Admission Officials' Tweets – Students Not Interested

Another social media disconnect?

According to a report in The Chronicle, Admission Officials’ Tweets are not being noticed by prospective students:

Colleges are ramping up efforts to connect with prospective students through Twitter—but students aren’t interested, a new study says. Evidence has shown that teenagers rely on college visits and Web sites to learn about colleges, rather than social-media outlets. When it comes to Twitter, students are barely on the site at all, let alone for college research purposes.

Abe Gruber, director of marketing at Bloomfield College, found in a recent study that while 40 percent of college admissions offices are active on Twitter, only 15 percent of prospective students expressed interest using in Twitter to learn about colleges. Mr. Gruber surveyed 200 prospective freshmen and 70 admissions offices in his study, which is not available online. He presented his findings at the Hobsons Connect U conference this week in Minneapolis. “Twitter scores high for the admissions officers, but not for students,” said Mr. Gruber.

Interesting this although it is not clear what the reasons are for the reluctance on the part of applicants. Some of the commentators on the piece suggest, reasonably, that it might be down to the purposes to which Twitter is being put by the Admissions staff: if it’s just used as another marketing device rather than as a communications tool to connect with applicants then it is perhaps unsurprising students are not excited.