The Enrollment Brief

Every campus says it has a close-knit community and world-class faculty, but prospective students have learned to scroll past all of it. In this episode, Jarrett Smith, Scott Rhodes, and Jeff Kallay each share one practical move to make before the next recruitment cycle. Jarrett challenges teams to replace adjectives in marketing copy with concrete evidence, Scott sends enrollment leaders out to learn what students are actually doing on campus, and Jeff asks teams to rework campus visit communications for yield.

• Swap Adjectives for Evidence: "Personalized education" becomes an advisor every student meets before registering. "Great location" becomes a 12-minute train ride to downtown internships. Specifics also give AI tools something real to repeat about your institution.
• Ask Better Questions to Get Better Copy: Prompting faculty to describe what students will be able to do with their hands or minds by graduation produces concrete detail that vague summary phrases hide.
• Learn What Students Actually Do: Time with faculty, student affairs, and students over the summer surfaces small campus traditions and authentic language that rarely make it into leadership meetings or marketing copy.
• Give Visit Communications a Yield Tone: More families are waiting on application and financial aid decisions before they visit, and for some students orientation is their first time on campus. Visit emails and web pages should reflect that.

Jeff Kallay has been on a post-pandemic mission to bring fun back to campus, and this episode makes the case that student happiness deserves an actual strategy. Citing Bloomberg Businessweek's reporting on America's fun shortage, Jeff, Scott, and Jarrett trace how budget cuts, risk aversion, and ideological shifts drained the joy from student life, and why that matters for enrollment. The conversation connects involvement to career readiness, challenges how SGA budgets get spent, and pushes marketers to trade vague talk of vibrant communities for specifics students can actually picture.

Key Takeaways

• Involvement Is an Outcomes Story: Ohio State research found highly involved students were three times more likely to be considered for a job by employers and rated 18% more career ready. Clubs and campus life belong in your ROI narrative.
• The SGA Problem: SGA leadership represents roughly 1-2% of the student body, yet often controls the activities budget. The result is expensive programming that draws ten students.
• Specificity Sells Fun: "Our vibrant and welcoming community" convinces no one. A $10 Broadway trip with transportation included does.
• Authentic Beats Borrowed: The right programming matches your actual student body, whether that means bingo, concerts, or LARPing. Talk to your RAs and housing directors to find out what it is.

Every year, enrollment and marketing leaders sign off on conference registrations, flights, and hotel rooms... sometimes without much of a plan for what comes back. In this episode, Jarrett Smith, Scott Rhodes, and Jeff Kallay draw on decades of presenting, exhibiting, and attending to explain what these events can actually do for your team. Scott shares the debrief system he used as a VP to turn every trip into staff development, Jeff makes the case for treating the exhibit hall as free research and career networking, and the group takes a candid look at where the conference model needs a refresh.

Key Takeaways

• Send Staff With Assignments: Scott's VP playbook: have team members choose sessions tied to something they're actively working on, bring back start, stop, continue ideas, and share what they learned at the next staff meeting.
• The Exhibit Hall Is Free Consulting: Vendors invest in original research, blogs, and podcasts. Your team should be asking every relevant firm, "What are you providing that helps me do my job better?"
• Know the Players Before You Need Them: If an RFP is likely in the next 12 months, conference season is the time to meet four providers in that space instead of defaulting to the two names you already know.
• Your Conference Runs on Vendor Money: Exhibitors and sponsors subsidize the events your team attends. Engaging them thoughtfully keeps registration affordable and the conferences you rely on viable.
• First-Timers Deserve Training: Associations pour money into gimmicks to drive exhibit hall traffic when a first-timer session on how to work a conference would serve young professionals far better.

Episode Highlights

• [00:19] Why conferences deserve a rethink: framing the state of admissions and enrollment marketing events.
• [03:46] What the exhibit hall really costs: an insider look at the money behind every booth your team walks past.
• [06:59] How vendors measure ROI, and why that long game shapes the partners who show up for your campus.
• [08:30] The Saturday problem: why exhibit halls empty out and what it signals about scheduling.
• [09:55] What smaller conferences owe their sponsors and their attendees.
• [12:56] The symbiotic relationship: what attendees and vendors each bring to a conference that works.
• [15:28] Scott's VP playbook: session assignments, debriefs, and making attendance count.
• [16:09] Turning the exhibit hall into professional development for your junior staff.
• [21:46] One change each host would make, from ditching Saturdays to funding first-timer training.

