  
Why I settled down? Luke, while I should give the audience a little bit of a breakdown of our relationship, Luke actually was first introduced to me right at the beginning of the pandemic, March 2020, so five, well over five years ago, Luke, we do know each other on time. And so Luke came from Fairleigh Dickinson University and reached out and said, Hey, look, we got a pivot here. We've got something quick. This pandemics ruined all my plans of in person events and non in person visits and campus tours. He said to Jonathan, what have you got? And, uh, he and I brainstormed a few things, and we came up with a kind of a virtual visit solution that really took the market by storm. And proud to say that we've obviously supported hundreds of different college universities with similar event platforms and everything else that you needed at the time. But look, Luke, you've obviously been a big believer in video and interaction for a long time, as your own LinkedIn page even expresses, I've been following you on LinkedIn, smiling as you're doing a lot of those pieces to camera, and becoming quite the LinkedIn celebrity. But why? You can't tell the audience a bit about what you're doing. You're no longer, obviously at Fairleigh Dickinson, so give us, bring us up to speed.

Dr. Luke Schultheis  2:05  
Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate it. I'm presently working to really scale opportunities to increase access and student success. It's been wonderful working on campuses, and have worked at some really large ones, but have found the opportunity, having culminated a lot of experiences there to be much more exciting, to be able to scale it across institutions. So I'm working individually with select institutions to help guide them on a number of discussions around improving their admissions funnel and holding on to more students, getting them through to the point of graduation. So I think, you know, that's why we all get into higher education, is to help transform society. So I'm trying to put it to work here, and to give it my all.

Host  2:53  
Brilliant. And Luke, you've mentioned something in just that intro that is so important is it's not just the food in the funnel to get the minutes, given that the best fit students actually going to retain and graduate. And so often I feel the pressure is to hit that enrollment number, not necessarily the graduation number and and so that that's something I see hopefully coming together as teams start working out we have a belief in StudentBridge better retention through better recruitment if you recruit them in the right way, hopefully they retain so with that, that's why it's so important about how students choose the genetic College.

Dr. Luke Schultheis  3:30  
Now absolutely Jonathan and to just echo that a little bit further, there's a tremendous amount of pressure, especially as things are evolving on the admissions offices today, especially for undergraduate, but not exclusively at the graduate and professional level as well, to bring in more students, more and more and more, and there aren't more and more and more out there. So it really behooves an institution to be genuine and to position itself as students see it, not necessarily as the institution may see itself, because, as you said, a student who fits a student who's able to incorporate social relationships, have a great academic experience and really feel the support of the institution, through finances, through advising, through all sorts of ways, is going to persist. And that's really what this is all about, is helping an individual get into an institution and out of it in a timely manner without incurring significant debt, and into the workplace or onto graduate or professional school.

Host  4:36  
So great. So let's jump into these questions that we're obviously thinking about, but we talk about why students pick a college or university. Data, current data says 54% it's affordability. But what are the foundational factors are coming into these decision making? I mean, it's a key thing, right? I mean, how it's not just about affordability in current, current markets, and maybe. Can you talk to that a bit please?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  5:02  
Sure, it's affordability. I mean, this is one of the most expensive decisions a family is going to make. We've got, you know, the house, the car and higher education and higher education can eclipse the house at times. Hopefully it doesn't, but certainly will eclipse the car. And we've spoken for years about how this is an investment, not an expense. So it's it's really important for someone to kick the tires, if you will, do the do go to the open houses, as you would at a house and and look at the plumbing and the walls and all those sorts of things, as we do for those other types of big costs, because each institution is different, and it will cost you a significant more amount of time and money if your students not, you know, acquiring their degree within you know, a bachelor's in four years, or an Associate's in two years, affordability is critical. What's somewhat fascinating to me today is that there are now so many schools, and I see this with a lot of public regionals that are offering in state tuition to out of state students. And that's not intuitive. So there are actually a significantly greater number of institutions that may be affordable today than were a few years ago.

