Is that the case at your institution? If so, now is the time to start a dialogue between the faculty and the admissions staff to correct the assertions made by the reps.
In my career in admissions, I have often listened to students that feel they were mislead or misinformed on the reality of their program outcomes. While it is true that a few admissions representives in this industry will tell a prospect whatever they want to hear, the majority were never intentionally deceived. Regardless of whether deception occured or not, it is the responsibility of admissions to assist in correcting the issue with the student the moment it occurs. Believing one can become an astronaut can be due to a vaiety of factors, some preventable and some not preventable.
For instance, the admissions representative may paint the picture of one rare success story to show the prospect the potential of completing a program. While the rep did not intend the prospect to hear 'you can become an astronaut', indeed the prospect perceived the rep told him or her that is what the program can accomplish. Often these types of miscommunications can be avoided. First, in a proprietary school system often we hire reps and provide little or no training prior to getting them on the phone and meeting with prospects. A rep needs to be trainied to communicate a message properly to a prospect. This involves the whole school, from faculty to career services assisting the new rep by providing accurate and realistic product knowledge. When a rep has the proper training prior to beginning the sales process, he or she will have the tools to accurately communicate career outcomes, both immediately upon graduation and long term. The entire school needs to give the students an accurate, detailed path to achieve a long lasting career in the program selected. We can tell a student they can become an astronaut but we need to provide a thorough explanation of how one individual accomplished this, not a simple statement, to prevent the prospect from misinterpreting the information. Second, we need to provide the rep with proper training on the psychology of selling the dream before the rep engages in any sales related activity to prevent the prospect from perceiving an unrealistic outcome upon completion.
Second,there will always be a small minority of students, regardless of how accurate a picture we paint, that will hear what they want to hear. But, as previously stated, that one student can ruin it for an entire class by being loud and vocal to his or her peers and getting others to agree that they were told a similar story. By slowing down the recruiting process and taking a lengthly first interview, we can provide our students with enough information to not be affected by a disruptive, disgruntled student looking for an excuse to drop.
My conclusion is that the entire school needs to be one the same page. We need to have all staff meetings in which we address issues and prevent them from occuring in the first place. We need to provide support to other departments, keep the communication line open, and truely all be on the same page for the education we provide. Admissions needs to educate faculty on the recruiting methods used and faculty needs to educate admissions on the subjects we teach, career services needs to educate other departments on realistic job outlooks and truely exceptional immediate success stories. If we as a school all work together to support one another and help each other from day 1 understand what we do and how we help students achieve, we can prevent these misunderstandings from occuring for most students. The school is one team, working together to achieve a common goal, not separate entities. We as a school must first educate ourselves on how we work as a system, then educate ourselves truely on the programs we offer, then finally we can accuarately and consistently give our students the same message so these issues do not occur as we pass our students from admissions to education to placement and finally the real world.
That's the theory, Theresa. How close is your school to performing according to this model? For those not there yet, what would you recommend as a solid first step?
I believe students at times wil say anything to divert the issue at hand. I do believe we need to sit down with each student to clarify where the error might be and deal with it accordingly.The school I work for constantly has each department working to solve any problem that may occur this has been very helpful and keeps all parties on the same page. We also make sure new reps have the product knowledge to conduct interviews on ther own before they do so.
Certainly the ideal situation is to determine where the misunderstanding began and then deal with it. Is there a mechanism in place at your school to do this? If an instructor encounters a misunderstanding, can he/she do to get things clarified?
We deal with each one on a case by case basis. I had a situation recently and I sat down with the instructor and our education director to review it and then with the student. The situation was resolved. The campus director here believes in making sure we have all the facts correct before moving forward and I agree completely withhim.
Having the facts is fundamental to problem solving.
