It has been demonstrated amply that financial aid leveraging can, under the right circumstances, increase enrollment and net tuition revenue. For some, however, that isn't the case. Enrollment leaders must therefore assess other aspects of recruitment to determine how effectively they are working to build larger, more committed applicant and admit pools, especially when increases […]
No one would deny that college students spend a good part of the day with eyes locked on their mobile devices, scrolling through social media feeds. Despite that clear trend, just 30 percent of financial aid professionals reported using social media to provide financial literacy content to their constituents, notes the “2016 Financial Literacy Trends […]
Michigan State University Social experiment: Facebook Photo contest Facebook.com/msufinaid/ The idea: To show the positive side of financial aid, Michigan State held a contest that asked students to share a photo of an experience that would not have been possible had they not received aid. Ten students won $500 each. Result: “We put it out […]
In his book, Breakpoint: The Changing Marketplace for Higher Education (Johns Hopkins Press, 2015), Jon McGee says higher education is in the midst of an extraordinary transitional period that has significant implications for how colleges understand their mission, their market and their management. McGee, vice president for planning and public affairs at the College of Saint […]
As we speculated last year, the shift to the use of families’ Prior-Prior Year (PPY) financial data on the FAFSA has come to pass. Starting in October of 2016, the FAFSA will be available for students to complete for college enrollment in the 2017-18 academic year. This shift has far-reaching implications not only for timing […]
New momentum has built behind higher education’s pivotal role in helping prison inmates turn their life around and re-enter society. So, what if a city offered convicted felons a college education instead of a jail sentence? The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office partners with the Community College of Philadelphia on the Future Forward initiative, which gives […]
With a student population of over 40,000, managing scholarship applications and processing supporting documents was more than a daunting task for the financial aid team at the University of Ottawa. The Canadian institution had been using an obsolete online system, which did not support the automation of supporting documents and created a burdensome student application […]
Students don’t quite run the show when it comes to course scheduling. But colleges and universities are striving to make it easier for them—with their ongoing juggle of work, family and school commitments—to take the classes necessary to meet educational objectives in time to graduate. Course scheduling policies and practices tend to date back—way back—to […]
On a cold evening in December 2014, over 400 students, faculty and staff gathered quietly on the central plaza of Salisbury University's Maryland campus. Chalked on the pavers were the silhouettes of 24 bodies. As victim names were read, students proceeded to lie down within the outlines and observe several minutes of silence, remembering black […]
Higher ed leaders continue to seek ways to prove their institution's value to a shrinking pool of college candidates. In addition, a huge financial aid cloud hangs over everyone's heads: the one with that odd moniker of "prior-prior." While the hope is that FAFSA modifications will ultimately benefit students and institutions alike, 2016 is the […]