Host  6:29  
It's interesting that you say about the car versus the education. So break up the back. We're not recommending someone goes to a very cheap college and gets a huge car loan. That doesn't seem the right thing to do. We want to do it the opposite way around, but, but, okay, look, so we know the importance of picking the right universities. Key though. I mean, we talk about all these data points to get the school on the shortlist, but what talk to me about how it transfers for this data based decision making to an emotional

Dr. Luke Schultheis  7:03  
thanks, a big part of this, and you almost think about it again, going back to the house or the cars, how am I going to feel in this? Is it me? And for each individual, your your me is different. You know, looking at your race helmets behind you, you've been in, you've been comfortable in types of automobiles that I would never be comfortable in, and while they may be, you know,

Host  7:28  
I'm six foot two, right?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  7:32  
Your comfort, my comfort, are different and and the way for us to get to where we want to be is going to differ by the context our lived experiences and things of that nature. And what's difficult often, I have found, is for an institution to be able to convey the different nuances that a student's really looking for. We've We've often relied on these, you know, very general view books that come in many pages of beautiful gloss, and are thick, you know, and cost a lot of dollars to mail. But at the end of the day, we don't know if those are really hitting on the different nuances that are important to a student and and that's often what they're judging, you know, attending an institution upon

Host  8:17  
interesting you say that so are now public is the expectation report. This one actually didn't come from Ireland. This came from another study I looked at that now with Gen Z, 60% believe that the 62% think the Digital First impression is more important than the in person first impression, because I think that goes into how we as a, as a, as a civilization now buying we go to the web. It's our shop window. It's the way we research. We can research on our terms without being badgered by a salesperson and and we click around what we want, when we want. And it's those first impressions that you can't make a second time, the first impression being created digitally. And I think a lot of schools are letting themselves down here, because you we'll talk about a bit later. But these, they just suffer from the sea of sameness. We call it. Everything looks the same, everything feels the same. And so for a potential student, prospective student, looking at 30 websites, applying to 10 to 15, I mean, there's just, it just needs to bet a job standing out? Would you agree?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  9:23  
No question about it. It is cumbersome to go visit different institutions. More often than not, we run into situations in which schools will have their open houses on certain days when they know school systems are closed, so now you've got competing factors. Everyone in the region is having their open house on the same day. More often than not, these open houses take hours and hours and hours, and you know, a family may not have that kind of time to dedicate to one institution they want to shop around. Every family is not interested in every. Service available at the institution. Often, our families, our students, have specific needs, and we're really looking to see how that institution can serve our student with that need. So recently, you know, I was engaged in shopping, or let's call it, window shopping, for cars and houses, and it absolutely began with the internet, because I can screen, I can look for things that pop out at me based upon keywords that I'm inputting. Because I know, if I go to see a salesperson, they're gonna, you know, they're gonna feed me, they're gonna, you know, treat me really great. They're gonna walk me around and show me all sorts of things, but I'm really interested in just some specifics. And when an individual is able to look for an institution in the same way, I think they're going to spend more time at institutions that have highlighted those attributes that students are looking for. So it's really critical, I think, in this regard, that institutions get behind the traits that their incoming students have said are important to them, rather than attributes of the school writ large, because we can kind of get caught up in a lot of statistics. I mean, how many times have we heard about small classes? I can point to several institutions that have well over 30,000 students that say our faculty to student ratio is this, I mean, come on, you know. And what's that mean to a student today? So they're the, you know, how many do you have? How many majors, the whole sort of thing? They're looking for specifics.

Host  11:37  
Well, also we have a long standing belief here at StudentBridge. It says, look, the decision to buy these large, emotional purchases, cars, houses, education, boats, if you're that kind of weapon, but anything that's large and emotional, which they normally go together, because you have to emotionally separate the cash. But education, highly emotional. You're leaving home. You're going to unknown surroundings. You're not near your parents and safety net anymore. You're doing your own laundry. Goodness me, that must be shocking for our students. So, so what, what I really see is it moving from the four data decisions, do they have a program I like? Is it in the setting I like, rural, suburban, very rural, urban, whatever it may be, do they close and far from home? Next on the location ones, the next data decision is, will I get in? And there's enough websites out there put your test scores in, or it gives you a chance, good, a good forecast whether you get in or not. And the fourth one is, if I do get in, can I afford it? Now, those are data decisions. They're all just they're all answered, binary, pass, fail, pass, fail, yes, no. 0101, they're all binary. So when you are a student, and you start and your parents, you start investing in those trips and going to visit by now, you have to assume that all universities they're visiting, let's call it four or five have passed the past. Well, binary data tests, and now it's about fit and feel only only about motion. It moves from your head to your heart. Am I on this? Am I out there going, you know what this campus speaks to me? Feel? I feel right here. I feel like won't be a cyber bullying all time high. I don't feel like I'm gonna be the odd one out. I don't feel like I'm gonna fit in. Hey, can I have look alikes? Can I look around see people a bit like me? And so, you know, again, this, this could be for for minority group, for LGBTQ, just like mental health issues, just anything that looks around that makes me feel comfortable. And so I think that the schools and colleges do underplay the emotional connection.

