What Drives Enrollment Decisions Today: Clear ROI

June 16, 2026 | Michelle Mulder 

One of the most proven ways to attract prospective students is for campuses to highlight the ROI of their degree. Over the past ten years, 62% of the conversation focused on the post-graduation path—students and families want to know the degree is worth the cost.   

A partnership with Jeff Selingo for his book Dream School: Finding the College That’s Right For You, prompted us to explore recent online college admissions conversation. The insights and themes we uncovered motivated us to return to our analyses of the college decision-making journey over the past ten years.  

Jeff Selingo’s book guides students and families to look beyond elite schools by identifying seven measurable dimensions of a “good school” that most rankings don’t capture. We developed actionable strategies from our research to help campuses improve their student-centric approach by focusing on recruiting and enrolling students based on individual fit, ensuring future success for students and sustainable institutions.   

Actionable Strategy 

Highlight the ROI of Your Degree 

When students talk about college admissions, almost two-thirds of their conversations are about what happens after graduation. Many students no longer view a degree as a guaranteed path to success. Instead, they’re prioritizing job readiness, practical skills, and a clear return on their investment. As a result, they’re increasingly seeking out institutions with strong internship programs and career placement rates. 

Recommendation: Communicate how your campus achieves the clear outcomes students and families value. They want to understand the utility of their degree in relation to job placement and real-world skills.  

The recommendation overlaps with the Dream School dimension of “outcomes that punch above the school’s weight.” Read the book’s appendix to learn more about your institutional data that may support our recommendation.  

Take Action: Promote Your Outcomes  

Alongside real examples of graduates’ early career journeys, highlight your job placement rates, graduate school admissions, and alumni salaries to help students and families understand the post-graduation value they’ll receive from your campus. 

Strategic Support 

A regional public university competed for students against several larger, more recognizable flagship institutions in its state. A value and perception assessment found prospective students consistently rated the university lower on prestige and selectivity than its named competitors—but rated it just as high, or higher, on career outcomes and return on investment once they learned the specifics.

The university leaned into the gap: leading recruitment messaging with concrete outcomes data—job placement rates, starting salaries, graduate school acceptance—rather than trying to compete on the prestige metrics where its competitors already had the edge.

Take Action: Partner with Employers and Organizations  

Create clear pipelines from education to employment to demonstrate how you help undergraduates succeed. Integrate employability skill-building opportunities wherever possible.  

Strategic Support 

A small private college in the Northeast wanted to understand how its career outcomes messaging compared to the peer colleges most often mentioned in conversations with them. The assessment found that while the college’s employment outcomes were competitive, students discussing the college alongside its named peers rarely associated it with career outcomes—the connection wasn’t part of its story yet.

The college used the finding to build employer partnerships directly into its admissions marketing, closing the awareness gap between what it could actually deliver and what prospective students believed it delivered relative to the schools they compared it to.

¹ Attracting Students in a Peer-Influenced Market: Drivers of College Choice and Value Perception. Campus Sonar, 2025. go.collegeboard.org/2025-admissions-research