Mickey Baines (Kennedy & Company) on College Marketing, Admissions Decisions, and the Value of...

Welcome to the Hackiversity Podcast, where your host, Kyle Whiney, deconstructs higher education inside the new economy. Get ready to learn how students can hack their way to the best results before, during, and after college. It's hacking time.

Ladies and gents, welcome to the hackiversity Podcast, where I, Kyle Whiney, typically, and I emphasize typically, interview recent college graduates who had rapid success immediately after college and deconstruct the reasons why. But today marks the first. Rather than interview wildly successful recent college graduates, the show is branching out. We are conducting a bit of experimentation, to use a Hackiversity phrase. Largely thanks to feedback from you, people in our audience have asked us to interview people in the education space, meaning those folks who either make decisions regarding higher education or influence those who do. People wanted to know how the college system works behind the scenes, and we've done just that. Today, I'm excited to welcome onto the show my first public policy guru, Mickey Baines. Mickey works for Kennedy and Company, which is a boutique educational consulting firm located in Washington, D.C. as part of Mickey's job, Mickey consults colleges and universities about mainly how to market to students. This means that Mickey is behind the scenes, helping colleges make themselves more appealing to students and the parents of those students. So in this episode, Mickey lifts the veil on discussions that colleges have behind the scenes. We dive into everything from the optimal tuition price to branding strategies to job preparedness. And again, these are conversations that colleges are having about students and how to entice students to come to their school. As you'll see, Mickey has a real presence about himself that is both confident, but yet approachable. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that Mickey has made his fair share of television appearances on the TV show qvc. Chalk that up to another first for the Hackiversity Podcast, a television guy coming onto the show. So, without further ado, let's dig in. Happy hacking.

Mickey, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Mickey, I'm really excited to have you on because today marks a first for a lot of things. With having you on, you are the first time I've ever had a TV star appear on my show. So congratulations on that.

That's a relative term.

The second first is that I've never had a policy guru on the show. Usually I interview radically successful recent college graduates. So congratulations on another first.

To be the first non successful person on your podcast is an honor.

Well, I don't think the unsuccessful part fits the bill, but I'm excited to see everything that you've Accomplished. So speaking of that, let's get into your career and kind of how you fit into the educational arena. So you currently work at Kennedy & Company, which is located in Washington, D.C. tell me, what exactly is Kennedy & Company?

Yeah, so we are a higher education strategy consulting firm where we're pretty small. We have I think 13 or 14 staff on board now. We work with colleges, universities primarily here in the United States, but we have clients in Europe and in Canada as well. Helping them rethink their strategy for enrolling students, the model they have for educating students, the modalities in which they connect and engage and educate students. You know, what does it mean to be financially sustainable today as a college or university? You know, those are a lot of their projects. I work a lot with enrollment related issues. So if the school isn't as successful as it'd like to be, and how it markets and recruits students to enroll, helping them rethink some of those strategies and thinking how they incorporate technology into those efforts, that's really my focus.

So you're doing a lot of interfacing with the colleges and universities themselves?

Yes, and usually I'm somewhere across the country. So it could be California, it could be in D.C. the Southeast, could be in the Midwest or in Michigan and those places. So we have clients all across.

Okay, so you generally kind of fly there on site and you put on your presentation. Are you guys running numbers on students or the market kind of at large? Or what do some of your discussions look like with these colleges?

So it can be both. It can be. Let's look at who the prospective student pool is at a particular college university. Let's look at that makeup, let's look at what you did, all the activities you had in place to build that particular student pool, and let's look at what you say you want to have and compare the two to see if there's a difference. And if so, you know, where are you falling short? Where are you doing better than you thought? How is your reach geographically? It could be market research, where we're looking at a particular institution and some of their primary or secondary competitor institutions and how they're competing against them in terms of building that student pool or yielding the right student set compared to that. We work with some, even graduate schools or law schools, as they think about, you know, their rankings and how that is impacting their ability to attract prospective students. And if they want to improve their rankings, what is it they need to do differently from generating students to looking at how they use financial aid and scholarships? To better price their particular programs for an individual student.

So basically, kind of, in short, your job is to consult colleges and universities to kind of maximize enrollment.

Yes.

Yeah.

Cool. Do you work with high schools or is it just mainly the colleges and universities?

I would say it's almost, I won't say exclusively, but near exclusively college and universities. We've, we've had some discussions with a few private secondary schools that have some of these same challenges, but most of our work, and I'll say especially mine, is with the college and universities.

And when you're having these discussions with the colleges and universities, are they trying to capture high school students? So is it marketing toward the high school students trying to apply for their university, or is it, you know, kind of trying to capture the hearts and minds of students that already exist at that college so they don't transfer? Who is the client, who is the customer?

Yes. Yep. So it can be both. I would say currently most of it is on the former. Those prospective students. We do have clients. I actually have a client now who's focusing on that current student. We have a couple of clients. So you schools are beginning to rethink their service models for students. We have several schools that we've been talking to and consulting with as they rebuild that model. And what does it mean to, you know, now that technology provides information that we have and we're on this kind of 24 hour cycle? How does a 9 to 5 office support that? And how can technology help support that? And so we're helping them kind of rethink that model so that students can get the information they need when they need it, without requiring the university to have all their offices open 24 hours a day, which is not the financially feasible thing for them to do. So there's a lot of interest in that. Several states have big initiatives. California has a very large initiative for two year institutions, the Guided Pathways model, that helps students better identify what are their actual desired outcomes. And how can their host institution, the student in which they choose to enroll, how can that institution help create that pathway so that when they enroll, they know what they need to do for the next six months or two years, or if they're part time, maybe three or four years, but they can start laying out that pathway so they know what they need to do along the way to stay on the path?

