A strong campus recruiting strategy has always been essential. This year, University Recruiting leaders should take a closer look at one of the most foundational elements: school selection.

Choosing which schools to prioritize, whether through on-campus events or virtual engagement, is a complex decision. It often involves balancing executive expectations, navigating budget cuts, and protecting your employer brand when making changes to a long-standing list. Heading into the 2025–2026 cycle, new trends are adding more pressure.

Heads of University Recruiting are facing heightened scrutiny. Budgets are leaner, and leadership is asking tougher questions. Executives want to know where recruiting dollars are going, what impact those efforts are having, and whether better outcomes are possible.

These questions go beyond logistics. They reflect a broader push for efficiency, accountability, and results. The average number of core schools has dropped from 39 in 2020 to just 25 in 2024. Many teams are continuing to scale back, not to simply do less, but to focus on what works.

This isn’t the year to default to legacy decisions. It’s the year to take a hard look at your school list, utilize data, and ensure investments align with your goals.

If your school strategy hasn’t changed in the past couple of years, you might be falling behind.

The Risks of an Outdated Campus Recruiting Strategy

We’ve seen firsthand what happens when teams don’t revisit their school strategy. At first, the consequences may seem minimal. Over time, however, the costs begin to surface—both financially and strategically.

When teams continue to invest in schools that no longer deliver results, they waste budget and allocate resources inefficiently. Limited team capacity gets stretched across a broad list of low-performing schools, leading to increased travel and event costs without meaningful returns in hires or engagement.

This misalignment also affects hiring outcomes. When the schools on your list do not reflect your current talent needs, you may fall short of critical goals. That includes missing targets for specific roles, locations, or identity groups central to your DEI strategy. In some cases, this results in higher renege rates or early attrition, particularly when candidates are not well-matched to the role.

The long-term impact is even more significant. A sporadic strategy can interrupt the flow of talent year over year and erode your employer brand. When campus engagement becomes inconsistent or transactional, it can damage your reputation with schools and limit your ability to rebuild relationships in the future.

Internally, poor school selection can lower morale among your recruiting team and create tension with stakeholders. Results may not align with expectations, which puts teams in the position of defending decisions or justifying spend. That misalignment can reduce internal credibility and lead to broader disagreements about priorities.

Finally, there is the opportunity cost. While your team remains focused on low-yield schools, you may miss higher-performing institutions that align more closely with your hiring goals. In many cases, competitors are already gaining traction in those spaces, making it even harder to gain a foothold later.

What High-Performing Teams are Doing Differently

The teams we see getting this right aren’t necessarily working with more resources, they’re just being more intentional. There’s no universal playbook, but here is what successful teams tend to be doing in 2025:

1. Tying School Selection to Business Priorities

They start with where the hiring demand is and what kinds of roles, skills, and locations they need to fill. Then they build their school strategy around that, not the other way around.

2. Looking Beyond Application Volume

Some University Recruiting teams may think, “With application volumes so high, maybe we don’t need to go to campus this year.” However, leading teams know volume is not the same as value, and pulling back risks weakening long-term school relationships that are built through consistent engagement.

3. Focusing on Depth, Not Just Breadth

Rather than showing up everywhere, they’re showing up meaningfully in a few high-impact places. That often means fewer schools overall, but stronger, more strategic partnerships.

4. Regular Reviews of Core Schools

Strategic teams know that school strategy is not a set-it-and-forget-it plan. They reassess their school list each cycle, making adjustments based on performance, goals, budget, and evolving market and hiring needs.

5. Tiered Engagement

Not every school requires the same level of investment. Strong teams use a tiering system to define levels of engagement based on each school’s strategic value. 63% of teams are already using a tiered approach to guide their campus strategy for Fall 2025.

What’s Driving These Shifts?

Several key factors are prompting teams to rethink how they select and engage with schools.

Shrinking Budgets

With limited funds for travel and events, every school on the list must justify its place. This challenge has pushed many teams to optimize and streamline their strategy.

Increased Executive Oversight

CHROs and CFOs are asking for results. They want to understand why your team is prioritizing certain schools and what value those investments deliver.

Shifting Candidate Behaviors

Gen Z candidates are more values-driven, more cost-conscious, and less likely to relocate. Attracting students to rural or less-desirable locations is a challenge, driving many employers to prioritize a more regional school strategy. In 2023, 34% of employers offered relocation assistance, but we’re seeing a pull-back from budget allocation to those initiatives. These changing preferences require new sourcing and engagement strategies.

Long-Term DEI Commitments

Removing a Diversity-Serving Institution that isn’t producing as strong an ROI might yield short-term savings, but it could also compromise long-term diversity goals. Teams are finding creative ways to stay engaged with these schools.

For ideas on how to stay engaged with HBCUs specifically, explore insights from our recent webinar, “HBCU Recruiting: How to Stand Out and Maximize Your Impact.”

Higher Expectations from Schools

Career centers are prioritizing employers that commit to long-term partnerships. Sporadic engagement or sudden drop-offs can damage your employer brand on campus.

Making Hard Calls with Confidence

Reevaluating your core school list often means having difficult conversations. This might include stepping back from long-time partnerships or explaining to a senior leader why their alma mater isn’t a priority anymore.

When those decisions are backed by data and aligned with business goals, they’re easier to stand behind. They also tend to yield better long-term results.

To help ground these decisions in data, Veris Insights’ SchoolScope platform includes filters for school type and name, along with student degree, major, race, gender, and more. This allows teams to assess schools through the lens of their specific goals and priorities.

Common Barriers to Changing Strategy

Brand erosion: Inconsistent campus presence can frustrate career centers and confuse students. When you deprioritize a school without explanation, it can hurt your reputation for the long haul.

Internal friction: Without a clear rationale, core school decisions can lead to friction with DEI, finance, or HR partners, not to mention business leaders who wonder why their alma mater isn’t on the list anymore.

Lacking Infrastructure to Track ROI: Without a system to track school-level metrics, it becomes difficult to assess what’s working and what’s not. In an era where demonstrating ROI is critical, not having this foundation can stall strategic decision-making before it even begins.

What Helps

• Clear communication with internal stakeholders around changes and rationale.
• Proactive updates to career centers and student organizations when engagement shifts.
• Offering other ways to stay connected when in-person recruiting isn’t feasible.

 

Final Takeaway

Your school strategy is more than a calendar of campus visits. It reflects your team’s priorities and ability to evolve. A static, outdated list can limit your effectiveness. Conversely, a thoughtful, data-driven approach can improve hiring results, strengthen relationships, and build internal credibility. It isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing what works and being able to prove it.

We’ll be covering this topic in more detail at our upcoming session on School Selection Strategy for 2025. We’ll share benchmarks, success stories, and a practical framework you can use to guide strategic decisions.