Driving into La Trobe’s Open Day in Bundoora this weekend felt like some sort of homecoming.
I took our youngest, Josh, to his first Open Day there in 2010 when he was three; not in the hope of an early early offer, but because I could combine work – reviewing the day and recommending improvements – with the joys of his company.
Fast forward 14 years and this time we are actually in the market for a degree, so it’s all about him – and he’s a bit too big to carry this time. He remembered that he liked the big bushy campus well enough, and just wanted to know about options in Law compared to the other unis he is considering.
As a parent and also someone who has now reviewed and restructured more marketing and recruitment teams in HE than anyone else, I am also pretty aware that HE in 2024 is less about ATARs and more of a buyers market, especially for someone like Josh.
Josh is more excited about his marks in footy than at school, but both are pretty exceptional. He’s not going to toddle along to Melbourne uni with his Mum, or bus out to Clayton where his Dad is relieved to no longer work, so he’s going to have his choice of middle-order status unis in Melbourne – and being close to a high quality footy team is a priority. He knows he gets bonus points for being regional, that unis are going to be fishing well below their promoted ATARs and that the old ‘one for the head, one for the heart’ mantra I have muttered for the last decade or so means that a double degree giving him a chance to dive deep into politics and stay engaged while ploughing through the law subjects is on the cards.
It’s a homecoming not because he is necessarily going to choose La Trobe, but because I’ve dragged him to many campuses all over the world, so universities are super familiar. But it is still special because this is the first time it’s just for him.
It’s also a homecoming for me, because this is about my fifth La Trobe Open Day, but as marketing teams go through cycles, you see some of the old mistakes creep back in again, so some of the experience yesterday was a bit like 2010 again.
This is not a chance to pick on La Trobe, or the valiant staff who sail within her – I have written about Open Days and marketing for more than a decade and there have been plenty worse than yesterday’s event. However, I believe specific observations are useful as a thought-starter for all, even though they may not be representative.
Some points of interest:
- Signage was a major issue in 2010, rectified in 2011 but seems to have crept back as a problem again – the cycle of marketing life. We walked in maybe 500 metres without seeing a single open day sign. We are pretty familiar with the campus, so navigation was not too hard for us, but a lack of welcomers and signage from carparks would be an issue for some.
- Welcome. The first person to welcome us as we headed towards the colleges was an NTEU member handing out flyers and telling me to ask about the cuts to courses and services that are imminent. I am fully respectful of the right to protest, but there were NTEU badges really prominent around campus and even a table in prime position at the Agora. It boggles my mind that staff are willing to jeopardise domestic student enrolments to get their message across about cuts – in an act which will appears to be designed to create more revenue pressure for more cuts. I am probably missing something with the tactics here – but the most passionate advocates by a fair margin seemed to be those representing the NTEU protest.
- Dining. My wife completed the first of many degrees at La Trobe and had minor PTSD walking into Glen College recalling the food she had been served a couple of decades ago. We asked someone about whether the food was good now and they gave a well scripted answer on it being a good option for first years, but when we asked about vegetarian options, there was no script backup and she could only say she didn’t know any. The brochure with a chicken sandwich in white bread was less than persuasive for carnivore of vego.
- Not Appy. We found a blow up welcome arch and a little cluster of people with merch bags, but we could only get one once we had shown our tickets. Now the young fella and I had both been seduced by the offer of going into a draw for cash and had signed up for Open Day in advance. Then we found, driving there, we should have downloaded an app (mandatory requirement to allow La Trobe to send notifications before you could use the app was not warmly received). Then, with registering early and a downloaded app, it turned out that we needed to get tickets through the app. This process seemed a bit too convoluted and turned out to be pretty hard to do. Spurred on by the hope of free cash Josh and I competed for a full five minutes to try to work out how to get tickets, and in the end experience prevailed. I secured six tickets by mistake and we walked away with a free hat, course guide and stickers. The hat said What’s real anyway? Which I am assuming was the Open Day theme, but hadn’t seen it anywhere else so couldn’t be sure.
- Free stuff. There was a line for free donuts but it wasn’t too long and they were gooood. Coffee van nearby wasn’t free. We walked on.
- Sport switchoff. There was a fun thing where you throw mini basketballs through hoops but the electronic display wasn’t on, making it look a bit broken and unloved and no staff engaged with us while we were playing. Josh even picked up the sport brochure, to find out about footy fields…
- The main event. So i have trained many people and written many scripts and conducted market research with many thousands of prospectives students and I realise I have higher expectations/needs than many. The Law folks we spoke to were nice and warm, but the end result was yet another open day experience where I wonder why I didn’t stay home and read the brochure. I genuinely wanted to know what set La Trobe law apart from the middle tier Victorian competitors that Josh will chose from, but there was no suggestion of anything special or different. It’s unfair to criticise staff who give up their time for Open Day and don’t have training, so instead I’ll just share some tips. My advice is to think like a human, not an institution. Ask the prospective student what they would like to do, what they are interested in and match what you can offer to the student. No need to lie or over-egg, but I have written enough course guides (including La Trobe’s a decade or so ago) to know that every institution has some special experiences that students value. You don’t have to be the best, just the ones that listen and converse. The future of recruitment is about individualised tailored programs and approaches.
- Responsible AI. I have a great interest in AI and I thought it was great that La Trobe had a responsible AI stand. They have created some bots to answer questions. I do admit I asked the bot to provide a 500-word essay that would evade uni detection and it duly spat out the text, noting it had used natural language to help avoid detection. Probably an unfair test, but one that a whole heap of students will no doubt try sooner or later.
- Not a sliding doors moment. On the way back to the car we ran into a gaggle of people stuck in a walkway unable to get through double doors, as they were locked from the inside. Thankfully someone came from the other direction after a minute or two and freed us. Josh spent a while after that pressing the green button inside so that others weren’t stranded on the walkway, until I begged him to renounce his community service obligation so we could head off.
- Final note: The NTEU reps had put another copy of their flyer on our windscreen and I heard them telling a crestfallen arts student that their chosen course was likely to be targeted for cuts.
Take outs
La Trobe has a lot to offer, and event didn’t swing Josh either way – for me the crucial measure of an Open Day’s success. I’ll be visiting more Open Days this year, but also think we need to either reinvent Open Days to create truly curated experiences, making prospective students feel valued – or else put even less effort into them, hand out free donuts and a course guide and invest effort in building proper engagement elsewhere. The idea that the current crop of apps followed up by dogged conversion campaigns are the solution demonstrates a deep misunderstanding of the 17 year-old brain.
It’s no longer “Josh, here’s the course, if you are lucky and get a big enough ATAR we will consider letting you in.”
It’s got to be “Josh, we realise you are articulate, insightful and passionate about social justice, but you also want access to elite athlete facilities. We don’t pretend that every 17 year-old rural boy is the same and we recognise individual strengths and diversity of spirit and values. We have experiences linked to the course to help you on your way and we know we would be lucky to have you.” And believe me, you would be (but I would say that wouldn’t I).