Yeah, it sounds a lot like what I'm doing with Hackiversity, which is, you know, students have very individualized career and college trajectories and there's a lot of confusion as to how they go about that process, what the beginning process looks like before they even hit campus, and then what it looks like afterwards. So I like, I like that with California. Miki, I want to ask you about this kind of whole maximizing enrollment thing. So, like I said, my work with hackiversity is really tailored to the student. And I love working with colleges and universities to the extent our interests overlap. But as you can imagine, oftentimes they don't. And one of the concerns I have with this kind of thesis of maximizing enrollment is doesn't that just lead to academic inflation? Meaning that a job that used to require a high school diploma now requires a bachelor's degree, and a job that used to require a bachelor's degree now requires a master's degree? Isn't at some point, isn't it kind of a zero sum game that we're playing? Tell me why I'm wrong.

Well, I'm not going to tell you. You are wrong. You know, here's the way I kind of view this. When we're looking to help a school maximize enrollment, the first thing I want to work with the school is to say this isn't about going and getting anybody with a pulse, you know, in order to maximize enrollment, it does include how to better retain students. And one of the key ways that you can better retain students is understanding who the right student is for you or who the right students are. There's not a single student. But if who are the right students? Who, which students are most likely to succeed in your environment. And the dynamics of that entail a lot of things, including geographic location, including academic preparedness, all those things. But if we can better understand who the right students are, maximizing the enrollment really is honing in on a different subset or a smaller subset of students and, and articulating to them better who you are and why you are the right fit. So that when you find those students that yield and say, yes, this is the right institution for me, you've got that right mix, and you're retaining more of them. You don't have to enroll as many, you don't have to reach as far. And it creates a much more healthy dynamic for the institution. So, you know, that's to me, that ideal place.

So it's more, more about the fit, the market fit.

Yes, absolutely and absolutely. And I think, you know, as struggle as college universities decide to do that, and as high school students are rethinking how they go about their education, you know, you are seeing many colleges, especially the small Institutions, private institutions that are so dependent upon student tuition to meet their financial need as an institution, you know, they're struggling. If you look in the Northeast, there have been closures and mergers happening over the past 18, 24 months, and that's not going to be unique. The Northeast is a little bit more of a competitive market than it is, you know, like in the Southwest or maybe on the West Coast. But, you know, that situation is due to students rethinking. Well, just due to a couple of things. There are fewer high school students graduating from high school, and therefore, there are fewer students to even recruit. But as students, you know, you add to that what you're talking about, Kyle, in terms of, you know, how do I know what's right for me if a college degree is really what's necessary, whether it's now or later, and maybe I don't have to enroll right away? And as you couple that with having fewer people to enroll to begin with, and you're seeing colleges struggle, and some of them aren't able to sustain. And, you know, that, to me, that's heartbreaking for the students that are currently enrolled there, because sometimes some institutions aren't giving them a heck of a lot of notice. They might tell them in April or May, hey, we're shutting down. We won't be back for you in the fall. And they're kind of stuck.

Yeah.

What.

What have colleges been doing and universities been doing to better tweak their messaging to make it more narrow and specific to, I don't know, a particular strata of potential students?

Not a lot. You know, a lot of them. This type of change is a large cultural shift for colleges as well. And so, you know, when you have a conversation with an institution about saying, hey, we want to radically change, you know, how you go about identifying and marketing to and recruiting your prospective student pool, that's a scary thing. They've been dependent upon those methodologies for decades. Right. And they know they may need 40,000 prospective students to get 15,000, to apply, to get 3,000 to enroll. And in that scenario, you know, if we say, hey, how about instead of 40,000, how about 15,000? That's scary. That's a huge risk for an institution. You know, I'm exaggerating those numbers a little bit. We wouldn't. We don't typically go ahead and say that to an institution. But, you know, if you talk about really changing that model, that's a huge risk. And so, you know, institutions aren't taking huge, giant leaps at that normally. So. And sometimes I guess it depends upon, you know, I find that institutions much more willing to try radical things if their enrollment is radically down and if.

They have nothing to lose.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, they know if they can't, they can't fix this and fix it fast, they're going to be in a heap of trouble.

Yeah.

And realistically, you know, a lot of what I do is working directly with the admissions team to say, look, here's, you know, here's the student pool we have right now, and it could be February and we're looking at fall, or it could be October and we're looking at next fall. But what can we do as close to a one to one basis as possible to really have a real conversation with someone to let them know a. To find out who they are and what is it that's important to them and then share with them based on that, how our institution connects so that they can make a choice. You know, I preach this to admissions teams all the time. This isn't about getting a student to say yes. This is about helping a student make a decision. We have to be okay if no is the answer. And part of admissions, like it or not, is a form of sales. And no one wants to be told no. But this is about helping that student make a major decision about his or her life and their commitment for the next four, maybe five years. And so if we can be honest and upfront and share that, you have a better chance that the student trusts you and can make a more informed decision, even if that is a no.