Dr. Luke Schultheis  13:45  
It's important because otherwise we're relying on so many different data points. And when you look at a website and it just lists, you know, these are the different programs, these are the different careers students have had. Those those points don't necessarily resonate. What does resonate is when you're able to talk to another student and hear about what they are doing, will do or have done with the degree that they've earned. We've all got 100 or 200 different majors, but just by title. Let's just take biology or psychology or business, you know, some of the largest enrolled majors all the time. What do those majors translate into? And the jobs that are out there now are different than the jobs we had yesterday. The Careers tomorrow are going to be different, and today's student's different, and if I can hear a student talking about their trajectory and why they're interested in helping other students with a say, mental illness, which is one of those programs that's growing, that really can speak to a student much more than just looking at the data points

Host  14:57  
absolutely and look the high percentage of students with. The disability of one description that I don't think the schools do a good enough job in the world of digital. Let me back it up, in the world of of non digital. In the world, what do we call it? In a buying what would you call that non digital? Old World, Dinosaur World, we had to market to everyone with the same stuff. We had to just take our high, lowest common denominator and make it our marketing message. But with digital, we have the opportunity to really drill down, personalize and allow the internet's like a magazine people can flick through whatever page they want to. And it's the ability to help that audience really find again, that comfort this is the right fit, because fit isn't about academic performance. Fit is about after your freshman year. Do you want to go back for your sophomore year? Do you want to go back and go back through it all again? And maybe you do, maybe you don't, but we'll move on from next on the questions we've got, we'll go through you and I met the first week of the pandemic, so 500 years ago, but we know the landscape, the emission landscape, is constantly changing, whether it be the pandemic, whether it be the looming demographic cliff, whether it be some of the political headwinds Created by budget cuts. Dei cuts talk to a bit about that. I mean, just what's happening in the world, how these examples impact the students, decision like, I'm not talking about your peers in the industry. You've got these great colleagues all through the how's that affecting the student?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  16:35  
I think the noise is taking a different context today. So we used to find a high school senior receiving mailboxes full of materials, and often this they were tailored upon as much as they could. You know, it'd be like, Hi, Luke. You know, they got my name so I feel, hey, it's personalized. I know you're interested in football because I clicked that, you know, on the standardized test form I was taking. So we've got a few of these things coming in. So every institution saying, Hey, we know you're interested in football. We know you're interested in football. It didn't really speak to the individual, but it was as good as we could do in those days. Today, the competition for the limited number of students has become so great, and that's due to a number of things that you had just mentioned, that very often institutions are just grabbing at, you know, a multitude of solutions, and pushing them out at the students. I think what they've forgotten in some instances, is that that's not the only institution doing that, and you all your competitors are doing it. So now this the high school senior may be receiving very similar, similar, over personalized, yet sterile communication from institutions. So if we think about the emails we get or the texts now we're receiving, they'll keep talking about the interests that I've expressed as a potential student, but they don't really incorporate the personality of the peers who are on campus. So we've got students just getting a lot of detailed noise that addresses their interests. But I think we're losing a bit of who is it that's sitting in those classrooms and walking those campuses, and do I want to be amongst those people?

