The atmosphere was far from celebratory at the Career College Association's Higher Education Investment Conference last week. But there also weren't any apologies tossed around for the successes career colleges are experiencing right now, or the spending cutbacks that some traditional colleges and universities are either contemplating or executing. Staff cuts and reduced costs at traditionals typically mean more opportunities for career colleges.

A true leader wants to be surpassed in knowledge and ability.

Share your leadership tips.

Learn how split-testing your web pages can help increase your leads substantially.

Consider the following:

• How do you know your sharp marketing wit sweet talks users into signing up for your newsletter?
• Should you choose baby blue or chocolate truffle as your background color to increase your form submissions?
• Does a picture of a Lamborghini or Halle Berry better capture the attention of your audience?
• Do any of these factors even matter?

Have you ever had meetings or one-on-one chats with your staff about what will make them successful? Many people think success just happens. We think a plan is needed. This starts with each person creating a list of dreams and goals. Then taking a risk to share these goals with others and listing what is holding each person back from achieving them. Can you imagine how different your school would look if every employee listed just two success goals for the year and how they will reach them and who they will call on for help so those goals are achieved?

Care to share a success story?  Click here.

Stifel Nicolaus research focuses on all market caps, but is a leader in small- and mid-cap research. The department is staffed predominately with industry professionals from outside Wall Street. In fact, approximately 50% of its analysts have hands-on work experience in the industry that they research. Stifel Nicolaus believes industry experience, its opportunistic approach, and broad market cap coverage drive excess returns and its award-winning franchise.  

Review, Relevant Issues – State of the Public Markets
December 11, 2008

Agenda:

Below are highlights from the Stifel Nicolaus CEO Roundtable discussion on December 8, 2008 in Washington, D.C. Participants included Rob Silberman of STRA, Daniel Hamburger of DV, Kevin Modany of ESI, and Jack Massimino of COCO.

Economy:

One of the companies we track in the education sector is Education Dynamics (EdDyn), one of the largest lead-generation and online marketing providers for the for-profit companies. Its sites consistently rank in the top 3 (for organic rankings) on any search engine when searching for education keywords.

In its monthly newsletter, EdDyn stated the following (roughly half of the respondents were seeking B.A. degrees):

When visitors to eLearners.com who submitted inquiry forms in the last 30 days were surveyed, 33 percent of respondents said they need a college degree to grow in their career or to compete, and 44 percent indicated they want to start a new career.

Ah, youth. It's a fickle beast. I keep getting older. And today's
incoming college students keep getting younger and more indecisive
every year. And I know that from recent experience. I just spent
yesterday at a conference meeting with up-and-coming teen leaders from
various high schools around the Kansas City metropolitan area. Two
things to note: 1) kids are a LOT more business-savvy than I was when I
was seventeen and 2) several of them called me "sir". So, it's
official. I'm old.

I'd say a good 95% of the kids I talked to had absolutely no idea
what they wanted to be when they grew up. Not a clue. Nada. Sure,
they'd show the occasional hint of interest occasionally, but most
played it close to the vest.