The Kenyon College web site had been bringing visitors to the campus, virtually, for more than five years now. The log files which track the locations from where visitors come are indicating that 2,000 people each day see the Kenyon web pages, and many of these, on the order of hundreds each day, are prospective students and prospective parents. Mailings of the traditional "Did You Know" postcards featuring the web site have augmented attendance at the site. With the numbers building each year, there seems little need to revamp such a successful web presence.
While Kenyon was enjoying the benefits of this status quo, several start-up firms on the Internet began to force what some called the most significant changes in admissions procedures nationwide. One such firm, Colleges-R-Us, is a case in point.
Colleges-R-Us has assembled an enormous web site of information about residential colleges. Some of the featured insitutions focus on the liberal arts but many have other programs in engineering, pre-nursing and business. Some of the institutions showcased at Colleges-R-Us are small colleges like Kenyon. Colleges-R-Us started operations by showcasing 100 colleges of diverse ranking. No fee was charged these schools. Kenyon was not one of them. Kenyon elected to participate in other similar programs but not Colleges-R-Us. The fees were relatively high and the commercial advertisements that were apparently associated with Colleges-R-Us were deemed inappropriate. Case closed - no one at Kenyon monitored the fortunes of Colleges-R-Us.
The business model for Colleges-R-Us is simple: in return for a fee from participating colleges and commercial advertisers, Colleges-R-Us attracts prospective students and assists them with their application process. Technically, Colleges-R-Us has lifted most of their information from the web sites of the participating colleges, or links to the college's web site. Little new information is provided by Colleges-R-Us. Colleges-R-Us ran ads in print media, TV spots, and did everything possible to capture the searches of any prospective college student surfing the 'Net.
Colleges-R-Us became the market leader almost overnight, attracting nearly 200,000 prospective students through its virtual doors in a single year. Kenyon was not a beneficiary of this growth. Instead, applications to Kenyon declined 20% that year, forcing a number of adjustments in the admissions process which ultimately were reflected in the statistics on which college rankings are based. What will happen next year?