They don’t throw those names into the full marketing plan until the student has actually said yes, I want to receive information from you.

I’m not debating the value of opt-in vs. auto-add/opt-out (that is a huge discussion in and of itself), but the “worse” I’m specifically referring to is not optimizing the process of converting pre-leads to leads.

I think this topic can be as complicated or as simple as we want to make. The big problem here is not where the leads are coming from, in my opinion. Who cares where they come from, to an extent. What should be focused on is the ROI, which is what Bill is saying. Call the leads and then pay the right price. The problem is that most buyers do not want to share conversion data. This data will allow both the buyers and sellers to be on the same page. Without it there is tension and mistrust.
It is pretty easy. Find a reasonable cost per conversion goal and work towards it together. Both parties adjusting pricing as the campaign moves along.

At least it sounds easy