By: Todd Long
Submitted: 2010-09-07 14:29:51 | Word Count: 972
During the last decades of the twentieth century, the concept of enrollment management emerged as a new organizational structure within two- and four-year colleges and universities. The term enrollment management refers to the ability of institutions of higher education to exert more systematic influence over the number and characteristics of new students, as well as influence the persistence of students to continue their enrollment from the time of their matriculation to their graduation. The emergence of enrollment management as a new administrative structure within institutions of higher education originated in North America, but it has also been employed in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
This phenomenon can be explained by shifting public-policy priorities in many countries that are the result governments reducing their subsidies for institutions of higher education, and for students earning a postsecondary degree. Increasingly, attending college is being viewed primarily as a private benefit to individuals rather than as a public benefit to society. Colleges and universities are being asked to fund more of their own budgets through tuition revenues, and students are borrowing increasing amounts of money to pay the rising costs of higher education. As a result of these trends, more and more students have come to view postsecondary education as a consumptive decision, and the increased competition for (and reliance upon) student dollars has caused governmental agencies, university governing boards, and university administrators to pay considerable attention to developing more effective student enrollment strategies.
Defining Enrollment Management
Don Hossler, John P. Bean, and colleagues defined enrollment management as "an organizational concept and a systematic set of activities designed to enable educational institutions to exert more influence over their student enrollments. Organized by strategic planning and supported by institutional research, enrollment management activities concern student college choice, transition to college, student attrition and retention, and student outcomes. These processes are studied to guide institutional practices in the areas of new student recruitment and financial aid, student support services, curriculum development, and other academic areas that affect enrollments, student persistence, and student outcomes from college" (p. 5). Enrollment management is an open-systems and synergistic organizational approach that fosters an organizational atmosphere that makes reporting relationships among student-service units more transparent. It also fosters an environment where offices and divisions work collaboratively to enhance the quality of the student experience, thus facilitating the strategic management of enrollments.
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Enrollment management can be viewed as a synergistic organizational concept that can be used to link several administrative functions within a college or university in order to optimize institutional enrollment goals. Examples of this approach can be found among the financial strategies of many college campuses, where important linkages have emerged between senior enrollment managers and chief financial administrators. Both private and public colleges use some of their tuition income to fund campus-based scholarships for students. Tuition revenue accounts for millions of dollars, and campus-based financial aid has become a large expenditure at most four-year institutions. Enrollment management efforts have therefore become closely linked to budgeting and campus financial planning. Successful enrollment management strategies and practices must also take into account the growing importance of college and university rankings. For many institutions of higher education, enrollment management has come to involve a combination of student enrollment strategy, budgeting strategy, and institutional positioning strategy.
Key Offices and Tasks in Enrollment Management
A university's office of institutional research should play a major role in successful enrollment management efforts. The more enrollment management professionals know about the characteristics, attitudes, and values of prospective students, the better able they are to design effective recruitment and orientation programs. Persistence studies conducted by institutional researchers can inform strategies to enhance the success of first-year students, and institutional research professionals can examine the impact of various forms of student financial assistance upon matriculation decisions and the academic success. A strong institutional function is a critical element of a sound enrollment management effort.
The office of admissions plays a key role in enrollment management efforts. The first order of business for enrollment managers is to ensure that their university has broad marketing efforts in place to make the institution visible and sufficiently attractive, so that desirable prospective students are motivated to seriously consider them. These marketing efforts should be segmented to appeal to different types of students, emphasizing different strengths of the institution. Once prospective students have expressed interest, campuses need to provide the right information at the right time in order to be perceived as a good match, and thereby attract applications.
The office of financial aid has a dual purpose. The first purpose is that of providing federal, state, and campus-based need-based financial aid to enable students to attend the institution of their choice. The second purpose is the growing use of campus-based financial aid to reward academic merit and other special talents to enable colleges and universities to attract a desired number of students with the academic ability and other special talents they are seeking. Historically, institutions of higher education relied primarily upon endowed gifts to fund campus-based scholarships. Toward the close of the twentieth century, however, more and more institutions began using part of the tuition students pay to fund scholarships. This practice is often described as tuition discounting.
Orientation programs in the summer and fall bring prospective students (and sometimes their parents) to campus for as little as one or two days and for as long as a week. These programs give students a closer look at an institution, and they also help prospective students to succeed once they decide to attend. Through campus tours, academic advising and registration, and structured academic and social programs, orientation programs help aspiring students to become familiar with the campus culture, the norms, and the values of the faculty and of peers. This is crucial to the anticipatory socialization process and the getting-ready behaviors can facilitate a successful transition to college.
