817: LIVE from ⁠InsightsEDU⁠ 2024 - with Katie Tomlinson, Sr. Director, Analytics & Business Intelligence, EducationDynamics

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back, everybody. It's your time to add up on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. In fact, I've said that probably eight hundred and fifty times or more in the last four years. Sometimes in my sleep while I dream, I say it and I mess it up and I wake up sweating just like you didn't graduate from high school. You know that dream. You've all had that dream.

Today we're going to talk all about data. Earlier today in the keynote, our guest and Greg Clayton, who was on earlier, delivered the insights from the Online College Student Report that Education Dynamics has put out for 13 years. Fifteen years of online student data. Boy, there's so much data. If you're a data person, you could be swimming in the data in that report.

Ladies and gentlemen, my guest is Katie Tomlinson, the Senior Director of Analytics and Business Intelligence at Education Dynamics, aka smartest person in the room. Katie, how are you?

Katie Tomlinson: I'm great. Thank you.

Joe Sallustio: Is this your first time on a podcast?

Katie Tomlinson: Absolutely.

Joe Sallustio: Are you nervous?

Katie Tomlinson: I'm always nervous.

Joe Sallustio: I can make coffee nervous. You did great up on the stage today, giving us insights all about the online college student. Lay it out for us. First of all, how hard is it to put this report together? I want to know because it's beautiful and it's really easy to follow and it's got a lot of insights. I don't think anybody really knows what goes into producing something like that. So tell the story of how something like this comes together.

Katie Tomlinson: The most difficult part, I think each year is selecting what questions are going to make the instrument. We take nominations both from internal parties and our clients, and we also try to think about what questions we're trying to answer for the upcoming year.

Joe Sallustio: Should we crowd source the questions?

Katie Tomlinson: We crowd source some of them. We actually, when we did the presentation earlier, we had some great questions that we took note of. We'll make sure we incorporate those for next year.

I would say the bulk of the report actually comes down to once we have the instrument and we've fielded the survey, deriving the insights and seeing what has changed longitudinally over time and also what's interesting to us. In the last couple of years, we've made some strides in terms of taking the data from this report that is a large Word document with a big study and dump of tables, and we've started to transform that data into more actionable and dissectable data.

We're using visualization software, giving people the ability to slice and dice the data, maybe with some statistical significance, maybe not, but be able to really break it down from a regional perspective or a grad versus undergrad and derive those insights and make some inferences based on what matters to institutions themselves.

One of the opportunities that we will create for our clients or prospective clients is the ability to have some one-on-one sessions, taking them through these Tableau dashboards, giving them more insights that aren't even within that report that really makes it actionable and insightful for them to move forward.

Joe Sallustio: Learning is always faster with the right tools. You provide a beautiful tool. By the way, if you can use "digestible" and "dissectable" in the same sentence, you know you're in data analytics. What kind of data are we looking at? Is this some massive spreadsheet? Are you collating all these questions and answers and sticking them in this and then pulling into pivot tables if you use Excel and sticking them in Tableau and putting geos on them? How long does this take? All year?

Katie Tomlinson: No, we actually start the process in about October. We fielded the survey this fall, concluded probably within December, and then have spent the last two months digging into the data. I love being able to find those hidden insights. You always have a hypothesis about the data and either being able to prove or disprove that is super geeky. But it's one of the most interesting things that we can do.

Joe Sallustio: Nothing better than looking at a report like that with a bottle of wine. Cheers! So I'm guessing there might have been a couple of those along the way. How do you decide how to show the data? Because charts, graphs, I mean, we all like the visualization, but sometimes we like to see the hard numbers. You have to find the balance for the audience to find the value in the report, right? If it's got too many pretty pictures, what's the meaning of those? What's behind those? How did you get to those? How do you balance that with something like this?

Katie Tomlinson: It's definitely about providing that balance. I want to know the what, I want to know the insight behind the data. So whatever could be the most impactful, highlighting those elements within the data, whether that's a pie chart, whether that is a table, whether that's some sort of bar chart, picking those things out and saying, how can I get those visuals to allow people to interpret that insight or data as quickly as possible without having to look at it and say, "What is this really trying to tell me?" That's what my team really tries to do in terms of that business intelligence side of things and taking that insight and really making it actionable to our users.

Joe Sallustio: What are the biggest takeaways in your opinion from this report that you would tell our audience, many of whom are around serving online students? What just sticks out for you and why?

Katie Tomlinson: I think for me, the big one this year was we have been talking a lot in the last year or two about the some college, no credential population. Seeing that come to fruition in our own data was extremely impactful to me. It means that there is a shift in the market in terms of enrollment or potential enrollment. And maybe we're all making a difference in terms of how we're targeting those students, how we're speaking to those prospective students, how we can get them back in to enroll.

