Higher Ed Marketing Study: MBA Websites Fail to Deliver the Info Prospects Need

The CEO of BestMatch, a website that helps prospects compare MBA data to find their business school fit, challenged me with a question: Why do all MBA program websites look and feel the same? I didn’t know. Especially when it comes to websites, higher ed marketing wasn’t something I had studied. But I wanted to see how effective MBA programs were at marketing themselves through these websites. I wondered how many of the MBA programs have home pages that make a compelling case with prospective students.

The 2014 mba.com Prospective Students Survey Report shows that MBA candidates find the following five criteria as most important when choosing a program:

1. Quality/reputation: quality of the faculty
2. Career aspects: percentage of the class receiving job offers
3. Specific aspects of program: type of program offered
4. Financial aspects: total tuition and required fees
5. Curriculum: specific curriculum offered

So we set off to study if the U.S. News 2014 top 100 MBA programs showcase these elements on their website homepages.

The results showed a mismatch between how MBA programs present themselves online and what prospective students find of top importance in their decision-making process. Overall, MBA programs focus on what they think makes them look good (rankings, alumni testimonials and more rankings), not what studies show prospective students need to hear. Long story short, MBA programs are doing a subpar job at marketing communication.

Since most schools did a good job at showing the type of program offered and our friends at BestMatch are undergoing a curriculum study, we chose to focus on the values presented by 1, 2 and 4.

MBA Programs’ Marketing of Program Quality, Reputation and Career Prospects

• 59% of programs mention “ranking.”
  • However, only 2 of the top 10 schools do. Harvard and #1 are interchangeable so I suppose they don’t need to try too hard.
  • Middle of the pack schools tout their rank the most. 70% of schools ranked 20 through 39 mentioned ranking and 80% of those ranked 40 through 49, and 53% of schools ranked 50 through 100.
• Only 18% of schools show their own data, non-ranking data, on their home pages.
  • Of these, barely 4% show the percentage of graduates who find employment. A few, such as Vanderbilt, mention their school, “ranks 4th in percentage of students employed at graduation.”

• Only 24% of business schools highlight faculty accomplishments.
  • Close to 100% of them feature alumni. You can pretty much find a collection of some of the top graduates by reading through the front pages of these 100 schools. But once again, there’s no data to back it up, and 76% of the schools promise renowned—in one case, even “re-knowned”—educators, but don’t give specifics to back-up these statements.

 

Availability of Financial Information:

• 36% of schools had a link to scholarship and financial information.
• Surprisingly, this percentage was distributed equally amongst the top 20 schools, middle of the pack and positions 80 to 100.

Crowdsourced Questions:

We also asked our social media followers what they’d be looking for on the home page of an MBA program. Application deadlines and clarity were top questions.

• Only 10% of schools showed application deadlines or had a link to application deadlines on their home page.

Clarity was harder to measure, but a pattern emerged. We noticed repeated mentions of “[school name] difference” and “leadership.”

• 19% of schools use the terms “the [school name] difference” and more than 20% of schools  promise to create leaders out of you.

In 2013 The Atlantic reported that in 2011 over 126K new MBAs graduated and the trend was on the rise. So give it 10 years and you’ll be 1 of over 1 and 1/4 million leaders out there. When looking at actual data, the promise of leadership via MBA loses its appeal.

The problem with using only rankings data:

We mentioned earlier that Vanderbilt touts being ranked “4th in percentage of students employed at graduation.” What does being ranked 4th mean? Does it mean that you have the 4th best chance at employment? That you have high chances of employment, better than 95% of other MBA graduates?

US News ranks schools as follows:

This is the employment rate for graduates of a full-time master’s program in business. Those not seeking jobs or for whom no job-seeking information is available are excluded.

If the proportions of graduates for whom no job-seeking information is available and who are not seeking jobs are high, then the information is not used in calculating the rankings. Employment rates at graduation and three months after graduation are used in the ranking model.