Host  18:38  
Yeah, I guess we've touched on a little bit a few minutes ago, but there's so many tangible factors, but that intangible vibe that that kind of the gut feeling a student gets on a campus tour. How much do you is there a chance this really actually weighs against the hard data points, safety statistics, other things like that student to faculty ratio you already spoken about, all schools are shouting at the same stuff. So, so how important is that gut what's happening with the gut feeling there?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  19:12  
There are plenty of discussions out there amongst colleagues about fit and and gut feelings and those types of things. Now I've heard sort of both, both ends of the dichotomy. There, some believe wholly in it, and some discounted completely from from my perspective, I think that it's it's really critical that if you're going to spend a number of years at an institution and spend a significant amount of funds to attend this institution that's essentially going to be a foundation for where you go next. It needs to be something where you're comfortable. Now that doesn't necessarily mean I want to go. A place where everyone laughs at the same jokes or loves the same sports, but there are some things that are important I'd like to know. You know, can I get a meal at a certain hour of the day? I'd like to know, are there some spaces where I can find that I can study and feel comfortable, be it in a group environment or individually? I'd like to know, how am I going to get around campus, because one of the issues that affects attrition is adversity. And parking can be adversity. Figuring out how to pay your bill can be adversity. Navigating meal plans can be adversity. So we've got all these different competing factors making life difficult to navigate it. It's really behooves the institution to be able to put students first, put them forward, to be able to talk about, here's how I navigated it. It's no secret. At some institutions, you can't find a parking space easily. Let's put it up front. I'm a student. Parking stinks. Here's how I navigate it, though, and be

Host  21:07  
surprised first at school than to be up front. Yeah, 

Dr. Luke Schultheis  21:10  
Be upfront, be genuine, because that's what students are looking for, and that reduces the amount of anxiety once they arrive on campus and go, Oh my goodness. You know, I didn't realize I wouldn't be able to find a space. I'm going to be late to class. The weather's bad. What am I going to do?

Host  21:26  
Yep, right, we're gonna take a break for a minute and we'll come back in for the final run to the check flag and the finish line. But don't go away back In a minute.

Host  22:57  
Welcome back. I'm here with my good friend and colleague, Luke Schultheis, and we're back after a quick break. So look, Luke, we've covered quite a lot already, but we've established academics and affordability to core drivers, obviously in the database decision, can I afford it to the program? I want those kind of things. But cottage is more than just classes and tuition bills. What role does the physical environment and the overall field of a campus playing students decision?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  23:25  
It's critical. And I think what I've seen through being on several campuses throughout my career is so much of Campus Life happens outside of the classroom. So we've got, you know, the faculty and staff there, let's call it nine to five business hours. But if you come out to a campus at nine o'clock, 10 o'clock, PM, off, and there are things going on small campuses as well as big campuses, and those aren't opportunities we've generally taken advantage of to highlight what's going on, because those aren't going on during an open house. We're not, you know, not many of us have sleepovers, you know, with potential students anymore, for a variety of reasons. So there's a lot going on that's, that's the lifeblood of the campus, to large degree, not just social, but but academic as well. These are opportunities for students to sit up late at night, which may not be so late for them, and to be able to discuss, you know, the world ahead of them. They've still got those, those dreams ahead of them that haven't been tempered by, you know, constraints and guardrails brought about by the workplace so often,

Host  24:39  
I'm a father of two young children. So late for me is 9pm these days. So you're saying it's two, three in the morning. They're staying up until it brings up. It just brings on this really interesting thing as well. I have it, it's, it's, if you're a regular listener to the podcast, you probably heard me say this before, but we I have a. Theory, which I'm going to prove out at some point when I get enough time my day that we go on about the importance of education, the degree on your wall, the thing, the stiff on your wall. But when I go round and ask people, okay, so Did you follow a career for the program you chose at 16, 17? Years old, you chose a program. Did you really know what you want to do? No, but you chose the program, and did you follow that career? I'm at like 10% if not less. 10% or less. So my theory is more people have married a college sweetheart than ended up going following a career. And what's we laugh, but I think, I think it's a fun thing, but I try it out. You try it out with your colleagues, at least the business network, the friends network, your college mates, you still hang out with the college buddies. So the social aspect that the becoming an adult, the route of passage that happens at college or university campus, versus the pure study, the academic side, is so huge and valuable. And so I think again, this is something about fit, something about students choose college, but a college is on a college. You wear a proudly on your chest till the day you pass away. Once you once you graduate. We got a lot of money. We think about capital campaigns students. You've got student success. You've got the advancement people that drop out your college don't donate. People that drop out your college do not refer a friend and cousin. So this a great place should go there. So the lifetime value of a graduating student by our type closer, 10x someone that only comes for one year. You've got five and a half years of tuition, books, everything else, sure, but you've got all the or you've got all the alumni donations. You've got the referrals, they're just a brand ambassador on your behalf. And so I think colleges and universities do do themselves well by discussing just how important it is to have a university experience, not just the programmatic approach.

