You’re a seasoned admission director, new at your current school and enthusiastic about this exciting opportunity. Within a year, you have established a marketing strategy that includes the usual glossy viewbook, flash presentations, E-Newsletters, bump mailings along with the requisite round of school fairs and informal receptions. By the third year, application numbers have improved modestly but, all in all, nothing has really changed except the price of your school. “What’s happening?”, says the Board of Trustees to the Head of School. “Where are the numbers?” “We need new leadership in that office!”

A true story? Most likely. Where? Look around the country at independent boarding and day schools and one may find a veritable revolving door of admission directors.  Why is this so? Why does it seem more remarkable today to find an admission officer with ten or more years experience at one school than it did when I began in this business over 30 years ago? When I hear of a superb admission officer leaving disillusioned from a school that has had eight directors in ten years, something else has to be happening at that institution, something that no glossy publication or extravagant Open House will resolve. No new marketing strategy is going to work for there is something more fundamental about the nature of that institution that needs to be addressed.  Yet, school leadership – its Head and its Board of Trustees – continue to bring in fresh admission officers and expect them to create new and unique marketing strategies on a product that hasn’t changed in years and may, in fact, not be relevant to regional or national market demands. When nothing of substance results from this new infusion of energy, they either lose that officer or change admission teams.  Hmm.

What is perhaps so perplexing about this dilemma is the way schools attack the problem. Many continue to staff development offices at three times the number allotted to admissions even though most admission offices account for over 85% of the entire income of the school.  Having been a one-time director of advancement, I am keenly aware of the need for annual giving and capital gifts to sustain schools but when approaching a prospective major gift donor, inevitably I was asked one question, “How’s enrollment?”  Such donors, in spite of their love for their alma mater, are savvy investors and they are not going to give to the extent of their ability to a sinking ship or one that is dead in the water. Yet, Boards of Trustees’ fascination with its development effort to the expense of its admission program continues to baffle me.

Many schools lean on their admission officers to direct a variety of other important functions for the school.  They forget the fact that the work of admission is one child and family at a time, a personal journey that cannot be solved by 3×5 ads in the LA Times.  I know of one school where the admission director was expected to manage admissions, financial aid, communications and public relations (euphemistically called “external relations”), and special events. All with a staff of two. When she approached me for advice, she was already near exhaustion. I did not think she would last two years.

Some years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting with one of the real gurus in independent school marketing, Dr. Jeffrey Wack. During our conversation, he suggested the term “mission conflict” to describe what many schools are facing in today’s admission marketplace. Mission conflict? According to Dr. Wack, it’s when a school’s “traditions and values conflict with market realities”. Clinging to programs that are no longer desired or considered relevant by a completely different kind of parent or student or ignoring the demographic economic changes within their market, such schools inevitably find themselves in an enrollment crisis that will not be served by even the most astute admission officer.

The few independent schools with endowments in excess of $50 million can experience inevitable periods of static admission numbers but the bulk of tuition-dependent independent schools cannot.  With boarding school tuitions expecting to top $50,000 in five years and day schools already approaching $30,000, the competition for full-pay, mission appropriate students is fierce and only those schools where mission and product align with market realities will survive.  The conventional wisdom that people vote with their dollars certainly applies to today’s school marketplace and only schools that continue to scan the horizon for the winds of change can hope to survive.

Before embarking on hiring that next admission director, Heads of Schools and Boards of Trustees must first look within the institution to affirm whether the programs designed to support a school’s mission are still relevant. In some cases, the mission itself or the school’s core values, admirable and desirable, say, fifty years ago, do not make sense to today’s parent and student. Yet, the opportunities for growth and expansion for independent schools are greater than ever.  Well-intentioned efforts to solve the public schools’ problems like “No Child Left Behind” are programs rich in rhetoric and poor on results. We in admissions can simply look at the ebb and flow of admission statistics from year to year to indicate which new reform program is on the table for public education. There’s a surge of interest and a flurry of media activity and then the reality of who’s going to pay the bill kicks in. What’s out there is a hunger for quality education: small classes, dedicated faculty, opportunities in the co-curricular arena, and demonstrated results.

The challenge for the independent school is to determine, then, simply three things:

a) What programs and services are still relevant and need to be maintained;

b) What programs and services not currently existing should be added; and

c) What programs and services no longer make sense given market realities.

The courageous school looks at itself objectively to answer these three questions. Organizational change expert Margaret Wheatley says, “Coherent organizations experience the world with less threat and more freedom. They don’t create boundaries to defend and preserve themselves. Clear at the core, they become less and less concerned about where they stop. Inner clarity gives them expansionary range.”

When admission numbers dip or remain static for more than five years, it’s the wind of change blowing through the campus. Shoring up the windows, blocking the door, and ignoring the coming storm will make no difference. One more admission director; one more new four-color viewbook; one more website redesign will make no difference. The market is voting.

Leo Marshall serves as the Director of Admission and Financial Aid at The Webb Schools in Claremont, CA- a coed, boarding school offering grades 9-12.