So the rankings take into account employment rates up to three months after graduation for full-time program graduates who report seeking jobs. “Those not seeking jobs or for whom no job-seeking information is available are excluded,” as long as the proportion of this group is not high. How high? We don’t know.

Secondly, any time there’s an algorithm, there’s a way to game the system. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it means numbers lose the advantage of being indisputable.

And if the numbers are disputable, why do MBA programs and other higher ed institutions rely on them so heavily? Why do only 4% of the top 100 schools back up rankings data with their own employment statistics and only 14% present other clear data to attract students? I am confident it’s not because “rankings sell,” because I have a very good idea how insanely high the cost-per-acquisition is for some of these top ranked schools. Many of them have marketing budgets in the  millions of dollars yet still struggle to recruit quality MBAs.

As a marketer I find it unacceptable that schools that teach finance and marketing curriculums fail to present a clear and concise argument as to why I should pick them. Why are you number one? And don’t tell me it’s because the ranking says so. Give me your best elevator pitch. Why should I pick you, and spend my hard-earned money with you?

Why this reluctance to show self-collected, actual data? Why rely almost exclusively on rankings data? If these same higher ed institutions were to apply what they teach about innovation and market disruption and how to win in a competitive marketplace, if they were to apply those same principles to their marketing communication, would they still rely just on ranking data? Would they rely on data they can’t control? Or is it that the rankings haven’t been challenged in a long time, so these business schools have no incentive to try harder. But how ironic that they’re trying to educate la creme de la creme on how to lead yet they are not leading when it comes to presenting themselves.

David Ives said, “lists are anti-democratic, discriminatory, elitist, and sometimes the print is too small.”  I spent some time on Reddit where I discovered aggressive arguments in the favor of “it’s only worth going to a top 10 school.” And that’s preposterous. That’s like saying you should work only for one of the top 10 companies in the world, or only be friends with the top 10 richest or smartest people (actually that’s quite common elitist behavior). As in, it’s only worth doing those things if you can do those things with the top 10. Keyword, “worth.” Things that are worth that I do, may not be worth anything to you. It may just be that MBA choice is about the individual, not the school. Which is why it’s so much more important for MBA programs to start thinking outside the rankings box, start thinking about what your candidates want.

After pouring over these websites for weeks they all indeed started looking the same. The impression I was left with was that they are like restaurant menus. Here is your list of options. Pick one. Oh and here are some of our alumni. Aren’t they great? And somehow I walked away thinking they would have probably been fantastic and accomplished no matter what school they’d go to.

Some schools did stand out:

• Texas Tech has a prominently displayed Dean’s blog.
• University of Alabama, Manderson, quotes the % of job promotions received by graduates. That sounds like a great way of showing the value of enrolling for an Executive MBA.
• Fox at Temple University showed interesting news and research info. Theirs was the only home page that led me to read more and more and I even shared one of the articles with my social networks.
• Kogod shows faculty in the media and promotes their Career-con.
• Jones lists average salary for full-time class of 2013.
• Kenan-Flagler at Chapel Hill shows a top-notch infographic on their home page.
• Ross at University of Michigan just relaunched their site and it includes positive examples of many of the elements discussed here.

Dear Business School, you want to show the best YOU that you possibly can. And in most instances that’s not you as compared to someone else. Who are you Business School? What sets you apart? Show me, don’t tell me. Practice what you preach.

 

In marketing we strive to present up-front the “what’s in it for you,” or what I’m sure every MBA has heard at least once to be “the value proposition.” I’m sure every MBA has also heard of “the elevator pitch.” The front page of a website is your digital elevator pitch. You have a few precious seconds to stand out, or get passed by. Especially for the schools that don’t have the reputation of Harvard or University of Chicago, what candidates see on that front page may be all they remember you by.

In the end, what did I remember? I will always remember that the MBA program at Vanderbilt University’s Owen School had a typo on the front page of their website: “Renowned” was spelled as “re-knowned.”