The tangible impact of AI has arrived, from data center booms to hiring freezes, and higher education is squarely in its path. In this episode, Jarrett Smith, Scott Rhodes, and Jeff Kallay dig into what AI means for the value and relevance of a college degree. Along the way they challenge some popular narratives: that every student is an enthusiastic AI adopter and that the AI job loss story is as dire as the headlines suggest. The conversation lands on a hopeful note, with concrete ideas for how institutions can defend and even strengthen the value of what they offer.

• Students Are More Skeptical Than You Think: Far from cheating their way through school, many students, including computer science and engineering majors, view AI as a threat to learning, creativity, and their own humanity.
• Gas on the ROI Fire: There's no strong evidence AI is dissuading students from college altogether, but it has intensified existing doubts about tuition pricing, degree relevance, and speed to career, pushing students to reconsider where they enroll, how much they'll pay, and how long they'll stay.
• Rigor Is the New Currency: Elite institutions are thriving because they project rigor, transformative experiences, and confidence. Schools that prove their students can think, create, and solve problems have a story AI can't undercut.

• [00:13] Setting the table: AI's tangible impact finally hits higher ed.
• [01:40] Skeptics, not cheaters: why students are warier of AI than the headlines suggest.
• [02:28] The normalization speed run: from cheating panic to everyday study tool in a single year.
• [06:38] The creator generation: a generational theory for why Gen Z sees AI as a false prophet.
• [08:35] Gas on the fire: how AI amplifies long-simmering doubts about ROI and degree relevance.
• [10:52] The polish problem: why a perfect job application now raises eyebrows.
• [13:03] Blue books and big questions: rethinking majors and what a degree should certify.
• [16:41] The layoff narrative: separating real AI displacement from corporate cover.
• [21:07] Where to steer the ship: rigor, outcomes, and putting AI 101 in the core curriculum.

A Forbes article on the rise of the "vibe school" caught fire last fall, and Jeff Kallay brings it to the table for a closer look. The premise: a growing number of families are bypassing the Ivy League in favor of campuses that pair academic rigor with balance, social energy, and stability. Jeff, Scott, and Jarrett unpack what actually creates a vibe, why staying out of the political fray has become a quiet competitive advantage, and what any campus can do to start building its own vibe, beginning with a fresh set of eyes and a pressure washer.

• Prestige is being redefined: Families who once saw the Ivy League as the only path are now prioritizing mental health, campus culture, career access, and a sense of belonging.
• Stability sells: Vibe schools have largely stayed out of national controversies, and for many families, that calm is a core part of the appeal. Echo Delta's own research shows most students don't want politics to be a primary feature of their college experience.
• Vibe can trickle down: The current list skews affluent, but the underlying ingredients (aesthetics, energy, pro-student leadership) are available to institutions at every price point.
• Vibe starts with leadership: Presidents and trustees set the tone. The most reliable first move is deceptively simple: walk your campus with fresh eyes and invest in how it looks and feels.

• [00:19] What is a vibe school? Jeff breaks down the Forbes article that sparked the conversation.
• [03:06] The overlooked trait: why avoiding national controversy is part of the vibe formula.
• [04:10] The vibe list: Boulder, Oregon, Richmond, Wake Forest, SMU, TCU, Villanova, and more.
• [06:53] What these schools have in common: leadership that invests in the undergraduate experience.
• [08:30] You know it when you feel it: Scott on sensing the vibe the moment he steps out of the rental car.
• [10:29] Deflating the Ivy obsession: why elevating other schools is good for higher ed.
• [12:55] The Target version of vibe: great value schools can play this game too.
• [14:24] What the politics of college choice research says about what students really want.
• [15:57] A vibe school case study: how Florida Southern transformed its campus, starting with landscaping.
• [18:18] Where to begin: Jeff and Scott's practical first steps for presidents who want the vibe.

• The Rise of the 'Vibe School' in College Admissions (Forbes): The article by independent counselor Dr. Liz Stone that inspired this episode.
• Echo Delta's Politics of College Choice Research: Echo Delta's study on how campus politics influence college choice.
• Dream School: Finding the College That's Right for You by Jeff Selingo: The book Jarrett references about finding quality and value throughout higher ed.

