Beyond Career Services: How MBA Programs Use Alumni Networks to Prove ROI

Good afternoon or good morning depending upon where you are, and welcome to our PeopleGrove webinar, "Beyond Career Services: How MBA Programs Use Alumni Networks to Prove ROI." My name is Aaron Mahl, and I serve as Senior Vice President of Partnerships here at PeopleGrove. And we're delighted to have you here today. A couple of quick housekeeping notes. We will be opening up the chat and taking questions throughout the presentation, so feel free to drop any questions or comments in that chat. The chat really can be an opportunity for you to interact with other webinar guests as well, and so please feel free to use that chat. In fact, I'm going to have you answer a question in the chat here in a couple of slides. So keep that in mind. And if there are questions at the end of today's webinar, we will address those at the end of our time together. So without further ado, let's jump in. So a little bit of an overview of what we'll cover today. We'll start at a high level and really survey the graduate enrollment landscape. Obviously, the MBA demand and that landscape really falls within the graduate school space. And there's some research, I think, that actually is really insightful to both the graduate enrollment landscape as well as the MBA enrollment landscape. Then we'll talk about your outcomes and your opportunity. How are institutions, specifically MBA programs, really leveraging their outcomes to drive enrollment growth and to help them reach enrollment objectives. And we'll talk about how some campuses actually leverage their alumni, those outcomes, as they recruit the next generation of MBA students and graduates. So that'll be the agenda we walk through this afternoon. So I want us to start with an icebreaker question. And I know sometimes in a chat, you're like, "I want to put this in the chat or not." But I'd encourage you to go ahead and do it. I want you to think back to your early childhood and your first thoughts really on jobs and career. What did you want to be when you grew up? What's that thing at five, six, seven years old when an adult in your life would say, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And I love this question even now to ask young children because it gives you a sense of kind of where their mind is. For me, I had career aspiration at a very early age, and I wanted to be a trash man. And the reason I wanted to be a trash man was because back in the day, there were typically two individuals as part of your trash collection. There was the driver of the truck — not interested in that role. Right? But there was the guy who got to ride along the outside of that truck right there on, like, a little step stool area, and that person would jump off the truck, pick up the garbage, throw it into the back of the truck, hop back on, and then we just kind of ride along from house to house along the outside of a large, loud truck. I don't think there was a better opportunity as a kid than to get to do that right on the outside of the truck. So that was my early career aspiration. Not doing a lot of that work now — really never went down that path. But as I obviously grew and thought through more options, those "what I wanted to be when I grew up" questions were answered a little bit differently. I think, you know, I start with this question because the reality is most individuals who are pursuing graduate education and specifically an MBA are thinking through career, are thinking through what they want to be when they grow up. What's the next step for them in their development personally and professionally? So they're often coming to us as higher education professionals, as admissions professionals, really with that question in mind. And because of that, it should shape the way we talk with them and the way we learn from them. So let's dig in a little bit into this graduate enrollment landscape. The graduate market is fairly stable, but with intense competition. So 3.4 million students enrolled in graduate programs at American colleges and universities in the fall of 2025. And so although enrollment held pretty steady, the reality is those institutions who are winning in this space are doing so because they're taking market share from another campus. Right? So when enrollment's flat and you're winning, that means someone else is likely losing. And the reality is, depending upon, you know, what your profile of student looks like, this could be a little more intense than even these statistics share. So for example, it's estimated that in fall 2026, due to the economic and kind of worldwide situations, there's going to be 50,000 fewer international students in fall 2026 compared to fall 2025. So even if domestic enrollment stays flat for fall 2026, it's likely that overall enrollment will be down, which can signal some pretty severe competition. Of those 3.4 million, though, we know that 86% of them are motivated by career goals. Advancing their career is one of the most important factors when they think about going on to graduate school. So, again, graduate student enrollment remaining flat means that growing really means stealing someone else's market share. And what this means for business school specifically is that winning requires differentiation, not just in recruitment. I think sometimes it's easy for campuses to really think they're differentiating when they're not — to say the same things other campuses are saying. Hey, faculty who care, small classroom sizes, great cohort of professionals, much like you, will challenge you and encourage you. All probably true. But if everyone says it, there's not much differentiation. So programs must prove unique value and attract students with that unique value because students are comparing more programs than ever before. Here's