Middlebury College is a remarkable place. And the president, Ronald Liebowitz, is a remarkable president.

I've never been to Middlebury and I've never met the president. (Although I did select the Middlebury website as a Link of the Week pick back on April 24 2009 for "frank talk on the financial crisis" by the president.)

The news broke in public this week that Middlebury has adopted an new, almost revolutionary tuition increase plan: tuition and other fees will rise no more than 1 percent above the Consumer Price Index (CPI), now and in the future.

The president addressed this and other financial issues on February 12 in a "Public Address on College Finances." You really do have to read his frank, realistic admission that the ways of the past 10 to 20 years (rising endowments, easy credit, and routine tuition increases sometimes as much as 4 percent above consumer inflation) are dead. From 1996 to 2008, FTE employment at Middlebury rose by 584 to 1,000 people, an increase of 72 percent as facilities, academic programs, and enrollment grew. The new target: 850.

The era of empire building is over in higher education. In many areas, Middlebury College will shrink. And it will be a better place for the early adoption of realistic plans to shape that shrinkage.

The change in tuition pricing is significant.

Private sector colleges and universities have used an "education price index" to justify raising tuition and fees far more than the CPI and the annual income of most American families. But not to worry: easy credit and a willingess to incur debt through low-cost loan programs combined with steep tuition discounting to shore up private sector enrollments.

Higher education had its own version of the housing bubble.

Tuition and fees increase: 1% above CPI

Liebowitz reminds us that Middlebury began to make severe financial changes in the summer of 2008. Today the college is projecting a reduced but balanced budget through 2015 with an FTE of 850 people supporting a slightly larger enrollment of about 2,400 students.

Today, the future of Middlebury is different but bright.

Read the entire presentation for a complete picture of the change underway.

See if you don't agree that Middlebury is indeed a remarkable place.

Public opinion poll: 60% of Americans don't trust colleges and universities

If other colleges and universities (public and private) adopt similar policies of fiscal restraint, public opinion might become more favorable than it is now. If you think that public opinion isn't a problem, read the new public opinion poll results just released: 60 percent of Americans believe that colleges and universities are "focused more on the bottom line than on the educational experience of students."

That's all for now 

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Here are details from a new listing at Ithaca College for a Web Editor to work with admissions for the benefit of student recruitment efforts. With the increasing importance of online marketing to effective student recruitment, positions like this should increase in the future even in the face of restrictive budgets.

Rather a formidable activity list here.

Summary of the Job Responsibilities

• Responsible for the day-to-day management of the Office of Admission website, portal-based recruitment environment (myIthaca), social media recruitment sites, and electronic marketing efforts directly related to undergraduate recruitment.
• Maintain existing sites and develop content through creative writing and/or editing of copy, coordination of multimedia and inclusion of links, determination of information architecture, and proofreading and testing of all content.
• Coordinate web marketing activities with other recruitment marketing strategies; direct student workers to create content for recruitment-related sites, online magazines, blogs, and social media networks; and manage College-owned social media communities.
• Assist with measurement of core site traffic and other web analytics.

Selection of "Specific Responsibilities"

• Research, write, edit, structure, update, and maintain the College's undergraduate admission website, myIthaca portal site, and other marketing efforts including e-mail campaigns, web-based magazines, and e-newsletters.
• Develop content through the creative writing and editing of copy; ensure proper communication with appropriate personnel to review the web publications for content, design, layout, and usability.
• Develop and assist in the creation of multimedia content for the website and other electronic marketing efforts, working with internal staff and third-party vendors, as needed.
• Coordinate internal staffing, facilitate community development, and moderate the College's accepted student social networking community, IC Peers.
• Keep abreast of social media market trends, new tools, and technologies for social media in higher education recruitment.
• Keep informed about best practices in recruitment web marketing, and assist with measurement of site traffic and other essential web analytics.
• Write and edit online copy for clarity, grammatical correctness, and consistency with Ithaca College's style guides.
• Proofread and ensure that all corrections, updates, and changes are incorporated into the final site. Maintain and update content on selected sites as needed.
• Work with the other web and print writer/editors in the marketing communications office to ensure accuracy and timeliness of content for both electronic and print publications.  

Salary Range: $42,000 to $47,000   

For now, there's more information about the position at the job announcement page. 

New Writing Right for the Web Webinar in April 

Writing for the web isn't quite the same as writing for print publications. Learn about the "5-second rule." The value of short paragraphs. Links that motivate. Basic steps for better SEO. And more. Register for my next "Writing Right for the Web" webinar on April 20.  That's all for now Join me on Twitter here at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/

In the proverbial interests of full disclosure, I am an Alfred University alumnus, have never attended a reunion event, and have been a very occasional donor. That last category was just frequent enough to keep me on the "alumni and friends" list of people who receive regular updates from the university president, Charles Edmondson. I read everything that arrives.

The president's Memorandum of December 11 focused on the "fundamental challenges" that Alfred had to meet to "remain the unique institution that you remember."

A quick summary of the future enrollment challenge:

• New York state high school graduates will decline nearly 20% by 2019. The decline is greater in the NY areas where Alfred has traditionally had its greatest recruitment strength.
• The projected decline is even higher among students most likely to enroll at a private sector college or university.
• Demographic trends are not much better in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states.
• AU has never recruited well in the South and West and there's no reason to expect that to change enough to balance the nearby demographic decline.