Dr. Luke Schultheis  26:59  
I mean, no question. And to your point, while I'm an n of one, I studied a field as an undergraduate, went on to have a career in a different field, went on to have a second career and then a third one. Yet I've retained a core group of colleagues I had in undergraduate and graduate school, and they've done the same thing. Not to say some people don't follow a linear trajectory, and there's nothing wrong with that. But as the world is changing, so many the value, the currency, value of degrees and direct relationship to the workplace, those changes well, but the human relationships, the experiences we've gone through together, that's completely different, and those relationships are critical. The Network, be it to help open up job opportunities or to be a sounding board for each other is really critical in one's personal and professional life. 

Host  28:05  
No, absolutely. So the word I was struggling to think of earlier on, saying digital, the opposite was analog, like the old analog world versus digital world. We will be thought of as dinosaurs ourselves. Luke, if we don't speak about this one topic today, which is AI, right, two letters. The whole world's talking about it. It's on people saying it's coming no front on top of us. It's been here for a while. Ai admissions most students, 56% in fact, believe using AI tools on admissions essays gives some applicants an unfair advantage. Yet, 35% trusted admissions officers to use AI to make decisions so they're happy to use it when it benefits them, which is probably human nature, less happy when you've got an AI machine looking for AI written content. But talk to talk to you about a little bit. Just let's talk about advancement in AI in admissions. How are you seeing it impact your colleagues in the industry?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  29:03  
It's a great question, very pertinent. I've attended a number of conferences this year at which AI was the theme, and some of these had hands on activities. In each of them, the participants were essentially wowed so from the industry perspective, I think we are, to large degree, struggling. We're very excited. We're like, we got to do it. We've got to keep up with the other institutions. But we don't always necessarily know what that entails. So there are lots of different I'll call them solutions, if you will. But if we embrace a solution without looking holistically, sometimes we miss the mark. If we're going to use AI to really speak to if you will, through. Through chat functions and those types of things, a personal way to prospective students, those are heavily reliant on the quality of our websites. And I don't, I don't know about my colleagues out there, but every now and then, when I look at, you know, the websites of institutions where I'm working, there may be some rogue documents floating around out there that you know require some attention to bring back home before AI is scraping those and pushing them out to students. Vice versa. From the from the applicants perspective, I would I would advise utilizing AI. AI like a calculator. A calculator won't solve your problem. A calculator will help perform math functions, and if you know the right math functions you need to solve the problem. That's a great tool. AI is the same thing. It's a tool. It can help you screen for institutions. It can help you scrape uh, maybe your transcript and some work experience to get an idea of of some themes around your experience that you can help put out there in an essay or something like that. But they won't be the answer for sure, it's, it's, it's not a solution,

