Enrollment management

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In higher education, enrollment management is the strategic use and analysis of data, and the implementation of practices based on those analyses, to shape the enrollment of an institution and ensure the institution is meeting stated goals and its mission. Such practices often include marketing intiatives, admissions policies, retention management, and financial aid awarding. Fincancial aid awarding has become a common tool in enrollment management strategies in recent years, through selective use of offers of financial aid to shape the composition of incoming classes in furtherance of the institutions' goals. It is to be distinguished from the allocation of financial aid based on student needs or on academic merit. The second aspect of enrollment management is a focus on strategic planning, or the effectiveness of an institution in meeting stated institutional goals complementary to enrollment management strategies. These goals include persistence, ensuring access and affordability, and the evaluation of learning - all constructs that can be used to influence initial enrollment, persistence, and completion rates.

Since about 1995, there has been a steady increase in the number of universities and colleges that have instituted offices of "enrollment management," or have combined former admissions and financial aid into such offices.

Enrollment management can be used to further various goals, but it is commonly used as a tool for competing with rival institutions. It frequently makes sophisticated use of data mining and computer modelling to predict the effects of financial aid offer will have on the composition of the incoming class. Examples of purposes for which enrollment management is used include:

• increasing net revenue streams ^[1]
• Increasing the proportion of entering students capable of paying most or all of the tuition ("full-pays") by offering inducements which are small but larger than those offered by competitors ^[2]
• "Admit-deny:" Decreasing the proportion of poor students through the calculated use of inadequate offers, thus discouraging enrollment while maintaining a public record of admitting and offering aid to the targeted population ^[3]
• Increasing ethnic diversity ^[4]
• Improving retention rates
• Increasing applicant pools

According to Matthew Quirk ^[5]:

[Enrollment management] consultants say they never tell schools what to do—they only present options. After they've worked up a model of how students will respond to different aid packages, the next step is to create a menu of sorts, detailing the different entering classes a school could have if it adopted their techniques. One option will almost always maximize net revenue; others might emphasize total enrollment, academic quality, ethnic diversity, or the enrollment in a specific program, such as engineering. Each potential class on the list comes with tradeoffs; generally, academic quality, revenue, or diversity can each be increased, but only at the cost of the other two attributes. In the business these costs are known as "the price of your principles." Low-income students often suffer in this process.

[edit] Notes

1. ↑  Maguire Associates, Dean College "success story"
2. ↑  Matthew Quirk, 2005 The Best Class Money Can Buy, The Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 2005
3. ↑  Ibid.
4. ↑  Maguire Associates, University of Vermont "success story"
5. ↑  Matthew Quirk, op. cit.