As the Wall Street Journal reported recently, Mac users are steered toward pricier options than PC users when searching common travel websites. It made us wonder, are some people steered toward more expensive colleges, than others?
Most likely!
The article states that people who use Apple Inc.’s Mac computers spend as much as 30% more a night on hotels, so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see.
Are Net Price Calculators going to be the next tool colleges will use to segment “buyers” of higher education?
When colleges ask for name, GPA, test scores, and zip codes in order to start filling out a Net Price Calculator on their web site, you have to wonder what that data will be used for. Granted, a user can run the calculators anonymously, but for those who don’t know better, they may be unwittingly helping colleges with their data mining.
Many colleges are already sophisticated enough in their review of interested potential students and while many may state they are “need-blind” with their admissions policies, they certainly are not “wealth-blind.”
Colleges understand the “Theory of Consumption” where they know that a family that is mortgaged to the hilt with tremendous consumer debt, will muddle through to potentially add more debt to their bottom line, in order to send their children to the college resembling the “shiny object!”
Keeping up with the “apple” users, so to speak.
Rather than biting off more than one can chew, we believe a student should seek appropriate academic AND financial “fits” that work for them. Not what society’s “bandwagon” promotes. Get educated on the college options for your student before Sophomore year in high school in order to avoid the financial trap that following the crowd could bring.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Very interesting indeed. Most commercial websites allow one to see who logs in, what pages are viewed, how much time is spend on each page, the IP address, the browser being used AND whether a PC or Mac is doing the browsing. Consumers would never believe what they “tell” colleges just by browsing their websites. To think that colleges will use the PC vs. Mac metric to segment results of Net Price Calculators is not beyond reality. They are probably already doing it as part of their enrollment management strategy.
Took me a while to get to this. Frankly not surprised. I will attempt to forward an article from “Hillsdale College” re; “federal college financing”.
Thanks for updates.
HCD