by Post CEO John L. Hopkins
Look around at most colleges and universities and you’ll find institutions that focus more on their history or legacy rather than what’s important to students. In other words, their version of “education” is more about them than their students.
At Post, we think that’s wrong. Higher education is broken and, the disruptors that we are, we’re out to fix it.
Reflecting on 2017, it was a year of change for the University. While we have a 127-year history of innovation and serving students, Post University® continues to evolve as a go-to education force. To focus on that evolution, we contemporized our brand in early August: i.e., Post Makes It Personal™.
How? By reinforcing in everything we do, our basic belief that students shouldn’t be an after-thought or a problem with which we must deal. Rather, they are the reason we exist and, as such, deserve our complete, undivided attention. Instead of making students fit the “Post mold,” we want Post to adjust to our “students’ molds” – ALL of them.
We reinvigorated our core values with renewed emphasis on personalizing student experiences, providing them with continual support teams, streamlining student processes for a seamless enrollment-to-commencement experience, and, to build excitement and keep top-of-mind awareness, created a new visual identity that symbolizes the importance of these enhancements. Everything is geared toward maintaining a student-oriented approach to all we do.
Now that the rebranding is done, here’s where I see Post University heading in the New Year.
We’ll continue making changes and expect ongoing growth. We’re still all about delivering a top-notch higher education…it’s just, now, we’ll be doing it with a renewed focus on greater customer service. It’s higher education with a twist. Everything at Post is designed around the concept of “students first.”
It’s a concept that’s working. Yes, Post Makes It Personal has gotten the attention of academics but, more important, it’s having a positive impact on our students.
Our main campus enrollment last year hit levels that were higher than at any time in the past 16 years, and enrollment online was up as well – our largest enrollment in two years. Not only that, alumni surveys report up to 95% of our graduates believe the value of their degrees have remained strong or even increased. Post’s alumni satisfaction is on a par with some of the nation’s most prestigious schools. Let’s aim even higher in 2018.
Coming from a customer satisfaction background, I wanted Post University to adopt this personalized approach since I arrived on campus in early 2016. Before it could become reality, though, we had to show our faculty and staff how we could produce more successful graduates with a “students first” mentality, get campus-wide buy-in, and then get everyone to make it a part of our, and their, culture – every day…every time.
Now, nearly two years later and headed into a New Year, we are a university with a “top down” commitment to make students the stars, and the rest of us supporting actors. Important players, to be sure…but here to help make our “stars” shine.
Students can go to school anywhere. We want them to want to come here.
To those looking for a warm, engaging place to study that feels more like a supportive family than a school, Post may well be exactly what they’re looking for. In 2018…and beyond…we invite them to visit our University and see firsthand how Post Makes It Personal.