Discussing the "Independent School Cost-Per-Enrollment Study"

Introduction

This episode of the InspirED SparkCast discusses the 2022 Independent School Cost-Per-Enrollment Study produced jointly by the Enrollment Management Association (EMA), the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), and National Business Officers Association (NBOA) to make informed decisions around funding and support for enrollment efforts. 

[Links above lead to the study. Your school must be a member of one of the organizations to be eligible for download.]

This is the Executive Summary on the NAIS website.

Among the independent schools that participated in this research, enrollment costs were as follows:

• The median cost-per-enrollment (CPE) was $3,677

• The median cost-per-inquiry (CPI) was $697

• The median ROI was $7 in tuition for each dollar spent to enroll a new student in their first year

Enrollment costs varied significantly across school demographics. The largest schools (those with 700+ students) had the lowest CPE of all school groups—and saw the highest return on their investment ($8.60 in tuition for each dollar spent on enrollment management in the first year of tuition). Elementary schools had the smallest cost per enrollment ($2,869 per enrollee vs. the median $3,677 per enrollee.) The median CPE for secondary schools was $5,844.
 
The full report contains additional data on enrollment costs sorted by school type (day/boarding), size, region, and grade levels served. 

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Kevin MacNEIL

Kevin MacNeil       

Kevin is the CAO and Partner of Metric Marketing. Kevin has worked with more than a hundred independent schools across North America. Exposed to nearly a decade of admissions marketing campaigns, he prides himself on helping schools make decisions based on data. He is a practiced teacher of marketing and advertising, including work with NAIS, NYSAIS, EMA, AISAP, InspirED, ISSL, CAIS. 

Metric Marketing started as a web development/tech company in 1999, and Kevin joined them in 2008. During that time, the company began to transform into a digital advertising agency and then a full-service agency. In 2013, Metric started working with private schools, and by 2019, they were working with schools across North America. Kevin realized his and Metric’s passion was to help schools grow. 

Kevin Quoted

“We need to get the right people around us who can gather the right data…and make the right decisions based on the data.”

“If you're a school that is not meeting your enrollment goals, and the study shows that we can spend money to make money. The average ROI from the study is $7 in tuition generated for each dollar spent to enroll a new student. We can't fall into a trap of looking to optimize expenditures. We're actually looking to spend and spend smartly.”

“We've not done a good enough job of putting those numbers in front of our CFOs, heads, and boards. This study helps us understand that, and what the report shows us is that an average cost per inquiry is just under $700.”

One of our tips is always to get that data in the same place, as well as marketing and admissions data in the same place. So we don't look at them as two different things. Then we can start to learn about that $697 cost per inquiry, working towards a $1,622 cost per application.”

“The mistake that many schools make is, ‘If we just drive more leads at a lower cost per inquiry, that's the answer to our problem.’ No, it's not. It's about the right leads.”

“Our industry struggled with bad data for years and years and years. Our CFOs, our controllers, they're smart. They don't write checks for things that they don't know about. So, we need to improve the data. We need to take on things like this study to understand the math behind what we're trying to do, and if we do so, the study says, yes, you can spend money to make money in our industry.”

“[Marketing has] got to be looked at as a growth driver. It can be when done right. It can be the growth engine for our school.”

What You’ll Learn

• Historical marketing budgets vs. mathematical ones

• What kind of marketing help should be in-house vs. outsourced

• How to spend money to make money

• How to use data, not opinions, to drive decisions

• Why it’s important to get the most out of software

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