The other thing I think was a big takeaway is in just that consideration set. How much we're refining and that research process is really being consolidated down. People are paring down the number of choices they're thinking about. So thinking about all of the marketing efforts and the ways that our teams can really impact that consideration all the way through to enrollment is extremely important. And I think we've all got to think about how we pivot on that information now that we've seen it and what action really needs to be taken.

Joe Sallustio: That's a fact. You're now the third person that's brought up the consideration set. Greg revealed this morning before he went and talked about the report, and just Brent Fitch, the president of Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, was talking about it. It's a big insight. So three colleges. So I'm going to be an online student. I'm going to look at three schools. Now, maybe I considered more and I just eliminated them based on information on their website. But when I actually get down to the ones I'm going to pick, there are three. So you better be really good about getting in front of me, first of all. So the marketing has got to be clean and crisp and get me there. And if I get there and there are three to choose from, what's my differentiator? How am I going to sell this student on my institution? Is it my staff? Is it going back? Is it almost shifting back to the personal part of it?

Katie Tomlinson: I do think, you know, how your admissions team interacts with them. It's also about the right message at the right time with the right person and thinking about where they are in that funnel and making sure that if there are differentiators in terms of your cost or how unique your program is or whatever offerings you do have, that you are kind of going through and systematically messaging them, talking to them about those things and helping them overcome the decision of any other school.

Joe Sallustio: One of the things that I liked out of the report and something that I deal with all the time in my role is speed. Speed is really important to lead. But there was a stat in there, let me try to recall, you'll probably know better than me. 80% of online students chose to enroll at the school that admits them first and they expect to start within one month. Is that correct?

Katie Tomlinson: That's correct.

Joe Sallustio: And you go, okay, my first thought and I'm going to give you a contributing question for next year. What kind of academic calendar must be considered in these? Does the student go, "I want a competency-based education program, I want a non-standard term program or an accelerated program. I want the good old fall, spring, summer program." I wonder if they're thinking to that level.

Katie Tomlinson: I think it comes down to those rolling starts now. And really that opportunity is, you know, they're taking all of this time, I think, to do the research upfront, but they're making those decisions so quickly. You've got to be able to facilitate their need for their education as soon as they're ready to make that decision.

Joe Sallustio: That is correct. I have been arguing for a long time, even schools that go with an eight-week calendar, you know, eight weeks, eight weeks. If you have an adult student who's ready and they have to wait six weeks to start, it's like... There are schools that are really good with marketing out there, and I'm going to give those schools who probably spend more than me, and if I get a student six weeks to get in front of my potential student, I don't have a high confidence level that my student's gonna get through all that messaging and start with me.

Katie Tomlinson: Absolutely. They'll be picked off.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah. And so getting them started right away is really a key component to, first of all, getting them to start, but obviously keeping them because they're just gonna go somewhere else. And I wonder if that's something that could be studied. How long will they be willing to wait?

Katie Tomlinson: That's a great question.

Joe Sallustio: See, I ask good questions, Katie. How important is this report to Education Dynamics as an organization? Is this like the crowning achievement, this report?

Katie Tomlinson: It is. I would say this is our banner report. We put out three other major studies throughout the year that kind of serve different purposes.

Joe Sallustio: And you serve all those too? You do all those?

Katie Tomlinson: Absolutely, yes. Our next one is probably the most boring one on deck, but the most insightful, which is our eLearning index where we really pair the student demand side with the labor market demand side to see which programs have the most opportunity in the market in the future. And then beyond that, we do a fall piece where we take a look at the higher education landscape as a whole. So a lot of that surrounds labor market statistics, where unemployment rates are sitting, what's the quit rate looking like, all of the things that could impact enrollment. And we kind of postulate on what's going to happen with enrollment in the upcoming session.

And then beyond that, we do our marketing benchmarks, which we just completed, which again is where some of the information we covered today came out of in terms of the number of streaming services people are using and kind of how we're using media and marketing in general. But all of them tied together into how can you build a cohesive strategy in order to increase or at least sustain your enrollment.

Joe Sallustio: What kind of team do you work with? Is it you?

Katie Tomlinson: No, I have a lot of super nerds. So I would say we all refer to ourselves as the wizard behind the cloak, right? We want to have those insights. We want to dig into the data, but we don't really like to talk to people all that much either.

Joe Sallustio: You seem to be doing just fine. How big of a staff do you have that's working through a report that's this large?

