Make Academia Cool Again: 6 Tips for Higher Ed Marketing & Recruitment
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Higher education can still come across as elitist. This is especially true of the academic side of things. Pop culture has given us the trope of a condescending professor lecturing about complex subject matter. Maybe with an indiscernible math formula on the whiteboard.
In reality, academia is full of friendly, welcoming people. It’s just that it’s still a bit of a black box for prospective students. They don’t know how any of it works. They don’t know that academia is no longer the stuffy, uninviting pursuit it was a century ago.
To bridge this gap and reach the next generation of learners, schools must present academia in this new, inviting way. Universities must keep things simple, approachable, and authentic.
Here are six actionable tips to help.
Tip 1: Show faculty as accessible people, not distant experts
Humanize your faculty! Showcase your experts’ passion for their fields by creating consumable content. Identify faculty who convey warmth and whose passion for their fields is contagious. Then create short videos, Q&As, or profile videos that show them talking about and demystifying their expertise.
Don’t worry about trying to make professors look “cool.” Instead, focus on enlisting the help of professors who are popular with students and have a knack for translating complicated subject matter into exciting possibilities.
Tip 2: Use student testimonials
Today’s prospective learners are savvy to marketing and skeptical of institutions. That’s why they turn to peers for reviews they consider authentic. Study after study shows that Gen Z looks to real reviewers and first-person accounts when making consumer decisions.
Build trust by leaning on your own student body. Student testimonials, day-in-the-life posts, and alumni stories make academic paths feel relatable and achievable. When you solicit for testimonials (preferably with some sort of incentive), use prompts that explore key concerns for prospective students:
Do I have to pick a major and stick with it?
How many hours a week will I actually spend doing homework and studying?
How challenging are classes, really?
How do scholarships and grants really impact the total cost?
How long before I actually start doing the cool stuff I want to do?
When the National Association of Higher Education Systems (NASH) launched an influencer-led campaign centered entirely on personal student stories about college and financial aid, the campaign delivered massive results: over 972,000 video plays, 769,000 engagements, and 98,000 link clicks.
Tip 3: Bring prospective students “into the classroom”
It’s not enough for students to read down a list of programs to fully understand each pathway. Bring these programs to life by featuring real classroom content—project-based learning, labs, research, and collaborative work. This helps students see the learning experience firsthand and imagine themselves there.
Think of ways to bring syllabi and course descriptions to life with visual storytelling. Maybe it’s a video or photo series of popular undergraduate courses. Maybe it’s a video walk-through of a lab. Anything that gives students a peek behind the curtain.
Tip 4: Use simple, concrete language
Joint research by researchers at the University of Texas and the University of Mississippi shows that many higher-education admissions instructions are written at an advanced college reading level. Yet the average U.S. adult reads and comprehends below a 9th-grade level.
Writing at a college level is an especially difficult habit for universities to break. That’s because key decision-makers are often people with graduate degrees whose primary writing experience is college papers. But recruitment marketing is not a college paper. An email series for high school seniors should not read like a research abstract.
Prospective students don’t speak like experts (yet). Even the brightest prospective students won’t be swayed or enticed by marketing materials written at a college reading level. Use plain language, especially on program pages and in ads, so students can quickly understand what the content is about.
Many AI writing assistants have built-in readability rubrics. There are also lots of free tools like Verbatim Voice Tool or Hemingway App. Challenge yourself to get your content down to a 7th-9th grade reading level.
Tip 5: Translate areas of study into real-world impact and ROI
The intrinsic value of education is something students don’t grasp until long after they graduate. Their main concern today is, “What can a degree do for me now?”
Capture their attention by demonstrating the outcomes of the knowledge and skills they learn. Don’t just tout your university’s biology program; showcase how undergrads made meaningful contributions to a breakthrough. Don’t just talk about your engineering school’s cutting-edge lab; show how testing in that lab led to a practical application. You get the idea.
Of course, modern learners are also increasingly ROI-focused. They want to know whether their degrees will lead to steady employment and comfortable lives. This is reinforced by the Department of Education’s proposed Workforce Pell regulations, which tie funding directly to these outcomes.
Connect these two dots—real-world impact and ROI—for students. Draw a clear line from theory to practice to career. Be specific about the cool things your graduates are doing in the real world. Surround those things with concrete proof points, such as salaries, employment percentages, and notable organizations where graduates work.
Tip 6: Highlight your friendly support services
Prospects are overwhelmed and are also worried about falling through the cracks if they struggle with the rigors of academic life. Ease their minds by demonstrating the wealth of resources available to them. This can include anything from tutoring and financial aid to academic advising and instructor office hours.
For many first-year students, it’s also their first time being away from family, long-time friends, and their trusted support systems. Some might welcome the distance and newness. Others might have anxiety about it.
It’s true that the jump from high school to college correlates with more rigorous expectations. It’s true that students are expected to take more charge of their emotional and physical well-being. But modern universities aren’t sink-or-swim institutions. Students aren’t left to fend entirely for themselves. Show them they don’t have to navigate any of it alone.
Conclusion
Successfully marketing higher education requires positioning your academic offerings as approachable rather than intimidating. By humanizing your faculty, leaning on authentic peer voices, and clearly demonstrating real-world value and support systems, you can demystify your academics and connect with future learners.
Here are some questions to help you evaluate the way you’re marketing your academics today:
Are your academic programs speaking the language of your prospective students?
Do you clearly articulate the excitement of academic study?
Are you translating complexity and theory into tangible outcomes?
If you‘re looking to take a broader view of your marketing, download our Higher Education Marketing Framework. It’ll help you think through the marketing funnel and effectively engage with learners across the entire student journey.
