Enrollment management is a process, one that brings together often disparate functions having to do with recruiting, funding, tracking, retaining, and replacing students as they move toward, within, and away from our institutions. Just as staff must be organized to support a synergistic effort, so must data. Databases that integrate admissions, financial aid, registrar, and student life information can provide the capacity for coordinated research and planning in support of enrollment management efforts.
There are a number of critical activities that logically fall under the enrollment management umbrella, but at the end of the day each is driven by data. Often misunderstood by administrative units as adding new tasks to the "in box", using data to inform enrollment management efforts is rather a way to more efficiently and effectively conduct business. For example:
* Admissions marketing programs that use data to drive efforts can attract more interest for fewer dollars. Pricing and financial aid strategies that are based on empirical evidence can optimize an institution's ability to attract and retain the desired academic quality, program of student, racial, ethnic, and socio-economic mix of students.
* Analysis of trends in academic majors can provide an opportunity for institutions to anticipate immediate and long-term student interest as well as methods of improving the institution's ability to provide for those interests.
* Re-enrollment information can identify student characteristics related to attrition, thus enabling the institution to develop strategic interventions.
* Outcomes information provides students and parents with the understanding of the return on their education investment.
* And, finally, collecting and utilizing data on alumni can allow institutions to both stay in contact as well as harness this incredible potential resource for recruiting, networking, and fundraising.
Clearly, at every turn, data are at the core. Analysis is the strategic hub that enables institutions to manage their enrollments not only to ensure the right number of students given an institution's capacity, but also the most appropriate students given institutional mission, and the necessary net revenue to meet budgetary targets.
Barbara Fritze, vice president for Enrollment and Educational Services at Gettysburg College (Pa.), talks about data as the glue that holds enrollment management together.
"Data is the foundation of the enrollment management program at most colleges and universities and Gettysburg is no exception," she says. "Whether it is collecting and reviewing admission marketing efforts (such as web trend reports, admission funnel information by various market segments, valuations of specific marketing strategies) or using our financial aid net revenue model to meet established enrollment benchmarks, our staff (and ultimately the College) continue to benefit from our data-driven approach to decision making."
The traditional use of data outlined above has grown into more sophisticated use of data by the Gettysburg enrollment management committee.
Gettysburg College employs four models in a comprehensive enrollment planning cycle:
Financial Aid/Net Revenue Model
Enrollment growth/Trade-off model
Five-Year Planning Model
Summer Melt Projection Model
"We can't even imagine not having this critical foundation to our enrollment program not available to us for planning and decision making," Fritze says.
First Step of the Journey
Planning is the first step in the enrollment management journey. The "Strategic Planning Model" (chart available in PDF version of this article) depicts a planning process which begins with a data-driven understanding of the external and internal forces which shape an institution's challenges and opportunities. For example, government policies, the economy, technology, and demographic trends need to be understood in light of available institutional resources, traditions, strengths, and weaknesses.
Many enrollment managers, particularly those at state-supported institutions have to anticipate an often uncertain and politically charged public policy arena which can have a profound impact on goals, constraints, and resources. Bill Young, associate vice president and director of Enrollment Management at Colorado School of Mines, reflects that over his 20 plus years of enrollment leadership continual change has been the constant.