Mickey, I love that approach. I think that's great. And that's more of what students need. You mentioned, though, that some of these colleges and universities who are doing well financially, who don't necessarily have the risks of going out of business in one to five years, aren't necessarily receptive to that kind of change of mindset. So what have some of the conversations been like with some of these more stable colleges and universities when you give.

Them the pitch that you just gave me?

So to be honest, I give them a different type of pitch because regardless of their model, they're going to get a significant amount of interest from students as they begin that college search? Because most schools, when you first have that initial interest, you might be looking at 10 or 20 different institutions. And some of those larger institutions who don't have that problem have a bigger name recognition. You know, if you are looking at the Ohio State University. Right. That they don't need to change that model. They don't need to Go out and do a sales pitch to a prospective student because they have enough people in their pipeline with that interest that will select them. And so the, you know, most of the times those institutions are looking at, you know, what are ways we can be more efficient, what are programs we're missing that we could add that would be more attractive to some of these students that are finding better fits elsewhere. Are there programs that we should consider adding or are there programs that we have now that should be offered online that aren't currently being offered online? Right. Those are some of the types of conversations we have with those institutions.

So the conversation about better developing market fit, if you will, those conversations are had more at the smaller schools, probably private schools, who aren't necessarily as established. They don't have the name recognition that maybe Harvard, Yale, Stanford, those folks do. Is that right?

Yeah, correct. And I would say a more significant portion of them. That's not to say there aren't public schools. That hurt. I actually, you know, while my company's based in D.C. i actually live in Pennsylvania. And you know, there's been a lot of talk in the state here, Pennsylvania, with, with our state supported higher education institutions that have struggled over the past years. As you know, the public funding has diminished a little bit as they're receiving fewer public dollars and being limited in the amount of tuition dollars that they get from students in terms of that increase, you know, limited that they've, they've struggled having enough enrollment to meet some of those budgetary demands they have. And so we've seen institutions like that sometimes be more willing to listen to different ideas. Now, sometimes they can do them, sometimes they can't. You know, as a public institution, they have other types of rules and regulations that they have to follow for their state. But it, you know, it's not just privates, but it's predominantly privates. Yeah.

So suppose that you were consulting with a college or university and they said, mickey, no, I think that you're totally right. We need to specialize. We need to kind of tailor our message to have a better market fit. We want to take your advice. What is the next step then for having them tweak their curriculum? Their curriculum or any other kind of product or classroom offering they offer on campus.

Well, our next step would be to look at if they have data that we can begin diving in to look and see. We may have to go collect some of that. We may need to have focus groups or surveys with current students, prospective students that did not enroll with other students that have enrolled elsewhere that maybe never even considered that particular institution to understand, you know, why are they losing students? Is it because of not having the right academic programs? Is it because they are in a very rural location and yet they're marketing themselves as tons of things to do and the students don't see eye to eye with them on that particular topic? Is it that they are not offering the right amount of scholarship opportunity to the right mix of students? And so that's where we would begin. Usually a school will come to us though, and say, hey, we're having that issue. We think it's this particular thing. Let's focus on this and say scholarship, for example, and then we can dive in and find that and say yes or no. And usually we can say yes. We might say yes. Here's where within the scholarship issue that you're. That you could rectify or modify, you know, your approach, that they might say, oh, well, that's not what we were expecting. You know, that might be the surprise. But they have usually a pretty good idea. Sometimes they don't, sometimes they're just unsure. I would say most of the times that unsurity comes in with something like retention. You know, we're losing more students than we should. We know that that's an issue. We're just not sure why. You know, we think it's X, Y or Z, but there's no real data that we have to tell us for sure. And we can dive in there and find some things for them.

Cool.

You know, Mickey, I work with a lot of parents and a lot of students, and across the board their primary concern is paying for college. It's the cost. And then shortly behind that is what kind of job they or their son or daughter are going to get when they graduate from college. So what are colleges and universities doing about those two problems? The employment issue and then also the cost issue.

I'll start with the cost. You know, I know I can speak more directly to that. I do. We do more work in that area for sure. And you know, you're seeing a bit of a shift with some college universities that are repricing their tuition. And I don't mean by saying, oh, let's not raise it this year or let's cut it 5% or only raise it 2%. No, we're seeing some schools that are saying, okay, our tuition last year was $42,000 a year. Next year our tuition rate is $23,000. So they're rethinking that whole price model because they are understanding that the prices going beyond each year more and more what a student and family can pay. And they're offsetting that with their scholarship strategy and their financial aid strategy. So that hurts their bottom line as well. And the challenge is, you know, they have fixed costs, you know, and so you can't just say, hey, we're, we get it. We're really going to cut everything 10 or 15% and not have that require some form of dramatic change operationally in house. And so they, college universities, they're really struggling trying to modify the model. But like other organizations, you know, whether it be healthcare or airlines or retail, it's very difficult to go in and just slash that price. You know, some institutions do really well financially, and most of those have nice, large, healthy endowments, but a significant majority, 95%, 96% of them, don't have that luxury. And so they're not just sitting on 50 or $100 million that they can just use to offset that. They're sitting on a million dollars or $5 million. And that, you know, is a struggle for them. So, you know, they're looking at, you know, can we reprice this? Can we take out this discounting we're already doing? And if we take that out, what does that do to our tuition? What might it look like? And that in itself has some benefit to students, because now you can see a clearer, more real cost for that, you know, in terms of employment. Well, let me back up for a second. I'll just let me touch on this, on the cost. I think with the cost, if you find the right student and you as an institution and you're doing a better job at that, you can more aptly apply the right amount of scholarship for that particular student because you know it's the right fit and you know that they are much more likely to succeed. And in doing that, if you're applying that right scholarship, the students will find that that helps make them more likely to succeed, more likely to be able to afford it, because you're getting instead of this group of students, we think this group is an ideal fit, so they're going to get X amount of dollars. But if we have a better sense of confidence in knowing who our right student is and applied that scholarship more appropriately, instead of just saying, here's this group of students, they're going to get 5,000, this student. Now, because I'm not giving 5,000 to students that aren't the right fit or that are only kind of the right fit, I can give this student 10,000 or 9,000 or 15,000. And that helps make that more affordable students for sure.

