Thirty percent off Ontario tuition

A student engagement problem

Abstract

The Argyle Public Relationships team worked with the Ministry
of Training, Colleges, and Universities to develop a campaign
for a government program providing tuition rebates to
post-secondary students. Argyle used research-based communications
and evaluated the student environment, identifying
key issues — including the narrowness of the program scope,
difficulty of completing the application, an unidentified target
audience, and potential controversy — and strategies to address
them. By focusing on “student-to-student” communications,
finding ways to pre-qualify students, and pairing oncampus
interaction with online socialization, the team made
face-to-face contact with 29,000 students on 47 campuses in 21
days, resulting in a 27.5% increase of registrations on average.