the stat. I think the stat initially was, you know, fifteen, twenty years ago — there was some research done by EducationDynamics that said that the average graduate student, I think, applied to 1.2 institutions. So when that student was applying to your program, it was you versus status quo. You versus inertia. If they were going to take on a graduate program or pursue a graduate degree, it was, "I'm going to do it, therefore, I'm going with your institution," or "I'm not going to do it." So the case to be made wasn't about even your program as much as a program. Right? So obviously the completion percentages of those applications and the yield to enrollment from those admitted students is pretty high. Fast forward fifteen, twenty years later, the average student is now applying to over three institutions. So now it's status quo inertia, institution one, institution three, and yours. And so how do you win in that competitive landscape? Well, outcomes and ROI are the new competitive battleground, and that's really your job as an institution — is to showcase your ROI in the value of your degree. Let's zoom in a little bit on MBAs. We started kind of thirty thousand foot with graduate enrollment. Let's really talk now about business school enrollment, specifically MBA. Similar to overall graduate school data, demand is strong but shifting. There's a 7% growth in business school applications, and so we're seeing more students apply to business schools. Most of that growth, excuse me, is fueled by online and hybrid MBA programs. So if you're a residential campus where there is residential programming, you might not be seeing this demand in applications. But because of the convenience of online and hybrid, and I think the familiarity as more individuals become more and more comfortable with that delivery approach, we're seeing strong application drivers. ROI is the decision driver. Those students are scrutinizing cost and career outcomes. They're comparing MBAs versus not just other MBAs, but alternative credentials. Should I actually get an MBA, or should I get a certificate program? Or maybe I try a concentration within a different graduate program. So, again, ROI is the decision driver, and so they're looking at cost. They're counting the cost. They're thinking through not just your program, not just MBA programs, but also other programs that might provide similar ROI. The outcomes differentiate the programs. So career advancement, networks, access to those outcomes matters most, and so programs must prove real career impact. They must do it pretty early in that admissions process. And here's why the MBA and the ROI for the MBA is really getting harder to prove. So the total cost for some top programs, well over $200,000, especially if we think about those executive MBA programs. It's been about a 12 to 13% increase in that cost over the last four years. Pretty significant. Right? If you think about those programs, especially executive MBA programs, we see that you may not be working or you may be working less during that time, as there's often a loss of wages during full-time MBA enrollment. So it's a high opportunity cost, right, for enrollees, and the salary gains aren't quite keeping up with those tuition increases. So if we're seeing a 12 to 13% tuition increase, even if you're in the same job year over year, you're not seeing 12 to 13% increases in your salary. And so, again, that ROI is becoming harder to prove, which really means that students are beginning to question the value of the degree and whether the institutions can deliver on that value. So how do MBA students specifically measure ROI today? We know that access to networks drives opportunity, especially for business students. I think some programs draw people who are thinking about networking and seeing the value of networking and opportunities. Well, that's true, especially for MBA students. 83% value alumni networking opportunities and expect them on day one. That's from some NAGAP research we did within the last six months. We also know that mentorships and connections often accelerate access to jobs. And so because of that, students are looking for those opportunities, and they're looking for them as they're making their decisions around enrollment. And we also know that personalized guidance is what drives confidence. So 93% of prospective graduate students expect tailored engagement for them. You know, the phrase is, if Netflix knows what they want to watch and Amazon knows what they want to buy, you should know what they want to study, how they want to study it. You should know who to connect them to, what's most relevant to them. Those are some pretty high standards. Right? But the reality is those are the factors that students are thinking about. The good news, though, is that there is typically that salary increase within three years. A study from GMAC shows that. So when networks and guidance converge, then that ROI is very, very easy to prove, and that's the great message you have as you think through selling those prospective MBA students on your programs. So let's talk about your outcomes, your alumni. One thing I often say is that the reality is your outcomes are your true differentiator. No one else has your alumni pool. No one else has your outcomes. And so your opportunity actually is to highlight those outcomes to prove, hey, this is the kind of outcome we produce in part through our programs. And when you are able to highlight those alumni, I think there's a great chance for you to enhance your ROI conversation. I want to talk a little bit about alumni now. And would you know that they are the primary driver of MBA choice? At least they can be. Right? 