For making public comments like these, the president tells us he's been accused of spreading "gloom and doom." I hope most people view this as trying to create a realistic view of what's possible and what's not in the next 10 years.

Tuition discount: $19 million from $54 million 

Tuition discounting plays a major role here. For the current academic year, the president wrote that $19 million from a total budget of $54 million is supporting financial aid awards. This year about 35 percent of the university budget isn't available for salaries or facilities or regular operations.

We as alumni are asked to "temper your distress with patience and understanding" as "probable" reductions in programs, "including a sports team," are determined.

With 2,100 graduate and undergraduate students, Alfred is several hundred students larger than when I graduated. It is more likely than not that in future years enrollment will shrink rather than stay the same. That's not "gloom and doom," that's a realistic interpretation of the likely impact of current demographic and economic conditions.

Survival in the Private Sector 

Private higher education is not about to disappear in the United States. But few instititions have the reputation and the resources to continue over the next 10 years as they have operated in the past 10 to 15 years. That golden era of enrollment growth and facilities expansion just about everywhere is over. 

If Alfred University and others like it survive and thrive it will be in no small part because presidents like Charles Edmondson are willing to talk about "gloom and doom" in public and ask "alumni and friends" to support uncomfortable change. 

Getting information about college and university tuition discount rates is as challenging as finding the Holy Grail.

Tuition discount rate (the amount a school has to reduce the "sticker price" to enroll students) is an important indicator of strength in the market place, for everyone from University of Chicago competing against Ivy League rivals to far less well-known schools competing against regional public universities. Not many people like to admit it, but without substantial tuition discounting the private sector of higher education would look far different than it does today.

The current financial crisis (and that's still very much the environment for both the public and private sectors) in higher education has placed even greater strains on tuition discount rates. That fact was confirmed at the 2010 meeting ("Securing a Better Future") of college presidents hosted by the Council of Independent Colleges on Florida's Marco Island.

A reporter for InsideHigherEd was allowed to sit in on a meeting where presidents talked about the need for higher tuition discounting to maintain enrollment for the freshmen entering in 2009. The reporter promised not to mention any individual colleges. No individual discount rates were reported.

Steady enrollment but less tuition income

Here are some of the important points of that meeting:

• "Most" colleges met enrollment goals.
• A "large majority" said their discount rates had increased.
• When talking about increased applications this year, a "bubble burst" as presidents acknowledged that there are not enough high school graduates to translate this increase into more students. (Without an increase in accepted students who are likely to enroll, pressure on tuition discounting will not ease.)

Other problems identified:

• Banks that have reduced lines of credit and increased interest rates.
• More reliance on "adult" students to maintain total enrollment levels and thus a change in the traditional profile of many colleges.
• Interest only in academic programs with strong individual reputations. Parents are reluctant to spend $$$ on private sector tuition for programs without perceived strong rewards.

Private Sector Transformation

While "paradigm shift" is an overused term, the college president who used those words at the CIC meeting was on target. Many if not most private sector institutions will be far different 5 and 10 years from now than they were 5 years ago.

Obviously, "securing a better future" isn't going to be easy. The journey starts with presidents who can talk frankly to faculty, staff, students, and alumni who may have different views of just what "better" means.

Tomorrow I'll write about one president who is doing just that: Charles Edmundson at Alfred University.

That's all for now 

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Over the past year 16 colleges and universities have done Customer Centric Index surveys with various groups visiting their website here in the United States and in Canada, Sweden, Norway, and the U.K.

Until recently we didn't have an option for adding answers to an open-ended question, but several of the early participants asked us to include that feature. And so in three recent CCI surveys completed at Bemidji State University, Ball State University's School of Extended Education, and Rider University we added a question like this:

• "If there was one improvement you could make to our website, what would you do and why would you do it?"

50 to 75 Percent Response

While we didn't predict a response rate in advance, the actual level was a major surprise. For Bemidji and Ball State, about 50 percent of everyone completing the survey took the time to add a written comment. At Rider, the only one so far to use a prize incentive to encourage responses, the response rate from survey takers jumped to 75 percent.

The message seems clear: ask people to help you improve your website and many will take the time to do just that.

Highest Concerns: Search and Links

Results of these last three surveys continue to confirm that two items are most likely to stand out as needing improvement regardless of who is answering the survey:

• Search... in this age of "Google," people have high expectations that search will work well at their college or university. For most people, it does not.
• Links... dissatisfaction with link structure is a common concern. People often are happy with content when they can find it. But too often, finding what they want is a special challenge.

Nancy Prater, director of marketing and communications at Ball State's School of Extended Education, summed up the value of the CCI survey results: 

• "The CCI survey has helped us identify problems we did not know we had, verify customer service issues we suspected existed, determine what we are doing right, and give us important benchmarks for measuring future improvement. We are using this data to make adjustments to our navigation and Web site copy, especially as it relates to search terms. It is also helping us focus efforts on our most critical needs, so that we are tackling problems impacting the largest number of our Web readers first.
• "We added an open-ended question at the end of the survey to help us understand the "whys" behind some of the responses. This provided us with more helpful and honest feedback than we would have received in a whole series of focus groups.