Katie Tomlinson: On our research side, we have two people devoted to our market research, which we conduct primary and secondary market research. And then on my analytics side, I have a team of eight now that vary from data scientists all the way through digital marketing analysts.

Joe Sallustio: What's your favorite report of the ones that you put together and why?

Katie Tomlinson: I probably get most jazzed, I would say, about the higher education landscape. So the fall piece we do about labor market statistics, it's so interesting to me, particularly coming off of the COVID environment and all of the weird things that happened with the labor market and enrollment in general. It's really interesting to me to piece together a story and think about what's going to happen with enrollment in the upcoming year.

Joe Sallustio: You talk about this conference, I know, all year, and it was such an honor for us to be here. I obviously work with Education Dynamics closely in my alter ego role. It's like Superman and Clark Kent. I don't know which one is Superman. But I do know that the insights that Education Dynamics provide help me make decisions key to growing my university. It's not like this report comes out and it goes on a corner of my desk and doesn't get used. I actually will go through it and I'll say okay, I'm gonna add this program, I'm gonna look at this or I'm gonna put this into marketing. What is the market saying? What is Education Dynamics saying about these decisions that I can make?

There's somebody that works at Lindenwood right now, Nate Watson, the AVP of online enrollment. I should know his title a little bit better. He works for me. But my point being is that this is real actionable insight that you can use to make decisions. What's your hope for those that attend this conference and see this report? What's a successful conference for you? And then what makes a successful report that you put all this energy into?

Katie Tomlinson: To me, it would actually be the outreach if people are more interested in getting more insights out of the data, if they want to have more questions, if they have a hypothesis, and they're reaching out and they're saying, "Hey, Katie, you got something else?" That is, you know, I probably get the most energy in my job when I see that people are actually taking action on the data, they're interested in it, and they're asking for more.

Joe Sallustio: Right. So they see the report and say, how important is the brand to the choice? Or things like that. Right. So that's what gets you excited is going, that's interesting. Why do you love data so much? I mean, she loves data. Look how excited she is.

Katie Tomlinson: I do. I don't know. I always love data.

Joe Sallustio: Are you a mathematician?

Katie Tomlinson: No, I actually got my degree in business information systems and psychology. So probably before the age of analytics, I was really interested in kind of the programming side of things, like how data worked and then understanding people. So ultimately like finding and evolving myself into this role has been huge in terms of just my satisfaction of honoring both my degree and my education, but also continuing to build upon the things that I love to do.

Joe Sallustio: What about AI in your job? You're dealing with everything, numbers, data, insights analytics. AI must be helping you or speeding up or, you know, so you're using it and how are you using it? What do you see for the future of AI and data analytics?

Katie Tomlinson: We are continuing to test AI, right? It's still fairly new and in some ways unreliable in some of the things we do. But I would say right now, most of the insights that we are leveraging AI for would be on our data science side of things. So thinking about like machine learning, how we can leverage data to think about what are the variables that matter, what are the predictors of students, how do we develop segments and targets and those types of things is really kind of the direction we continue to go. I have also played with AI and, you know, how... What have you found?

Joe Sallustio: Lots of things that it can be misused for too. Yikes!

Katie Tomlinson: Yeah, so we're trying to be careful about the way that we're leveraging it at this point. And I'm interested to see how it continues to evolve in the education space. Another way that it's probably most helpful for my team is we used to not know how to write a formula or a calculation or something like that. And you'd have to go out, maybe Google, look at message boards, those types of things to see how has someone else solved this problem. That's a great way for us now. We can just type it in and say, "Hey, I'm trying to accomplish this. Help me write this formula." Boom. It's done.

Joe Sallustio: How long have you been doing these reports?

Katie Tomlinson: So I have been with Education Dynamics for the last four and a half years, was part of the Thruline acquisition. Overall, I have been involved in marketing analytics and market research for the last 21 years in higher ed.

Joe Sallustio: I just want to say thank you to you because these reports that you lead and you put out allow many of us to make decisions for our universities and do our jobs better. So you deserve a lot of credit and thanks from the industry. I'm glad you love data because otherwise it'd be the worst job ever. You have to love it, but just know that you're providing great service for us to make decisions to serve students better. That's what it's all about. What else do you want to say about your role, about Education Dynamics, about the report, anything?

Katie Tomlinson: That's about it.

Joe Sallustio: That's it. All right. And is it fair that I give you a list of questions to research next year?

Katie Tomlinson: I love it. I will take it.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, she is the one and only Katie Tomlinson, senior director of analytics and business intelligence, basically the greatest title ever created. Katie, thanks for being on the podcast today. Did you have fun?

Katie Tomlinson: Yes, I had a blast. Thank you so much.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, you've just had EdUp.