To that point about cost, you mentioned that a lot of colleges and universities, or maybe some of them, are considering substantial reductions in their tuition prices. Let's say that there's no big endowment to offset these costs. Can colleges and universities run their operations at a 15 to 20% discount on.

Their current tuition rates, or are they.

Losing money at that point every year?

That's going to vary so widely depending on the institution. Most of them can handle that 10%, you know. So the way for those who've not modified that model and still have that higher tuition, you know, a lot of those institutions, and I'll focus on those who are tuition dependent, who need those tuition dollars for students to balance their budget. You know, some of them have discount rates currently 40, 50. I've seen 60% discount through your financial aid model. And that's a large risk to have. Again, it's scary to change and say, hey, we're only going to, instead of 42,000 next year, we're only going to charge 21,000. That is huge risk for them to take. And if they make that decision to discount and they miss their enrollment by 15, 30, 50 students, they might be in the hole two or three million dollars. They could eat up their entire reserve in a single year. And those reserves often take 5, 6 years to build up. And that is when things get really scary. You'll see schools maybe potentially considering layoffs, things like that. And again, this isn't a huge problem where you're seeing this every year. It's a few schools that really struggle like that. There are a lot in that category, but only a few are really at a point where they're not meeting that enrollment goal. You're several years in a row where they really begin to get into a danger point.

Well, the reason why I asked that, Miki, is because it seems to me like if there's not a lot of margin for them to cut costs and they have to run at deficits year after year and they don't have a endowment to offset those losses, then they're just not going to cut tuition. So I didn't know to what extent those financial dynamics exist out there where it's like, hey, we have no room to go down with, you know, cutting our margin, so to speak, so we're just not going to lower our price of tuition at all.

And so, and so if they're not doing that, then what they'll find is, you know, that applicant pool of a, you know, say 2000, 3000 students that you had two or three years ago is now 1700 20, 400 students. And you see it start to dwindle. And that's when a school gets a scenario where they're having to offer more aid dollars to a less qualified student to ensure that that student enrolls and you're increasing likelihood that that student isn't successful. And so, you know, my freshman class of 500 that normally can retain at 420 the next year is now 380. Well, 380 means I need 40 more freshmen than I had last year to make up for that, which means I have to work a little harder, maybe consider a student even less qualified and give additional dollars out. And it can snowball and it gets into a bad cycle if you're not careful. And that's so, yes, they can get into a scenario. And we've seen institutions struggle like that. And that's where, you know, it gets really messy sometimes as you kind of go in and figure out, okay, what can we do differently with recruitment? How can we go about approaching this and how can we have the better conversation with the student? How can we look at our operations institutionally to see, you know, are there other areas where we can save dollars that are putting less pressure on enrollment and admissions to meet that need? You know, so there's several dynamics that really go into play there.

Yeah. Is when you have these conversations about, with colleges about cutting costs, do you find that there is the ability to cut costs but just not the culture to do it? Or do you find generally that there is the culture and a willingness to do it, but just really not the ability, the margins aren't there to cut, the endowments, not there to offset. Is there one of the two that primarily exists?

Again, I don't like saying it varies, but it does. You know, there are institutions, there are institutions that don't want to make any cuts that they don't absolutely have to do. Usually, at least with the clients I work directly with, when I get in there, they're already at that point, like, we know we have to cut. We can't fathom any other way than having to cut to help correct the ship. And so we need some help, you know, looking at these operations and identifying, you know, what are those areas and.

What are some of the operations that usually go.

