Show me the money!!

Mitt Romney has endorsed Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan.  No surprise.  In turn, Vice President Biden has attacked the plan, and by extension, Mr. Romney for endorsing it.  Again, no surprise.  Here’s what the Vice President said to the candidate (via the media), “Don’t tell me what you value.  Show me your budget and I’ll tell YOU what you value.”

Interesting point.  My first thought was to go down the road about our institutional budgets and how much of it goes to the admissions/marketing function and question if that mirrors the importance, if not pressure, our institutions put on our admissions.  But I often find myself telling my staff we need to focus on what is in our control to fix.  We may not like how other people or offices do things so, instead, let’s focus on our office and operations, where we can affect necessary change and improvement, and strive for excellence.  And then hopefully lead by example.

So instead of the possible depressing exercise of looking at how much resources our schools allocate to our work, I decided to give some thought to how we allocate within our operation those resources we are given.  I don’t know a colleague who doesn’t value having a family visit campus.  Don’t we all believe (don’t we all know??) that we exponentially increase the chance of enrolling a family if we get them to visit?  I also don’t know a colleague who doesn’t think the school’s website isn’t the primary source of information for a prospective family.  Sure, they may learn about us from word of mouth or maybe from an internet search but once our names are on their lips, isn’t their first stop at our own homepage?

“Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.”

So, how much of our budget and human resources are allocated to the campus visit?  Is there someone dedicated to insuring a successful visit for each family?  Do you have funds for training, rewarding, appreciating your tour guides?  And how about that homepage?  Do you have thousands of dollars for newspaper advertising but none to add that key button or functionality to your website?  Can’t find $3000 to reward and retain that awesome young recruiter but spending $5000 per annum on food and beverages for admissions events?

Show me your admissions budget and I’ll tell you what it says you value.  But is that what you really value?  As we go into another admissions year in just six weeks, hopefully it’s not too late to think twice about how and where we deploy our dollars and our staff.