Is There Brand Loyalty to Colleges?

We usually think of college (or uni) as a loyalty purchase (if we think of it as a purchase at all).

People pick a school, attend it, graduate from it, love it, bleed red & yellow (go Yeomen!), and even send their kids to their alma mater.

And graduation rate is one of our key quality metrics for how good a school is. Start there: end there.

But the data tell a different story.

Looking at stats from a range of educational organizations in the US, it appears that “buying” education from at least two “brands” is a lot more normal than we’d think.

Nearly 40% of students transfer schools. That’s 2 in 5! For instance, 30% of University of California grads and a whopping 50% of CSU grads started at a community college.

A vast majority of people switch schools if they go beyond undergrad. (I switched to UNM for my PhD.)

And for households that have several kids who go to college, 80% of them have kids in different schools.

All of this paints a picture of a lot less ‘pure loyalty’ than we often ascribe to the world of colleges & universities.

(One big Nerd Caveat: this might formally be a subscription market, not a repertoire one. But I haven’t calculated Dirichlet’s switching parameter for it. Yet. Time — and math — will tell.)

Some lessons for y’all:

1. Count things (aka measure!) to compare your gut feeling to reality.

2. Stop assuming pure brand loyalty is the norm, or even the goal.

3. Get familiar with the science of repertoire buying. (Call me; I can help.)

And GO LOBOS!