Picture this scene. It's a warm spring afternoon on the campus of an urban, Northeastern university. Frisbees are soaring through the cloudless sky.
Music fills the air while dozens of students enjoy the day; some sunning, some playing, some standing around talking. As you look closer, you realize that the music is coming from speakers attached to one of the students' laptop computer. The computer is not playing a CD, but rather it is streaming music from an online radio station.
The laptop owner rolls over, flips up his sunglasses, and pulls the computer to him. He spends the next 30 minutes reading e-mail, checking his schedule, IMing with some friends and finishing the application to a grad school, which he started the night before.
This scene could be taking place on the campus of Drexel University in Philadelphia because the entire campus is set up for WiFi, both indoors and out. Any member of the campus community with a laptop has access to the Internet with a wireless, broadband connection from anywhere on campus.
More surprising is that Drexel's ambitious WiFi network might soon seem rather insignificant if the City of Philadelphia proceeds with plans to make the entire city a wireless hotspot.
Today it is not too difficult to find a wireless Internet node with a little bit of hunting. Many airports, hotels, offices, coffee shops and campus buildings offer WiFi access with more and more coming online all the time.
Less desirable (because of slower connection speeds), but more accessible, is the ability to check e-mail and access the web through a Blackberry, Cell Phone, or Cellular adaptor for a laptop.
What does this all mean to you? Very simply, it means that online recruiting continues to become more vital every day. The computer with a wireless hookup to the Internet is becoming ubiquitous. The students (think early adopters) that you are looking to recruit are ahead of the curve. Postal mail, paper view books and other "old-world" media are becoming more and more insignificant to them. The student on the blanket is filling out a school's application. Is it yours?
About the Author
Paul Fleming is Project Manager at EDU Internet Strategies, a marketing consulting company for Higher Education organizations. EDU Internet Strategies aims to help schools better manage and produce better results through the process of communicating with prospective students.