88% of MBA alumni say their degree improved their professional situation. That's phenomenal. My guess is if you surveyed your graduate MBA students, that your numbers would be pretty similar. Right? Because, ultimately, alumni provide proof of career outcomes. It's not just saying, hey, you know, 98% of our alumni get jobs that are paying X percent more. That might be a quantitative stat that resonates with some, but maybe one that others question. Right? Because a statistic doesn't seem personal to me. But alumni do provide proof of those outcomes, and those success stories can really showcase the real-world validation of an ROI and career pathways. But the reality is that most institutions really underutilize their alumni networks, and there are some reasons for that. I think most admissions offices do their best. They might have panels at visit events. They may have some opportunities to connect one-off with different alumni, but it's typically not scalable. It's typically episodic, and it doesn't quite drive home for the majority of those applicants, those admitted students, really what the alumni have accomplished and how they're making a difference because of that degree. So how does underutilization matter in the long term? I think sometimes in higher ed, we can think, well, you know, I work in admissions or I work in enrollment management. So alumni — that's not really my thing. That's not what I'm in charge of. And, you know, that's been true. In my experience, I've worked on two different campuses and primarily leading enrollment efforts for over ten or fifteen years. My wife worked in the alumni office at the same institution. And, you know, the joke was, well, enrollment and alumni probably rarely talked unless it was the two of us talking. That's how it sometimes felt. But the reality is one does impact the other. And alumni can be your greatest source of referrals, and they can also be the greatest recruitment tool you have. And the reason that matters is because it also matters to the alumni office as well. Did you know that alumni are philanthropic? 82% of alumni that we surveyed — over 80,000 surveyed in the past year — 82% give or volunteer to causes annually, and they support on average three to four organizations per year. So your alumni for your MBA program are likely giving. Four out of five are likely giving between three to four organizations, but not to you potentially. 35% of alumni said they volunteer for their school ever. So at one point, a little over a third. Only 10% give to their school, and 42% don't see their school as a giving priority. So by not leveraging our alumni, we're really hurting ourselves in two ways. Right? We're not engaging with them on enrolling students, which we know drives higher yield rates, higher conversion rates in the enrollment funnel. We also know that because we're not engaging with them there, they're actually less likely to give, to be engaged. And the philanthropic dollars they're spending with other organizations could be spent with us, but they aren't because they're not engaged. And so, again, it's a two-sided coin. It can really impact us negatively in two ways, both on the enrollment side and on the fundraising side, both, of course, significant revenue streams. And what we do know is that alumni, when they are engaged, they drive value, and you have to engage them. So get this: three to three and a half times more likely to give philanthropically if they volunteer. If your alumni are volunteering, they're more likely to give. Three to three and a half times more likely to give. 81% of highly connected alumni rank their school as their top giving priority. So if you're highly connected, engaged, volunteering in some way, shape, or form, you are now a top giving priority for your institution. And, actually, you're 24 times more likely to give when alumni feel connected. So all these factors really go in there. It's not just an enrollment lever you can pull, but it's also an advancement, an alumni lever you can pull as well. And alumni who feel known deliver significantly higher lifetime value than those who don't feel known. Right? It's so easy once you graduate in many ways to move on to the next thing, to not feel connected. Oftentimes, institutions aren't maybe proactively seeking out alumni, especially early on. They have things like student loans. Right? And they're paying back some of that debt. But the reality is if you've had a transformational experience, those alumni — you should want them to be engaged, and you should want to keep them involved. And the way to keep them involved is not asking for a small donation. Right? It's asking, hey, would you be willing to actually provide some feedback to other prospective students or current students who are in the MBA program right now? Would you be able to share some of that wisdom and insight? What a great way to engage alumni and keep them plugged in. But here's why this is hard. Right? The challenge. Scaling alumni engagement is hard. The reality is access is limited. Mentorship and alumni connections often only reach a small subset of students. We talked about that earlier a little bit. Right? There's some episodic things that happen, maybe an alumni event, chapter event where maybe a prospective or current student is there with an alumnus and there's some interactions. Those are really powerful, but really hard to scale. Right? Experiences typically are pretty fragmented. So career support, alumni engagement, experiential learning often lives in separate silos. Right? I mean, the reality is in enrollment, you don't have a database of alumni that you have access to. Right? That's protected by the alumni office, often the advancement office. And so even access to those data points is sometimes challenging. And relationships candidly don't often scale. Right? So mentorship that is happening — when we talk about mentorship, we can talk about formal, you know, months-long processes, or what we