Well, it's not necessarily full operations. It might be, you know, some of the first steps. And usually schools will take these. You know, we're going to freeze hiring. You know, if anyone retires or if anyone leaves, we're not going to rehire that position for that, for that role, at least for a period of time. You know, we've seen it go to. Well, we're not going to go that far yet. But any position that needs to be filled needs to be approved by the president and, or the senior cabinet first so that they can discuss internally and prioritize what absolutely needs to be filled and what doesn't. It could be offering early retirement for staff and faculty. You know, we, we see most institutions, you know, really want to, you know, not impact their academic faculty. You know, that's, that's the bread and butter of what they do. That's their, you know, that's, that's how they deliver education. So that's usually the last place that they want to impact is the classroom and the quality of people leading the classroom discussions and the size of the students in that classroom. They want to protect that as much as possible. So, you know, it could be anything from facilities. It could be student affairs, it could be alumni relations. It could be a lot of places that they look. It just kind of depends on their staffing models and then how staff they are and what their budgets are. And so I don't want to imply that it's always staffing. It could be, hey, we're cutting some of the budgets. We're not going to have as many events where, you know, and we're not going to have the steak dinner this year. It's going to be chicken. You know, we've, you know, we've seen that we're, you know, we've cut, you know, we're still too reliant on paper and then electronic age. So we, we're saying, hey, stop the printing and the photocopying unless it's absolutely necessary. Let's be truly electronic in an electronic age. So there have been things like that that, you know, don't seem like a lot. But, you know, say you say you cut paper, you know, yeah, that's less paper you buy. It's less ink you have to use to print and toner for copiers. But then it's also less paperclips, less staplers. I mean, and that seems to me so petty to say, but that could be a 20 or $30,000 savings that could be a student right there for an institution. So that's, that's. So what I hear you saying may help look.

Yeah, what I hear you saying, Miki, is look for students and parents worrying about college costs for some colleges who are doing quite well. They don't necessarily have the pressure to lower their tuition. So they, they probably won't, or at least they won't raise it. They might raise it, but it might not be all that aggressively. But generally speaking, it's going to be about the same, same tuition prices moving forward. So that's kind of one category. The second category that I hear you saying is there are some smaller schools, some lesser known schools generally who are under significant budget pressure, and they are the ones who are more willing to take risks and lower their tuition rates to attract more students. It's really two different worlds that exist out there right now.

Yes. And I would say that, you know, the, and there are schools that are in the middle, there'll be schools that aren't under incredible pressure that will still make that tuition adjustment. And you know, I'm not going to say that that's the way schools have to go. But seeing a school take a measure like that, I appreciate because it does mean they're trying to do this to help the students, support the school more, afford their tuition more. And I want to applaud the efforts. Absolutely. And you know, I think we'll probably continue to see differing models, you know, as more students consider enrolling online, you know, with online programs. That has an impact because that's fewer students getting meal plans and fewer students living on campus in a residence hall. And so I think we'll continue to see over the next five or ten years, some, some more shifts in that you probably. Well, I'm sure you'll see a few more closures out there with institutions closing their doors. You'll see a few more mergers and it's, it's, you know, economically it's just a reshaping of this industry. And it happens with, you know, we're seeing in retail just, it's more publicized in retail with Sears or Toys R Us, places like that. It's a reshaping of the industry.

Yeah. Cool. Mickey, let's talk about the employment side. So we were talking about the cost side there for a while. I mentioned that I work with a lot of parents and students who are terrified that they're going to graduate. The students are, they're going to graduate from college and, you know, have no job or, you know, a very kind of lower level, service level job. And so what have colleges and universities been doing to address that problem?

What I see them trying to do is help the student understand the importance of starting this process early in their college career, not early in their senior year. Much earlier in their college career, you know, students are thinking about in 10th grade, a 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, about what they need to do to get into colleges. You know, that's three or four years before they graduate high school. Well, that's what they need to be doing when they enroll in college, thinking about their next step in their career. So we know they can do it. Colleges very much like to have students take some of that responsibility on themselves because they're going to have to do it after they graduate. And so they will offer programs they don't. Usually I've not seen where they're forcing them and requiring them to take specific steps, but they offer these opportunities, and the students need to take some of that ownership and say, you know what? I want this internship. If I know I want an internship, let me work with my advisor or someone in the career center to determine when's the right time to take it and have that conversation sometime at the end of your first or beginning of your second year of college so that, you know, hey, the beginning of my junior year or the second semester of my junior years, and start preparing in that way so that they understand from their class selection, from how they identify the institution or organization that they want to try to have an internship with, and doing that and getting some of those experiences to help them when it comes time to graduate and find that job. You know, they're doing it just in a different way in high school. You know, they're volunteering, they're playing athletics, they're involved in other activities outside of high school that are very helpful to them. So they just need to translate those efforts into a slightly different avenue. And that. And where the schools come into play here is, you know, being sure that they have the right industry network that offers enough of those opportunities to students and then making significant progress in helping match those students and those organizations instead of saying, here's an email we sent out to these 200 institutions we've been talking with for the past 10 years and say, hey, we're going to have a career fair, internship fair. We want you to come to campus doing more than that. Let's take that to the next level. Let's go out to these organizations. Let's see them, especially those that are routinely hiring our students for internships. Let's go on site and see those students if we can. Let's understand what they're doing. How can we build those relationships with those organizations so that they want to hire us and then understand what are our students most prepared for, for an internship, what aren't they? And work with the faculty to ensure that, hey, how can we help cover this company that hires three or four of our students for internships every year, says, hey, the one thing we wish they could do better or knew more was this. How can we find a way to address that? And then, same thing with employment. Once we know, and this is probably one of the areas where schools struggle. I know a lot of schools who struggle is, you know, we've got 700 students graduating this spring. You know, how do we know where they all got jobs or at least know right away rather than knowing five years from now? And that's, it's sometimes challenging to get students to reply and tell you that information, but being sure that you're doing all that you can to know that information so that you can identify companies that are hiring more of your students faster or right out of college. And how can you, if you don't have a relationship with them, develop that relationship? Because a lot of times what you may find is it could be an active alum from your institution that starts looking at that institution for qualified graduates for the positions. And then a, that helps your alumni relations network, but it also helps build a strong connection with that organ, that company or organization, so that it's not just that one alum that you're connected with. Because if you don't, when that alum leaves for another position, no one from your company may be reaching out to you the same way.

