As small liberal arts colleges face a general decline in student enrollment, which fell nationally by 2 percent in the academic 2012-13 year alone, pressure on admissions offices continues to rise in the face of stronger competition for fewer students. While the New York Times noted in an article last week that those hardest hit were schools at the lower end of the wealth and prestige scale, Washington College is not entirely risk free is this new era of declining prospective students.
And no one knows that more than Washington College’s new Vice President for Enrollment Management, Satyajit Dattagupta. With an undergraduate degree in computer engineering, followed by a master’s in business administration from Minnesota State University, Dattagupta represents a new generation of admissions directors, with highly-tuned skills in data research and advanced marketing, eager to merge more science into the art of recruiting a class of freshmen every year.
The Spy sat down with Satya last week to discuss the challenges that face Washington College admissions, his approach to marketing to young adults, and ultimately his confidence that WC will remain competitive in a market that is getting more and more sophisticated.
The video is approximately eight minutes in length.
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