Students are open to multiple communication avenues, the report suggests. Respondents were fairly evenly split in their preferences of printed college brochures versus Web sites. Fifty-six percent said they preferred Web to print, while 44 percent said they preferred reading brochures. Sixty-four percent revealed they would like to obtain college information in the mail compared to 36 percent who stated a preference for e-mail. That means that while schools may want to go entirely paperless and send all communications via e-mail or some other electronic means, paper still has a role to play in outreach and recruitment efforts.

While e-mail and the Internet remain the baseline for e-recruitment efforts, the survey showed that students also increasingly use technologies such as instant messaging and cell phones. Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed said they own a cell phone, and 64 percent said they use instant messaging.

Roughly 82 percent of prospective college students indicated that they would consider reading or responding to an instant message from a college representative. Seventy-one percent said they would consider sending an instant message to a college representative using an institution’s Web site, and 59 percent said they would consider taking a cell phone call from a representative.

“As cell phone technology continues to advance rapidly and offer students an increasing number of communication options — from Web browsing to e-mail to text messaging to phone calls — colleges and universities need to be ready to explore the use of these technologies in their recruitment efforts sooner rather than later,� Crockett says.