The Great Student Swap

"When prospective students visit the University of Alabama, they begin their tour at the Catherine and Pettus Randall Welcome Center, a gleaming white three-story Italianate-style structure with a stacked front porch. The building, which once housed a mental hospital and is on the National Register of Historic Places, opened up on campus in 2024. In the escalating contest for teen-age attention and allegiance, an admissions "welcome center"-with an auditorium for presentations to high-school students and their families and iconic spaces for Instagrammable moments-is now a must-have for universities. But Alabama's might be the most extreme example."

"Once inside, families are met with a mix between what one might find in a modern museum, and while waiting in line at Disney World to ride the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Floor-to-ceiling screens welcome visitors, displaying the individual names of prospective students in lights. As the visitors wend their way through the halls, toward the theatre where the admissions-information session takes place, they pass a series of carefully crafted photo and video exhibits highlighting various aspects of the university and the surrounding city of Tuscaloosa. The facility's crown jewel is the Roll Tide Room, which is wrapped entirely in monitors playing clips from Alabama football games on a continuous loop."

"The point of this is to persuade teen-agers from all over the country to choose Alabama. "You have to differentiate yourself at the front door," Matt McLendon, who oversees the school's undergraduate-enrollment operation, told me during a campus visit. "Not all undergraduates even here now were predisposed to consider us at first.""

Public universities long sought higher tuition from out-of-state and international students to bolster revenue, but those recruitment pipelines are showing signs of strain. Universities are investing heavily in marketing and infrastructure to attract applicants, including elaborate admissions welcome centers designed as experiential, Instagram-friendly showcases. The University of Alabama exemplifies the trend with a museum-like welcome center, floor-to-ceiling screens, curated exhibits, and a video-wrapped Roll Tide Room aimed at persuading teens nationwide. Enrollment officials emphasize the need to "differentiate" at first impressions because many admitted undergraduates were not initially predisposed to consider the institution.

Read at The New Yorker