It’s almost spring. High school seniors around the country have begun narrowing down their choices for a post-secondary education and are preparing for the next stage in their lives. It also happens to be Career and Technical Education Month, a fantastic time for postsecondary CTE schools to market themselves to new prospective students.
As you know, Career and Technical Education Month is a nationwide public awareness campaign (hosted by ACTE) that celebrates the accomplishments and importance of career and technical educations, for students of all ages.[1]
And, as you also know, more and more high school graduates are choosing a career-based education over college.
However, simply marketing your school to new high school grads may not be the only, or even the best way, to increase enrollment.
You see, even though the decade long trend in higher education shows a smaller percentage of the high school graduating population is going to college, and more are enrolling in postsecondary career-based programs, there is a large population of prospective students between the ages of 20 and 30 who are looking for opportunities with a career-based education as well.
These are adults who are already in the workforce, but are unsatisfied with their jobs, wages, and lifestyle; and many fear that the lower-level jobs they do have could be replaced by AI.
Unfortunately, although CTE Month does promote to adult learners, many schools have focused their own marketing efforts on recent high school grads, rather than adults.
This means there is a big opportunity for schools to take advantage of marketing to this demo; adults between 20 and 30 years old.
Conversion Media Group, a national leader in higher education enrollment initiatives has spoken to thousands of prospective students in this age group. They too are looking for an education they feel can get them into a better career without having to go to, or go back to, college.
In just a moment, we’ll show you how you can speak directly to them too.
Now, through our conversations, we’ve found that many of these adults are interested in the trades, while others are looking for certification programs, shorter career-based educations, or expedited online degrees.
And it’s not just our conversations with them that prove it. The data does as well.
In a recent article by Ricardo Azziz in Higher Ed Dive, the author highlights some startling data. According to his piece, “The Wall Street Journal and the University of Chicago found that 56% of U.S. adults believe that a four-year college education is “not worth the cost” …
“Of 1,000 surveyed young adults who graduated from college in fall 2021 or spring 2022, one-third of them were working at jobs that don’t require a degree.”
And…
“Paradoxically, many of our society’s needs are increasingly requiring hands-on personal attention with a growing demand for blue-collar and skilled-trades workers. That’s resulted in an increasingly tight labor market and greater negotiating power for workers.”[2]
So, with all this information showing that the adult workforce is not only concerned about college costs, that our society needs more skilled workers and that they’re getting great negotiating power…
How can you speak directly to adults who are looking to gain that negotiating power? Adults who are seriously interested in a career-based education?
Well, it’s simple, really.
As we said earlier, Conversion Media Group is a national leader in higher education enrollment initiatives, and we speak with thousands of adult learners. Sometimes a thousand a week.
By partnering with us, we can highlight your school and its programs to them, and the moment they show real interest in potentially enrolling, we can transfer the phone call directly into your enrollment department, live.
This is called a live transfer, and CMG are experts at it.
So, if you’d like to learn more about how live transfers work, or how many live transfer leads we could deliver to your enrollment department, simply give us a call at 1-800-419-3201.
Or, you can contact us HERE and an enrollment expert will get back with you ASAP.
[1] CTE Month® – ACTE (acteonline.org)
[2] How many people actually need a four-year diploma? | Higher Ed Dive