Yeah.

And that's, it's, it's building that network.

So what I hear you saying, Mickey, is basically the primary focus of colleges for helping their students get employed is providing them resources to get internships. It seems like a very internship focused endeavor. Is that right?

Well, it starts there. I mean, they're doing similar things with, like, with employment opportunities on campus, having employers come to campus to recruit students. They do a lot of work with interviewing skills. They do a lot of work with resume building techniques. And then, you know, I think where I see some schools trying to do is how can we take our career services and meld it with our alumni relations network to build some mentoring opportunities for these students, professional mentoring opportunities. How can we connect our current students with our engaged alumni? I'm seeing some of those types of activities as well. And I think as long as the institutions are assessing what they do in those activities to find out how can we do this better, then they'll see a bigger, you know, bigger return on their students finding employment. You know, I will say Where I see. And some of this goes back to my time when I was still working in higher ed directly. But excuse me, what I see is the students, a lot of students who struggle or are not employed, you know, May and June, July after graduation are a lot of times the students that waited very late in the game to begin their process. Sometimes it's their fault, sometimes it's not. I've seen student athletes who are playing sports that are spring sports. You know, if I'm a baseball player and I'm playing for a college, that is a pretty good Division 2 or 3 school, which means I'm probably not going to be getting a lot of looks from major prospecting, you know, from the major league prospecting and teams I'm playing the whole spring term. I don't have time for interviews. I don't have time to necessarily be trolling job sites and looking at companies. And that's why planning further out is so important, so that you understand that, so that you're trying to network with companies early mid fall of your senior year. And that's, I think, where some of those gaps are, is how can we help those students. The students that are most proactive are finding those jobs because they're ahead of the game. It's those students who are waiting until February or March of their spring term and their senior year that are behind the game.

Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more, Mickey. I work with a lot of students and I always encourage them. I say, look, get internships as early as possible. If you wait until your senior year, that's too late, even your junior year. I encourage people to get internships freshman sophomore year because they're so, so important. And same thing with networking. You know, people ask, when should I begin networking? I always say, you know, now, today, even if you're in high school, because it's that valuable. So it's cool to hear you affirm that. Miki, one last thing I want to ask you here before we kind of transition into the next segment. I just want to put a fine point on the admissions process. So if I'm a college student or the, or I guess a high school student looking to go to college, how can I best position my application or my resume to a college to make me the most marketable?

My answer is both an answer for this process as well as for life, and, and it's not easy to do for adults. And I know it's not going to be any easier for a teenager, but the better you understand who you are, the Better. You can articulate to a college university through your application and your application essay who you are, what truly excites you, that you have a path in mind. You may not know how to get from point A to point B, but you know you're going to point B. And when you can articulate that, they understand that, and that helps them A, when we talk about that fit, that helps them understand, you know, is where you want to be and how you're looking at potentially getting there. Is that the right fit for an institution? And it will help the students do that work at articulating for the school, but it helps them think through the process of their mind of what, what it is they want to be able to do. And so when they hear the college talk to them about how they envision them as a student progressing and succeeding there, they can see if that fits, align with the vision of what they have in mind. It'll help them make that decision for themselves. And so understanding who you are, what makes you tick, what excites you, it's not just that it's sports or theater that excites you, but what about it that's drawing you to it? And how might you incorporate that into, you know, the rest of your life? There's only a handful that could say, I can incorporate basketball into the rest of my life, but in terms of being a player. But maybe it's being a coach, maybe it's being that statistician. Maybe you know, something else about that, you know, what draws you, what do you like about that? And then how can you articulate that? And then the school can see that. And you might say, you know what? I like you. But, you know, this helps me understand I care more about basketball and sports management. You know, you, you know, I don't know a school that doesn't. But maybe, hey, this school doesn't even have a basketball team. Well, that might have impact, you know, on that. I. There's less opportunity for me to study that sport and to learn how to be a successful coach in that sport if they don't have a team where I can maybe be a team manager. Yeah, to pick some of that up. And so I think that's. That's really key for it, for this process.

Yeah, I love that. Mick, it sounds like you read Hackiversity. Because half of my book, half of my book is talking about self awareness and how that is so important to not only drive where you go in life, but how you play the college game in particular. And so many people want to concentrate on the what to do when they get to college, so what classes to take, who to network with, what internships to get. But if you don't know for what purpose that's for like, where am I going to begin with those other questions about interning and networking, they're just really misguided. And so it is so important to know where you're going and to have that self awareness to figure out what makes you tick and what do you want out of the college experience. So I love that. That's great.

Yeah. And you know, and I would assume if you go back and you said, you know, I'm your first person you've had on the show that was not so successful right out of college as you're interviewing them, you know, if you look at those, I'm going to assume all of those folks you've interviewed had a pretty good idea before they started college about who they wanted to be, where they want to be. They may have changed majors, but they had a stronger understanding of what kind of made them tick. And knowing that helps you make decisions faster about what clubs to be involved in, you know, what organizations or other activities might I jump into in college? And that helps you begin to enjoy it more. It helps you connect and dive into that culture at that school more and fit in better and, and have a better experience. And the earlier you start that, the more stress gets pulled off of you. So you can focus on the academics and then you can focus on the internships. All these other things, they just start to fall in place once you have that better sense of who you are and what it is you're looking to connect with.

