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Ask a question from your peers to help you in your professional work. Seek different points of view on a topic that interests you. Start a thought-provoking conversation about a hot, current topic. Encourage your peers to join you in the discussion, and feel free to facilitate the discussion. As a community of educators, all members of the Career Ed Lounge are empowered to act as a discussion facilitator to help us all learn from each other.

Marketing & Budget Planning for IT Schools

Marketing and budget planning for IT schools involve developing strategies to promote the school's programs, attract prospective students, and effectively manage financial resources. 

I.E.P vs. 5 year plan

How does an Institutional Effectiveness Plan compare with a 5 year plan? What essential components can be found in both and what areas are unique to each plan?

Adding new programs?

How are schools determining which new programs to add? Is there some bank of information available or are people "dipping their toes in" by trying new programs in a small way and then pouring in support if it gets some traction?

Retention in the more "Creative" schools

As the Dir. of Career Services in a school that teaches make up and hair styling for the media and entertainment industry, I find it challenging to find ways to integrate key retention programs. The industry is predominantly freelance and so once a student believes they have found the "perfect" job, while in school, it is hard to convince them that it would be beneficial to stay and complete and even augment the skills they have learned up to that point. How do you keep a student "full time" in a freelance industry?

5 yr. Plan

Once your 5 year plan is developed an in place shouldn't it be updated regularly? Would it be better to maintain a rolling 60 Month plan? This might better reflect adjustments made to market and economic trends!?

Yearly Plan vs. Five-year Plan

We do end of the year meetings to review our Yearly Plan but never have done it on a five-year Plan basis. Why is so important a 5 year-plan, besides giving a sense of being here for the long run, are there other benefits? Isn't a yearly plan more up to date? Which one is better? Thanks!

Getting Started

I recently was hired as the Director of Education and was asked to complete this module to help with the 5 year plan for our school. I am looking for some insight on where to begin, i.e. even before holding a brainstorming meeting. Who participates in a brainstroming meeting and is this group different from the Advisory Board? Thanks, Crystal

Work together

When the relashionship is good , you can put your brains together and find the best for your school never forget asking and never understimate anybody.

The Strategic Plan

Has your institution ever developed a comprehensive plan that required more resources than the budget, personnel, or the facility could handle? What was the outcome (please do not discuss any proprietary or confidential information)? What contingencies might a strategic plan include to allow for adjustments as it is implemented?

CPI and education

It's interesting to note that the cost of education has increased 72% from 2000 to 2008. These figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics can be found by searching their website: http://www.bls.gov/bls/proghome.htm What has been everyone's experience with tuition increases? Based on national tuition rates for my program, I've seen increases as much as 100% or more from 2000 to 2008.

5-Year Plan Drivers

What drives the 5-Year Plan? Do we start with the project sustainable student count for each program, or with the desired gross profit and work backwards? How does placement factor into the equation? Thanks!

Brainstorming...

If you have been conducting brainstorming sessions, what have you discovered so far? What new ideas do you think you can realistically put in place? What answers to previous questions have emerged? If you haven’t started the sessions, what do you think you will discover when you do start the process?

Enrollment Projections

I'm curious to your thoughts on ways to more accurately project and predict student enrollment numbers. We try to factor in as many external sources as possible such as the legislation to expand the Post 9/11 GI-Bill, but it really feels like at it's most basic it's just a guessing game based on previous year enrollment numbers. Thank you.

5 year plan

I work for a large school group. When developing the 5 year plan committee is it suggested that we develope it at the campus level first then present it to our home offices? Historically speaking we have had our corporate directors and VP's working on this. Perhaps we could work collectively on the plan, include corporate indivduals and campus level individuals.

Execution

I am a Campus Director at a small school with an even smaller staff. My staff always has great ideas, and we definitely excel at the brainstorming and idea sharing activities. However, once we have great ideas and plans we struggle with implementation....who will do it? where do we have the time? how? does it sustain? etc. Anyone have any suggestions for stronger execution and follow-through?

planning and initial steps

I have found that casually speaking with students has given me ideas on where I want my school to go, and I have shared many of those ideas with my superiors.

involving members of the community...

Great insights in involving members from the community in the planning process

Placement Services

I consider that Placement Services is the most important service that school has to offer to our students. Students need to be more confident to get better job opportunities. Our Placement team has to develop many initiatives to develop Workshop and presentations to help our student in regard this important matter for them.

Placement Services

Discuss ways to enhance your placement department regardless of how many employees or staff hours you can budget for it.

How can we effectively motivate our students to seek employment once they have graduated?

I have a small but fast growing Allied Health Academy. We train medical assistants, dental assistants and massage therapists. Our medical and dental programs each have externship components. We agressively seek externship sites that are hiring. Our massage therapy program has an internship component that is held in our clinic. I have opened the clinic up to our licensed grads so they can have assistance starting their new careers without being at the mercy of a spa hiring them or not having start up cash to go it on their own. Our problem has been motivating some of our students from all programs to actually seek employment when they are finished with school. We have a professional development class for interviewing and resume wiritng etc. We have tough academic and hands-on skill requirements, so they all must demonstrate competence prior to graduating. Since our classes are usually small (sometimes 4 or 5 students) it makes it hard to achieve at least a 70% placement rate when we usually have a few who choose to either turn down several job offers or to not search at all. We are in the application process for accreditation now. Placement is very important. Even without accreditation, as the owner, I have always been very placement conscious. During the interview process, we stress the fact that this training is geared to those who want to job search, and the applicants say all the right things. Any suggestions on motivating the students to actually want to work when they are done? HELP!