Host  31:18  
Got it. Yeah, no, understood, that I think that obviously ai, ai, so I speak to one venture capital firm or investment firm, and then, like, it's hard to invest in AI because it's they reckon seven months time your AI's been beaten by another system, probably written by AI, that why this website's doing whatever this solution can write me the code one before. You know, you've got one yourself. But look, think that this again goes back to what when we talk about AI, you know, we talk about, there's so many ways AI can help and can hurt, from from process and framework through to content. I was at it. I was at RNL doing an hour long presentation, like a learning session. And just for fun, I prompted up. I showed our video of Welcome to Atlanta of RNL in Atlanta. I did an AI version show me someone in Atlanta welcoming to Atlanta on the bridge I was standing on. And it worked perfectly, because the lady had three arms. It just showed perfectly. It was such a good video, until the fact she had three arms, and it's like, and so it's just not there yet for certain things and and I don't think I think AI is great for framework, but you can't make it final. AI is not ready to be a total replacement for actual intelligence. It can get us down the road. So when I use AI come an hour, two hours a day, I'm always doing something but and it's accelerated my productivity massively, but I just the amount of intelligence I feel like I don't have to have. That's the other thing about AI. If you take AI, cut and paste it and put it in there without actually understanding what it's saying. The person you're sending anything to, or that is reading it will actually get, maybe what they want, but in no way have you actually understood it. It's like, it's like regurgit regurgitation training, just it doesn't actually help that person understand what the topics about. So there's a real danger there as well. Everyone can sound like an expert without actually having any knowledge whatsoever. What does it it's very dangerous.

Dr. Luke Schultheis  33:24  
That's right. It boils down to me, Would I rather win a game of trivial pursuit or solve a problem? And I think the AI sets, you have to win Trivial Pursuit pretty quickly, but problem solving, you've got to incorporate the context your experience and use a tool such as AI, but not be fully reliant on it.

Host  33:42  
So we I briefly spoke about your videos at the beginning, and again, audience, if you haven't seen them, you should check out Luke's LinkedIn page. We'll probably link on it, on our podcast page, on the website, but great use of video. But let's just talk about the importance of the experience and storytelling, the influence of student, yeah, the influence of students. How authentic stories of student videos, student voices just guide decision making.

Dr. Luke Schultheis  34:13  
I think an example. So we're removed from the decision making process in attending higher education. And it's, it's hard to look through that lens. So it's, it's often easy to think, if we put everything in front of a potential student that they're looking for, we will show them that we're the best institution to attend. And that's not necessarily true. It's, it's, again, like when we use AI to make other types of purchases, and they all come back and say, This is the best one for you, Jonathan. And you're thinking, well, maybe, but what about this or this? But based upon the input it got, it's, you know, that's its formula.

Host  34:56  
My children use my Amazon account, and that it's matching to. Their buying habits, not mine.

Dr. Luke Schultheis  35:02  
All right, that's right, that's right. Storytelling helps put the human perspective into context. And if I can hear about, for example, your journey, how, how you embarked upon one career and that led to another career, and things that you learned in one help prepare you for another. I can incorporate that into my own life and my own journey. Storytelling is very, very powerful. It's genuine, it's relatable, and it enables us, I think it provides an opportunity, rather, for us to fall out of that formula solution where we're trying to say, Well, if the student's interested in these 15 things, we need to show them these 15 things.

Host  35:53  
It might not surprise you, studies in psychology and marketing show that telling stories is 22 times more memorable than just telling facts, facts alone. I mean, 22 your brain's wired for it. Your brain is wired to be able to take on stories. That's why we love watching TV. Your brain burns tons of calories a day and burn less calories watching content, video content that you do reading, and in reading, you've got to picture the scene often, so it's really, really the power of storytelling, just just the effectiveness of it. According to EDUCAUSE, the research that 86% of students say that videos help them imagine life on campus better than just text based materials. So that's huge. I mean, I don't know who the 14% are that didn't I thought of me 100% but some people out there big imaginations maybe that don't need to be shown the video, 86% Luke, I mean, part of policy and bridges process to try and identify great target partners to work with is we go to their.edu and we try, and we have, We've written an AI bot assistant agent. It's called to go through the website and other other digital assets they may have, and they score terribly. They then there's just no storytelling on these websites. And work 2025, I mean, this is crazy, that they have no storytelling, or very minimal storytelling, and so. So, yeah, it's really interesting to me that we have this, this hard time. Still, video to give away. In my mind, video should be everywhere. Online. Attention spans are short. We know that, right? So what's the number website in the world? Tick, tock, number one website in the world. So when you know that that's happening, when you the audience is telling you that's how they want to communicate or consume your content, they've got insatiable appetite. I mean, when you look at the astounding numbers of hours of content going up on Tiktok, YouTube, Facebook, it's astounding. And so, yeah, absolutely, I see, I see the real opportunity still for college, university, adopt video, anything you'd like to say something you've got a lot of experience on this now.