call flash mentorship — these one-time conversations that are for a specific goal, whether it's, you know, helping craft a resume or getting some experience or some knowledge around a particular career field you're interested in. Those are hard to scale. And then impact is very hard to measure as well. So programs struggle to connect alumni engagement, mentorship activity, and career outcomes to enrollment, student success, and philanthropic metrics. And that's why, candidly, this doesn't happen very often, and it's why you might even feel some angst as you think through maybe why you haven't engaged alumni as much as you would like to. So, again, a question here for you to think about, and if you want, answer in the chat. How are you leveraging your alumni in career conversations? How are you leveraging your alumni in career conversations, and what challenges do you face with your current approach? What has worked? I often think that, you know, at PeopleGrove, we help campuses do this very thing, but the reality is the answers to a lot of these difficult questions are typically in the room. Really intelligent, bright people who are doing this work every day, thinking through some of these challenges, and really attacking these challenges with some real creativity. And so if you have great ways to share with others how you've leveraged your alumni in these career conversations, especially at that admitted student stage and lower in the funnel, we'd love to have you take a stab at answering those questions now. So I want to share with you a couple of examples of how we've helped business schools really leverage alumni outcomes. And so I'm just going to walk you through these next few slides with a little bit of a play-by-play of who PeopleGrove is, what we do, and how we help campuses. One of the ways we do that is through our Engagement Hub. It's a unified online platform that really brings your entire community together. It connects admitted students, current students, and alumni to each other so that relationships drive enrollment decisions and real career outcomes. And so think of this as — there's an opportunity for you to connect your current students to alumni, your alumni to alumni, and then your institution to the community. So how this typically works for business school, maybe even a graduate business school, is there might be a small subset of current students that you have as part of your admissions process, maybe forty or fifty. It might be called ambassadors or something along those lines. They're on the platform. Some campuses really involve the prospective students at the application or the admit stage. They're on the platform as well. And then there's typically an alumni component on the platform for the enrollment module specifically. And those alumni, maybe they're part of an alumni council or something. They're on the platform as well. And so what the platform does is facilitate conversations. We call them flash mentorship conversations. I referred to that a little bit earlier. But those conversations can be about career readiness, about networking around a job or a location. Those conversations are often one-to-one where I can ask, as a prospective student, a specific question about someone who maybe is in education technology. Maybe I want to get some clarification there. But it's also one-to-many. There are discussion forums. There are events you can host in the platform as well. And the beauty of the Hub is it really differentiates your campus, your current students, and your alumni from every other institution. So it's those prospective students, those current students, that alumni network, and then the faculty and employers all working together in one way to help drive that home, that ROI. These are just a couple of quick screenshots about how the platform works. Again, we talk about mentorship really in two specific ways. Most of our campuses really work on that flash mentorship. These are those quick on-demand connections between students and alumni for career questions, advice, and introductions. And then there are also some formal long-term mentoring programs. Those are typically done when a student body is on the platform, or maybe not necessarily the whole student body, but maybe most of your business students are on there, and they're being mentored by maybe an alum. But the platform exists really to facilitate both those types of things. You know, one quick story of how I used it. One of my alma maters actually uses PeopleGrove, and so it's not uncommon for me to post jobs that we're hiring for at PeopleGrove on that platform. And so students who are looking for jobs or alumni who are looking for jobs, when they see the job posted from PeopleGrove, they say, hey, Aaron Mahl works at PeopleGrove, and here's his connection. Reach out to him about this job. So it actually brings up those jobs that are connected to another alum or where you might have a connection as well. And so I've also had several flash mentorship conversations around individuals who are looking for a career change, wanting to get into education technology. And so it's been a pretty valuable tool for me, and I've enjoyed using it even as an alum of the campus. The other option is think of a one-to-many approach. This is Ask Anything. These are open Q&A sessions where students engage alumni and industry leaders at scale. So maybe you have a question around, hey, how does one get into this particular field? Maybe you want to get into higher education enrollment management. How do I do that? You don't know who to ask the question to. You can use the Ask Anything button. And that question then — we use AI to actually send that question to the top five or six individuals who are most equipped to answer that question. And the beauty of that approach is we're not blasting every single