The Parish Pulse is our monthly roundup of higher education trends, enrollment insights, and the industry conversations we’re watching.
A bigger conversation is underway about the value of higher education—and institutions play a key role in shaping it.
For years, higher education marketing has largely focused on helping students answer one question: Why us? But for an increasing number of prospective students, there’s a question that comes before it: Why higher education?
That question has implications for enrollment marketing, but it also connects to broader conversations about what students expect from their institutions, how recruitment and retention work together, and how colleges and universities communicate their value.
Here are a few of the things we’ve been thinking about, reading, and writing about this month.
Rethinking the Higher Education Value Proposition
Higher education marketing has spent years differentiating institutions from one another. But differentiation only matters if students have already decided that higher education is worth pursuing.
In Higher Ed Needs to Sell Higher Ed to Today’s Students, Eric Bryan, The Parish Group’s Senior VP of Enrollment Strategies, argues that institutions have an opportunity—and a responsibility—to make a stronger case for higher education itself.
That means talking about more than rankings, programs, amenities, or other points of institutional differentiation. It means helping students understand the value of higher education, from career preparation and critical thinking to community, belonging, and the opportunity to expand their horizons.
The challenge for enrollment marketers is important: before we can convince students to choose our institution, we may need to help them see why choosing higher education matters in the first place.
Connecting Recruitment and Retention
The relationship between recruitment and retention doesn’t end when a student deposits—or even when they arrive on campus.
In From Recruitment to Re-Recruitment: Keeping Students Engaged With Slate for Student Success, The Parish Group’s Chief Slate Strategist, Marcus Webb, looks at how Slate for Student Success can help institutions carry the relationship built during recruitment into the student experience.
Recruitment teams already have valuable information about students: what they’re interested in, what they’re looking for, what questions they’ve asked, and what initially drew them to an institution. That information doesn’t have to become irrelevant once a student enrolls.
Instead, institutions can use it to create greater continuity throughout the student journey—and to support communications that keep students engaged, connected, and moving toward graduation.
The larger point is that recruitment and retention shouldn’t operate as completely separate parts of the student lifecycle. The relationship an institution begins building with a prospective student can—and should—continue after enrollment.
Higher Education May Be Entering a Bigger Reinvention
There’s no shortage of conversation about the challenges facing higher education. But some of the most interesting questions are less about the next temporary disruption and more about whether the sector is undergoing a more fundamental transformation.
In this Forbes piece, Marymount University President Irma Becerra looks at the forces reshaping higher education, including demographic shifts, AI, affordability, changing expectations around value, and the growing emphasis on career preparation.
For institutional leaders and marketers, those shifts raise a bigger question: Are we marketing higher education based on what it has traditionally been, or are we communicating its value as students experience it today?
That distinction matters as institutions rethink both their strategies and their messages.
Making Higher Ed Content More Distinctive
If everyone is trying to stand out, following the same content formulas probably won’t help.
Our latest blog, 10 Ways to Make Your Content More Distinctive, draws on our conversation with editorial strategist Charlsie Niemiec about what it takes to develop a stronger point of view.
The goal isn’t to make content different for its own sake. It’s about creating work that reflects an institution’s perspective, expertise, people, and personality.
That means trusting your judgment, getting more specific, and asking a simple question before publishing: Could this content have been created for another institution?
If the answer is yes, there’s probably an opportunity to make it more distinctive.
What Does Value Look Like to Students?
The conversation about the value of higher education also has to include what students actually expect from their institutions.
A recent Higher Ed Dive piece highlights gaps between what students want and what institutions are currently providing, including career and salary information, financial guidance, flexibility, and support beyond graduation.
One finding particularly stood out: 74% of learners want career pathways and salary outcomes integrated into degree planning, but only 4% say their institution currently provides that information.
That gap is worth paying attention to. If students are evaluating higher education based on increasingly practical questions about cost, career outcomes, flexibility, and what happens after graduation, institutions need to make those answers easier to find—and easier to understand.
Put Prospective Students First
Institutional websites have to serve a lot of audiences. Current students, faculty, staff, alums, parents, donors, and prospective students all have different needs.
But when it comes to enrollment, prospective students should be at the center of the experience.
In his latest piece for eCampus News, The Parish Group’s Roger Jones argues for designing higher education websites around what prospective students actually need from an institution.
That sounds straightforward, but institutional websites can easily become organized around the institution rather than the people trying to understand it.
For prospective students, the questions are usually much more practical: Can I see myself here? Can I afford it? Will this help me reach my goals? What do I need to know to take the next step?
A website that answers those questions clearly does more than provide information. It’s helping students make a decision.
Final Thoughts
Across all of these conversations, there’s a common thread: higher education has to be clear about the value it offers—and that value has to be communicated from the student’s perspective.
That applies to the big question of why higher education matters. It applies to the information students expect to find about careers, costs, and outcomes. It applies to how institutions connect recruitment and retention. And it applies to the content and websites prospective students encounter along the way.
Enrollment marketing isn’t just about convincing students that your institution is the right choice.
It’s also about understanding what students are trying to figure out, giving them useful answers, and helping them see where higher education fits into the future they’re imagining for themselves.
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