Dr. Luke Schultheis  35:53  
No, I completely agree. And it brings it brings in that factor of being genuine all of us come to college with, let's just call it our baggage, our life experience, and those types of things. None of us, you know had, had had a sterile, sanitized, easy life, and come in just ready to nail it. We're coming in with experiences, and to be able to hear from an individual through a video about their experience on the campus, and to say not that the library is open 24 hours a day, which used to be novel, but hey, I, you know, I find that at 11pm the library is a place where I can go in, and I can find myself a room where I can get up on a whiteboard and write questions to myself, and in, you know, practice the speech that I'm going to give in class tomorrow, or whatever the case is, and that speaks to a student. Yeah, that makes sense to me. I get it, but telling them it's open 24 hours a day, it's, how do I put that into context all these facts coming at me?

Host  39:11  
Yeah, let's mean to me, right? Well, as we start wrapping up, I think we could start kind of giving, giving your colleagues in the industry a little bit of advice on how to get ahead of all this stuff with a lot of the lessons you've learned along the way. I know one thing that we've spoke about, the sea of sameness, is something you feel strongly about. Visiting campuses, but also looking at their their marketing collateral, every school says the same thing, correct?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  39:37  
They do every every view books got the smiling students under the proverbial, you know, the tree? I remember, remember being at one school, the students said, Where's the tree? And, you know, the school's like, well, it looked good in the pictures. There's actually no tree. So outside of the tree, the one thing that really makes. Campus, your campus distinctive is your students. We've all got great programs, great campuses, people who believe in it and give their lives right tenure, you give your life to the institution, advancing the body of knowledge, committing student growth, but the students are distinctive. And if you talk to an alumnus from a school today and ask them where they went to college. They light up, and they'll have some things to say about it. So if we can embrace the distinctiveness of our students through their voice, I think that's the most powerful distinctiveness you can convey to attract students who are going to feel they have a fit at your institution.

Host  40:42  
Alright, thank you, Luke. And we start to wrap up now, you mentioned earlier, when we're offline, about you felt that with some of the practice, it's critical that practitioners think of the big picture. Could you expand on that a little bit?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  40:56  
Thanks, Jonathan. There will be some things new coming tomorrow and the next day in the next right now, we've got, you know, we've got some tools at our hands, and just jumping in with with our full budget and our full staff might deviate us from some of the other alternatives that are going to be propagating themselves. We've, we've just got to have a look at keeping ourselves grounded in what higher education is obviously a place to expand upon learning and development, but a place for an individual to grow personally, to develop into an adult. And that's bet that's really best derived from integrating themselves with prospective students and current students and alumni, and really talking about experiences at an institution that's that's just fundamental, and that's not going to change.

Host  41:51  
So final question of the day, if you could give your enrollment one piece of advice to your enrollment leaders, your colleagues in the industry trying to implement student choices for what would it be?

Dr. Luke Schultheis  42:04  
I think unequivocally, it's the student voice. We've got to pass all of our materials through the students eyes. Let them give it back to us through their voice. Help us see what's important to people of their age these days, it's different than what was important to us when we were having these pursuits. And then that's going to allow us to keep current. We're going to keep providing the same product, which is, you know, a wonderful experience delivered through a variety of means, but the student voice is something that can't be replicated.

Host  42:45  
That's brilliant. Luke thought we have time for today. As always, we could go on and on and have a lovely chat. Thank you for taking some time out of your busy Monday to come and join me today. But like I said to everyone, before follow Luke on LinkedIn, he's well worth following. Some great content. I've now put pressure on you, Luke, to keep the video content coming. I know it's hard. It's hard, right? Creating video content. It's the investment of time, effort and brainwaves. You got to keep thinking what to make content about. So that's

Dr. Luke Schultheis  43:16  
doing it. I appreciate it. Jonathan, thanks for all the work you do.

Host  43:20  
A fan look for more great content. Please visit www.studentbridge.com, we've got a great area on the site for all kinds of resources, whether it be webinars or other podcasts, blogs, white papers, case studies. We'd love to hear from you, but until then, thank you for watching Filling Seats, and we look forward to seeing you next time. So long.