The numbers should unsettle enrollment professionals: College and university enrollment rates have decreased for each of the last four years and nothing indicates a reversal anytime soon. A look at recent headlines reflects this trend: Mary Baldwin College in Virginia and Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore each saw a drop of 5 percent […]
When the economy tanked in 2009, the trustees of Hamilton College in upstate New York made a major investment in the future of admissions practices—they shifted from need-sensitive to need-blind admissions, while remaining a school that promises to meet full need. The trustees of the 1,850-student liberal arts college provided bridge funding of five $500,000 […]
Having just returned from my first trip to Haiti, I have been thinking a lot about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. The situation is appalling to most Americans because we take for granted an abundance of fresh, clean water at every turn. Indeed, one might argue that it is a triumph of Madison Avenue […]
Staff in the IT department at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg used to say “no” a lot. Meeting the computer needs of 6,000 students—many who work full-time and have families—and hundreds of faculty became an increasing challenge in the less-than-affluent community. Requests from faculty and the demand for technical assistance couldn’t be […]
The world of online learning has significantly changed the landscape of higher education over the last decade. In a survey by the Instructional Technology Council (ITC), 94 percent of student respondents said their online courses were equivalent or superior to traditional courses, indicating improvements in both online pedagogy and delivery methods. Fred Lokken, a member […]
The free lunch for marketers is over on social media. Now that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and, more recently, Snapchat can boast millions of daily users, they can set the prices—and encourage users to pay through the algorithms ruling user feeds. Social media might be about the people, but for the top players it’s about business. […]
When it comes to website design, universities continue to make common key mistakes that turn away potential students, according to an annual report from KDG, which advises higher education institutions on website redesigns, enrollment management and alumni engagement. The report, based on a year of research involving more than 1,000 prospective students and dozens of […]
Times of transition are always a good opportunity for evaluating processes in a financial aid office. So when the director of financial aid at Beloit College in Wisconsin took a new position, leadership at the 1,350-student institution decided to examine that department’s business operations. “We wanted to see if we were operating at best-practice level,” […]
If you work in enrollment management you've probably heard the term "big data." Ubiquitous in the business world, big data is being adopted by higher education, particularly in the area of recruitment. With stagnant or declining recruitment budgets and increased competition for students, leveraging the data most colleges capture is a cost-effective approach that can […]
Sometimes, well-known premises lead to predictable conclusions. But not always. Occasionally, they lead to surprises—and even busted myths. Here's one: The best job of helping low-income and first-generation students gain access to higher education and reverse the trend toward greater income inequality in our society is being done by wealthy private institutions willing to invest their […]