Most conversations about AI search in higher education center on visibility: how do we show up in ChatGPT or AI Overviews? Jarrett Smith opens this episode with a different question, sparked by a paradigm-shifting moment auditing a school he knew inside out. The AI tools weren't just surfacing search rankings, they were holding up a mirror to the institution's actual brand, with eerie accuracy. In this episode, we explore how AI search often reveals the gap between what schools claim to be and what they actually are, and why that gap is getting harder to market around.

• AI Search as Brand Mirror: LLMs synthesize every Reddit thread, review, and social mention about your school into a portrait that's often uncomfortably accurate.
• You Can't Out-market a Weak Product: Information that used to sit buried five pages deep in Google now surfaces directly in conversational AI answers, making it much harder to paper over experience gaps with clever messaging.
• Real/Real Beats Real/Fake: Drawing on Pine and Gilmore's authenticity matrix, the strongest brand position is being genuinely what you say you are.
• AI as Institutional Therapy: An AI audit can be the catalyst for honest internal conversations that admissions teams have wanted leadership to have for years.

• [00:30] Why AI search is more than a visibility problem.
• [02:35] The paradigm shift: when an AI audit nailed a school's brand with 90% accuracy.
• [04:39] Every Reddit thread, every Facebook post: how AI digested higher ed's digital paper trail.
• [07:39] Brand mentions over backlinks: why AI visibility is a winner-take-all game.
• [10:32] The apostle of authenticity: Jeff Kallay on Pine and Gilmore and the real/real matrix.
• [14:16] You can't be amazing at everything: the case for serving one audience undeniably well.
• [18:24] Institutional therapy: using AI as a catalyst for honest internal conversations.
• [20:04] A glimpse of the future of brand and market research.

• The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore: The foundational book Jeff Kallay references on why experience is the marketing.
• Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore: Pine and Gilmore's follow-up, source of the real/real vs. real/fake matrix Jeff discusses.

For many enrollment leaders, the greatest frustration is being held accountable for metrics they don't fully control. Scott Rhodes opens the discussion with a blunt truth: no amount of marketing can fix a campus experience that feels dead or a classroom experience that feels transactional. A core theme of this episode is the mismatch between the residential promise made in the brochure and the actual daily life of a student who finds themselves sitting in a dorm room taking Zoom classes from a faculty member who is not fully present.

• [00:19] Stop blaming the funnel: Why enrollment problems start before the admissions office.
• [02:28] The Zoom classroom dilemma: Addressing the friction of remote teaching on a residential campus.
• [05:28] Where did the fun go?: How risk aversion and ideology are draining student affairs.
• [08:35] The SEC factor: Why students flock to campuses that prioritize an alive atmosphere.
• [11:29] The suite vs. community debate: Why higher ed may have caved too early on private housing.
• [14:16] How tours reveal the truth: Using class changes and authentic cues to build trust.
• [18:12] Politics in the classroom: The enrollment impact of faculty bringing personal views into work.
• [20:12] The measurement challenge: Why it is easier to fire an agency than fix the academic experience.

In The Enrollment Brief's debut episode, Jarrett Smith, Scott Rhodes, and Jeff Kallay dive into a thought-provoking report from Advent that suggests a fundamental shift in the student psyche. While colleges have traditionally marketed the residential experience, today's incoming freshmen are increasingly transactional, viewing their degree as a high-stakes career investment.

The team discusses how to bridge the gap between what students say they want (ROI and job security) and the hidden value of the campus experience that they only realize once they arrive.

Episode Highlights [00:58] The Advent Report: Why the latest college choice study has Echo Delta's "campus visit guy" feeling uneasy. [03:26] Messaging Mismatch: Why some colleges are still selling fun and belonging while students are buying a career investment. [08:48] Stealing from the MBA Playbook: How high-quality program pages act as essential risk-reduction tools. [12:33] Data vs. Real Stories: Why general labor market data isn't enough—students want to know where your graduates go. [15:46] The Transactional Generation: Exploring the mindset of students who grew up during the pandemic. [18:34] Admissions as Career Counseling: Rethinking the recruiter's role from "hostess" to "consultative guide". [23:32] Parting Advice: Final thoughts on the "Alpha" generation and the urgent need for a website messaging overhaul.