How Career Services Can Help Drive Enrollment (feat. Thy Nguyen)

Amid a national decrease in higher education enrollment, Illinois Institute of Technology drove their highest enrollment in about 40 years in Fall 2022 by centering their recruitment strategy around career readiness.

Thy Nguyen, Associate Vice Provost for Student Engagement and Career Services at Illinois Tech, and his team partnered with colleagues in enrollment management to build a virtual career center full of resources both teams use to recruit, enroll, and retain students—and set them up for success after graduation.

Why? Because today’s learners (and their parents) care deeply about the return on investment in higher education. Rather than operate in siloes, Illinois Tech’s career services and enrollment teams combined resources to tell a compelling story about the ROI of a degree from their institution. 

In this episode, Thy shares:

• How IIT recognized the need/opportunity to make career resources the lynchpin of their recruitment efforts
• An overview of the partnership between career services and other teams across campus (and early results)
• Specific strategies and tactics used by enrollment teams to promote career resources
• How creating a campus culture of career readiness has impacted retention efforts in addition to new student enrollment
• How IIT uses outcomes data as a key selling point in recruitment marketing

Resources from the episode:

• Thy’s LinkedIn page
• Elevate portal
• Elevate portal career outcomes page

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