Yeah, that's precisely right.

And that's true.

All the people that I've interviewed who are recent college graduates who are incredibly successful, they all had a vision of what they wanted to do. You're right. They may not have known the exact major or the exact person to network with to get them there, but they generally knew where they were going. And what I found is that vision, that kind of self awareness that often was cultivated before, long before they even got to college, high school, middle school. I had people come on, say, look, I'm really successful in Hollywood right now, but I knew when I was, you know, in seventh grade that I wanted to do film. I just knew it. And so everything I did from there was tailored toward getting me into film or people in entrepreneurship. They said, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I always studied business, I always learned about networking, I always Learned about sales all the way through. I was always building stuff in college too. That is the theme that I've encountered for why people are super successful right out of the college gates. It's because they had that self awareness early on and that drove everything else. Internships, grades, networking, everything. So yes, yes to that, Mickey. So let's transition to the final segment of the show, which is what I like to call the rapid fire question section. That's where I offer up some quick hitting questions, but that doesn't necessarily mean that your answer has to be quick hitting. So you ready?

Sure.

Cool. Mickey, is there a specific career path that a college student can follow to land them where you are today?

Maybe. You know, I was my undergrad in college, was as a theater major and as a consultant. People may or may not make that connection of how it fits in with that. You sure aren't a college student majoring in theater thinking, I want this degree so I could be a consultant. That's.

That's not what you're thinking that didn't encounter your brain at the time, huh?

Not at all. But there are a few skills that I picked up even in my very first acting course that I use every day. Observation. Just the skill of observing the world around you, the people around you, the people in a room, the dynamics. Who is with you, who doesn't get it, who's against you. Seeing all of that in a room has dramatic impact on how I continue to approach a project and a client. And that first acting class where you, you know, I remember one of our assignments was to go out, observe people, pick up a person that you're going to impersonate, watch their mannerisms. You're not trying to make some Cosmo Kramer type character from Seinfeld. You want to replicate this person and understand what makes them tick without them knowing you're staring at them for a long period of time. But watch them, observe them, and then come in and present that person to the class. You know, just that type of observation. I use it every day, you know, so there and I, again, I haven't come across another consultant that was a theater major in their undergrad. And I use more of that, I will tell you, than I use of my graduate degree in what I do now. And it's because I work so much with people in dynamics and helping coach teams, you know, that that is very powerful for me. So I, you know, I don't know if there's a straightforward path. I have colleagues who left right out of college and began consulting in this industry as an analyst for a company. Now, a lot of those folks are analyzing data and so they're a lot of business majors. We've got, you know, could be marketing major, communications majors that we have. I think we may have an English major on our team as well because there's a lot of writing involved in some of our reports and being able to take the data and articulate it in a very effective manner, that's, you know, that's important. And so there's not, I would say, a single path. You know, I think the degree hopefully will help each student develop a strong set of critical thinking skills that help you see the numbers in the data and to articulate and see the causes, because there's usually not a single cause. And how does, for example, a student meal plan and their use of that meal plan tell me if they're having issues on campus like that? We look at things like that and having those critical thinking where you see, oh, here's this data points as a meal plan. What else do we have? No, I want to look at that meal plan to say, hey, here's a student who has 14 meals a week and hasn't used a meal in the past five days. Something's not right. They live on campus, they don't have a kitchen, so what are they doing for food? And I can look at that and say, okay, they have gone from a 3.0 to a 2.7 to a 2.4 over the past several semesters. Here's a student who needs help before it gets to be too late. Right? You know, being able to think in those ways. And that's where at the time in college was never on my mind. I was not one of those top academic students. I was one of those having the most fun students.

I know a lot of those people.

Yes. But you know, there are, you know, I mentioned the acting course. There are a couple other courses that I took that had nothing to do with theater that still resound with me. And that's where I think you also pick up so much potential learning opportunity that will carry forward life. US History professor Mark Smith, I'll never forget him. He was British, by the way, which was ironic, right, that I had someone from the UK teaching me my US History course. Seeing how he prepared for course. You know, he would be there 10 minutes before class began and filled up one of those wall long blackboards with the terms we're going to cover an hour and 15 minutes and flew through that. The first time in college where the book Assignments they gave us were books that I actually wanted to read. And so he got me that engaged. And then logic. Never would have guessed a logic course would have been one, but that was one. For whatever reason, it just fit my brain. There wasn't a question the teacher could throw out at us that I couldn't understand and get. I took it spring of my freshman year and helped tutor it for the next four years because it was just natural for me. And that got my mind thinking in ways that it hadn't thought before. And. And that helped me drive towards challenges and problems that work through, like, logic that invigorate me and excite me. And that's how, you know when I'm getting involved in a project, when I find those, you know, I like those opportunities. It helped me find some of those avenues that really excited me. And that's what we were talking about earlier in terms of finding who you are and then going in that direction. I wish I had known some of those things before college and maybe I would have taken a few other courses that I would have enjoyed more. So there's not a single path. It's just creating your path and moving towards that which excites you and motivates you to keep wanting to do more.

