Market Segmentation and Targeting

College admissions offices do much more than decide whether or not to accept applicants into their respective institutions. Before they have the opportunity to make a decision on applicants they must attract students to gain interest in the college or university. One recruitment tool used is to implement market segmentation and targeting. All types of institutions whether they are large, small, public, or private implement forms of these marketing strategies. My expertise largely lies in the area of small, private institutions, so that will largely be the focus of my analysis. At my current institution a strategy recently implemented seeks to attract students that come from wealthier backgrounds.  This is being done in a number of ways. One way this is being done is by the addition of rowing as a varsity sport. The theory behind this addition is that people who compete in rowing tend to come from wealthier backgrounds. As The Atlantic notes, “[sports such as rowing]… require expensive equipment and instruction…’” Therefore, we can reasonably argue that students that participate in rowing tend to come from wealthier backgrounds. Hopefully the addition of this sport will attract students to apply to the university who otherwise may have not due to the fact the school did not provide an opportunity to compete in that sport. Another tool that this particular institution utilized was hiring an admission representative who is based in, and focuses on a wealthy area of the country. In the past, an admission representative was based on campus nowhere near the targeted region and would travel there a couple weeks out of the year. With the creation of the regional representative position, this individual is able to focus much more of their time on a region which has been deemed as a priority for its wealth.

               The question remains however, why are higher education institutions, especially small, private schools targeting wealthy students so heavily. A large portion of this can be attributed to the decline in enrollment numbers that many schools, including the one I work with the most are dealing with. In an attempt to attract more students, primarily lower income students, institutions are giving higher amounts of financial aid than they may have given in the past. This higher award rate leads to less profit for the college since they are giving more institutional funding to students. If colleges are able to attract more wealthy students they will be able to fight declining enrollment numbers, while also combating the increase in funding they are giving lower income students, since wealthy students will not be given as much financial aid. Many schools are attempting to solve similar problems with these tactics. Time will tell whether or not the targeting of these students will pay off for colleges. 

Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/the-5-olympic-sports-where-being-rich-matters-the-most/259959/

https://www.census.gov/did/www/saipe/data/highlights/files/2014/F1_MP_14.pdf

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