Lost Students
Valuable Guidance
Understanding the thinking of two groups of “lost students” is especially valuable for increasing enrollments and retention.
Looked Around & Left
Enrolled but Didn’t Stick Around
Acting on this intelligence is always important. It is especially valuable now when the judgments of prospective students and students consist of a wider range of considerations and threats, including to their personal health.
There are other categories of “lost students” but these two account for the most variance in enrollment growth and are a good place to begin.
Looked Around & Left
“Looked Around & Left” denotes prospective students who were interested in one of your programs but did not enroll. To be included in this group, a prospective student must have had at least a brief but substantive conversation with one of your enrollment counselors and then decided to enroll elsewhere or deferred their enrollment decision.
Enrolled but Didn’t Stick Around
“Enrolled but Didn’t Stick Around” denotes first time students who matriculated at least past the drop/add period of the first course. How long they have to stick around to get out of this group varies with term structure. We can help you arrive at this criterion.
It is seldom the case that these students drop because they lack the capacity to succeed. The point of this research is to determine the more complex real reasons why newly enrolled students withdraw.
Why Study These Two Groups?
Now and continuing through 2025 or longer, independent colleges are vying with de facto competitors for the same students. If this is true for you, understanding and responding to the value propositions held by lost students is one of a small number of ways to increase the size of the matriculation pipeline in a declining market. Many of the reasons why interested students do not enroll or enroll and quickly drop are easily addressed and will substantially increase your conversion and retention rates.
A Common but Weak Methodology
Some schools try to understand the lost student population by comparing information in their enrollment CRM with records in the National Student Clearinghouse database. If you have enough records and they are not skewed by extraneous factors, you can use this methodology to identify de facto competitors, which allows you to position your marketing efforts where they will have the most impact. However, you still don’t know why people looked and went elsewhere or enrolled and dropped from your programs.
The Best Methodology
To learn why prospective students looked and went elsewhere or why new students enrolled and dropped from your programs, you need to have authentic conversations with a representative and appropriately stratified sample of these two groups. We emphasize conversation because surveys or telephone interview scripts do not provide an accurate or complete picture. In fact, we can tell you what a web survey or questionnaire script will tell you before you initiate it.
You also need to analyze and profile the information obtained correctly. For example, the reasons why students chose to enroll elsewhere and the reasons why they did not choose your institution are independent dimensions demonstrating only a modest degree of concordance.
DIY or Outsource to InterEd — Either Way, We Can Help
The choice is yours.
If you want to gather this intelligence in-house we will send you a checklist of do’s and don’t based on 26 years of research and tens of thousands of records going all the way back to 1987 (that’s not a typo). The methodology you will need to employ is not complicated and the initial training is short. Developing effective interviewers involves a selection (and rejection) process, and some field testing.
If you prefer, our skilled senior interviewers will conduct the research and our senior analyst will compile and analyze the data. We will then write a report with recommendations and be prepared to deliver a teleconference briefing. Let us know and we will send a proposed strategy and price.
Once you are on the research calendar we will complete your research within 30 days.
High Return on a Low Investment
This is the least expensive service we offer. The potential for returns based on understanding the student value propositions that drive enrollment and persistence in your programs far outweigh the very small cost of acquiring the understanding.
Send an inquiry via the form on the right and we will return pricing details for two typical situations. A word about our pricing: (a) no surprises except if final fee is lower than what was agreed upon and (b) existing clients always receive a 10% minimum discount, which makes this service an inexpensive way to earn future discounts on Program Feasibility, Pricing and Financial Modeling, or other more extensive research services.
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