alum with a question that's irrelevant to them, but we gather really high response rates. And, again, you're getting those questions answered quickly, and then we're driving to the next step. We also help students really with templates around whatever questions they may have so they can present themselves effectively as well to your alumni and your current students. I referred to the alumni job board already, but the alumni job board is great because it brings in other boards — maybe think of Handshake or 12Twenty — but it doesn't just bring those boards in or those jobs into one board via an RSS feed; it maps those based upon what other connections you may have. And the beauty of the alumni job board too is this is a chance for connection, not just for a quick apply. So, again, it's connecting those opportunities, those jobs to a specific individual who may be equipped to answer those questions for you. We're going to have a poll question jump up right now, and I encourage you to fill that out. So what would be most effective for you and for your institution? Would you like an exploratory conversation around how the Engagement Hub will help you with enrollment, a follow-up email with some more information, or happy to walk you through a fifteen- or twenty-minute demo, a live demo of our platform, and how other campuses like you use that platform. A couple of quick things as we kind of wrap things up here at the end. When we think about PeopleGrove and the advantage our clients experience, it's really about behavioral analytics that are really synced up with advancement. So we track engagement across alumni, current students, and prospective students to understand who is active, who is disengaged, and why. That surfaces really some actionable insights for your admissions teams, also your retention team, also your advancement team. So this is a tool that really services the entire institutional life cycle. We're synced with advancement as well. So we know how and when your alumni are connected, and so it allows you to connect with alumni and thank them for their time volunteering, to provide opportunities for them if you'd like to show them when a campaign might be coming, and also some program recommendations as well. So really, these behavioral analytics synced with enrollment and advancement are really what set the tool apart and make it pretty valuable for institutions. One of my favorite stories, actually, is that a recent campus partner of ours actually launched PeopleGrove and gave PeopleGrove to their graduating class as a gift. Now, of course, every alumnus can be on the platform, and every current student that's invited and prospective student can be on the platform if they choose. But instead of saying, hey, you know, in six months, once you've landed your first job, why don't you send us a check and start contributing to your alma mater? They said, you know what? The best way you can contribute to your alma mater six months after you graduate is by sharing what you've learned with other current students and even maybe some prospective students who are in that stage of pursuing their degree. What a great approach, right, from an advancement perspective, from an admissions perspective, to really foster and develop that relationship — and PeopleGrove is the platform they use to pull that off. A couple of quick case studies of some business schools. A top ten business school has engaged over 21,000 users, 13,000 alumni, 7,300 students. You can see the number of messages and the response rate, the connections. Those each user represents an individual who at one point answered the question, what do you want to be when you grow up? Right? And the tool connects those individuals with career aspirations to others with maybe different or similar career aspirations, really with the goal of engaging with them and helping them get to that next step. Top fifty business school there — you can see 9,600 total users, a good split between alumni and students, 18,000 messages exchanged, 48% response rate, which, by the way, is two times that LinkedIn boasts. And so, again, a platform without ads, a platform that doesn't have bots, that actually is really meant to facilitate relationships. A regional business school with 5,600 total users, again, a good mix between alumni and students, connections made, messages sent. And really, the value to the campus is that you as a campus have access to know what types of conversations you're having, and you can step in when needed. And then a mid-sized business school, 5,800 total users, 12,000 messages, a 62% response rate. Really strong results. And, again, a chance to connect those current students, those prospective students, those alumni to each other to really drive higher engagement. A couple of key takeaways as you think through the summation of today's content. I think number one, ROI is evaluated through access, outcomes, and relationships. How are you driving access, outcomes, and relationships across the enrollment funnel, across the institutional life cycle of prospective student to current student to alum to donor? Alumni are the clearest signal of that value. Your alumni are your differentiator. No one else has your alumni. They're your clearest signal of value. And the opportunity is to really make that alumni network visible and accessible at scale. That wraps up the formal content today. I want to say thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure having you with us. Feel free to reach out. You can always email us. My email address is below. If you'd like more information about how to utilize a platform like the Engagement Hub to really drive higher conversions in the enrollment funnel, and also higher contribution levels for alumni, we welcome that conversation with you. Thanks so much, everybody. Have a great day.