1. New state compliance regulations will impact recruitment marketing efforts dramatically. So many of our education partners serve students in over 30 states, representing a large amount of revenue particularly for online and distance education. Students, of course, will be impacted the most. The challenges facing the institutions include the costs of applying and complying from both a business and branding standpoint, as well as the need to determine how to communicate with potentially impacted students who don't understand the laws and think that the school is not servicing them. With the use of social media today among students, this has the potential to have a negative impact on the institution's brand. 

2. The potential of CRM to optimize and better utilize existing data by taking information out of departmental silos and consolidating it is becoming more widely recognized by higher education institutions as presenting a major opportunity for efficiency. A faster workflow process that makes jobs easier, makes response times for meeting students' needs quicker, and makes efforts that increase revenue more targeted, are motivators to try and find the resources to undertake this challenge. 

3. One way to meet challenges in tough times is to be creative, but according to Kevin Coyne, coauthor of the book Brainsteering, brainstorming can be too unstructured and not very productive. Asking the right questions to steer thinking and better direct creative energy can be an alternative approach that yields the breakthrough ideas. This "thinking inside the box" theory as a way to productively and creatively find new ways to move forward was the topic of a highly interactive session at the seminar.  More on brainsteering from Coyne in the McKinsey Quarterly HERE.