Yeah. Comes back to self awareness. I like it.

Yes.

Last question for you, Mickey. If you could recommend something to a college student in the form of a tweet, what would it be.

In the form of a tweet? I'm not a big tweeter. I've wanted to be for so long, and I'm just not clever enough to do it. So if I wanted to, is it recommend something to a student through a tweet?

Yes. If you could recommend something to a college student in the form of a tweet, what would it be?

Do I have to say it like a tweet?

We'll allow some flexibility on your tweet.

Okay, so I'm going to connect it to another question we talked about before we. Before we started the interview as a question I said I didn't even have an answer to, but now I have an answer to it.

So what was the question?

Think about. It was about the book. So if I would recommend a book.

If you would recommend a book to a college student or a high school senior.

Yep. Yep. So I'm going to combine that with the tweet. All right. Today's top read the book is called To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink.

He also tweeted about my book Hack versus Did he did. Yes.

So the Cell is Human is a fantastic read. And the premise of the book is that we have this negative perception about sales and sales people when we know. I think it's around a quarter of college graduates will go into some form of sales when they graduate, like it or not. But we have this negative perception on sales. But realistically, everything we do as humans is about persuasion and sales is simply about persuasion. And if we look at it that way and see that the conversation we have with our parents so that we can stay out past our curfew time about persuasion, if it's a conversation with a professor to say, hey, I know you want us to write a paper on one of these three topics, I would like to offer this as a fourth option and here's why. That's persuasion. And if we just understand that and understand the dynamics of persuasion, it helps you much more with those challenging conversations in life.

Cool. I like it. Yeah. To Sell is Human.

I don't know how you put that into a tweet that's more than 170.

Characters, but maybe to read to sell his tea. The tweet is this read To Sell is Human by Dan Pink. That's the tweet.

Okay. There we go.

Cool. Mickey, thanks for coming on the show. Where can people learn more about you and anything else that you find interesting?

I have a pre company has a pretty good job with bios so they can learn about me and my TV stardom that you referenced as we started interview kennedyand company.com if you just look at the team bios, you'll see that about me if you things that I find interesting. LinkedIn is where you'll probably see that most. I'm a little bit of a geek and nerd and so most of my interests revolve around my professional interest. I love reading books now I did when I was younger, but reading books like that from Dan Pink and making the connections of what he says and to sell as human and how it relates to higher ed, LinkedIn is where I share a lot of that.

Cool.

I love it. I will put all that in the show notes with links so people can click directly on those things. Mickey, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me so much. This has been a great experience and I really enjoyed the interview. Thanks for having me, Kyle.

Hey everyone.

Two major takeaways I want to emphasize before wrapping up.

The first is about self awareness. When I asked Mickey what is the one thing that students can do to help them succeed during the college admissions process, he said learn what makes you tick. Or for those who have read Hackiversity, what he said was develop self awareness. Notice what Mickey did not say. He did not say get higher grades, be the president of more clubs, or immerse yourself in some more extracurricular activities. No. He said it's important to know yourself to understand where you're going and why. Everyone today is so obsessed with things like grades and other resume line items. And while those may be important, those or step two inside the college arena. But first you must understand where you're going. That's one thing every wildly successful recent college graduate on this show says. They knew where they were going and that's how they got there. They didn't wander into success. Success was not an accident for them. Sure, they may not have known the exact path to get there, but they.

At least knew where they wanted to end up.

So it is with the college admissions process. It's the exact same thing. If you want to get into better schools, focus on developing self awareness. You'll present yourself much better to the admissions staff and you'll have a much higher chance of success once you're on campus. The second thing I want to emphasize is what Mickey said about the marketing strategies of colleges and universities. So Mickey mentioned that some colleges market and accept anyone with a pulse. And he also said that other colleges are a bit more selective in ensuring that the student is actually a good fit for the school. So Mickey's job is to confront these colleges and persuade them that their interests and the students interests would be better served by reaching out to a more narrow market of students. Yeah, unfortunately and perhaps predictably, Mickey's message is often met with resistance from colleges. This is important for students to know because colleges may be soliciting you even if you're not actually a good fit for that college. That means students and their parents must be more vigilant and self reliant in making sure the college is an appropriate fit for them. Fortunately, hackiversity is here to help. We are shortly rolling out our college selector tool that helps students, no matter where they are in the country, identify colleges that matter most for their specific interests. The College Selector tool considers both the traditional elements of college, such as quality of education and all that good stuff, as well as the practical elements of college such as the affordability of college and the employment prospects that the college offers. So look for the College Selector tool coming out here soon. I want to thank Mickey for coming on. Like I said, it was the first policy guy I had on the hackiversity podcast. I thought it went well. I enjoyed listening to Mickey exploring his insights, some of the experience that he's had. Let me know what you think. If you like these, I'd love to.

Do more of them.

Or if you just want to hear about young 20somethings to mid 20somethings and how they have crushed it out of.

The college gates, let me know that too.

I am happy to do that as well. So that's all for now. I'll catch you guys next time.

If you want more hackiversity and our optimized approach to Hacking College, subscribe to this podcast on itunes or grab the book on Amazon. For the show notes and the latest on hackiversity, check out hackiversity.com don't forget to follow Ackiversity on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Until next time. Happy hacking.