Articles: Enrollment & Retention

Mark your calendar for EduComm 2010, which returns to Las Vegas, June 7-9. This year's conference promises to be more informative, more cutting edge, and more value-packed than ever.

We asked members of The EduComm Institute to help us plan the 2010 conference program and they delivered. As a result, this year more than ever, the program features the topics and speakers that you told us you want to see.

In America, we lavish attention on our most talented fellow citizens—star athletes, film and television celebrities, brilliant scholars and scientists, and sometimes even college presidents—but we also insist that our celebrities not act like self-styled royalty. When members of America's elite are aloof and ignore the public's welfare—as many titans of Wall Street did, first ruining the economy, then paying themselves bonuses—Americans insist on retribution.

Natural and man-made disasters cause immediate harm and can also have an impact for months or years afterward. This article offers basic recommendations for pre- and post-disaster leadership, planning, preparation, and action to mitigate a disaster's effect, expedite your institution's recovery, and maximize the financial recovery process. Start with the premise that disasters do occur and pose serious challenges and problems for institutional leadership.

We're starting the new year by announcing a new recognition program here at University Business, a program that honors those administrative departments that have found a way to work smarter and better. We call it Models of Efficiency, and it gets to the heart of what University Business is all about, a message that is reflected in our tag line, "Solutions for Higher Education Management."

Although there are glimmers the recession could be ending, the unemployment rate is expected to stay high for some time to come. College enrollments will probably keep pace, especially at community colleges, where older adults looking to brush up their job skills are joined by traditional students looking to avoid high tuition for a few years.

IN A RECENT MOODY'S SURVEY, almost 30 percent of private colleges projected declines in net tuition revenues for the current fiscal year. This is likely not because enrollments declined, but because more financial aid was spent in achieving enrollment goals. Officials at institutions whose discount rates increased this fall are wondering if this is the new cost of doing business or whether they spent more than necessary.

IN THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, most of us have read any number of time management articles that focus on how easy it is to become a slave to e-mail. Most of these discuss the discipline required by executives, including university administrators, to keep the handling of e-mail from distracting us from our primary function--that of providing leadership. It is my contention that time management issues are but the tip of the iceberg.