HIED860:
Lesson 02: Enrollment Management Process and Organization
Introduction
What is enrollment management? In this unit, we review the importance of enrollment management to the institution's vitality. The days of only being the institution's admissions gatekeeper are over, as enrollment management has become a foundation for each institution's strategic planning, financial stability, and institutional effectiveness. To help make enrollment management more digestible, this unit breaks the process down into a three-stage model: 1) Attracting, admitting, and enrolling students 2) Introduction and integration and 3) Persistence, graduation, and success. These three stages form the topics around which the rest of this course is organized, and we will be identifying the offices and functions within the institution that are crucial to good enrollment management.
Upon completion of this lesson, you will:
- Understand the complexities of enrollment management, especially as expressed in the literature on the topic.
- Understand the three-stage enrollment management model
- Understand how higher education institutions integrate the three-stage enrollment management model within its organization structure.
Lesson 02 Road Map
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Lecture Notes
Enrollment management is becoming one of the core administrative functions of colleges and universities. EM is a key component of strategic planning, financial stability, and institutional effectiveness.
But EM takes place within a context, so this week's lesson begins by examining that context using a systems approach. My colleague at SUNY, Albany, Dr. Bruce Szelest, and I, have developed a Systems Dynamics Model of University Enrollment, Financial and Faculty Resources, or Influence Diagram, that explains the relationships among enrollment management and the other academic, financial, and support activities within the organization. Please view this system to understand how these relationships are intertwined.
On most campuses, enrollment management has become a key strategic planning ingredient. Not only does EM focus the institution’s attention on the need to capture market share in a competitive admissions environment, but the success of EM impacts many other areas of institutional activity. As noted in the Szelest model above, the reputation and financial health of public and private institutions alike is substantially enrollment-driven. Student enrollments not only generate revenue from state appropriations, federal financial aid, and tuition, but they also support residence hall operations, athletics, student activities, food service, bookstore, and vending. Student recruitment, admissions, orientation, and instruction are expensive activities that become even more costly under conditions of high turnover. To reduce turnover and attrition, E. M. serves as an important mechanism for improving student-institution fit. Thus, E. M. has also become a means of demonstrating institutional effectiveness to accreditation bodies and legislators.
Enrollment management has received scholarly attention for about three decades. Kemerer, Baldridge and Green (1982), Hossler and Bean (1990), and Kroc and Hanson (2001) are among the many authors who view enrollment management as an institutional research and planning function that examines and seeks to manage the flow of students to, through, and from college. Traditionally, two domains of enrollment management have received the most administrative and analytical attention:
- student recruitment, and
- student flow.
Important activities of student recruitment include admissions marketing, applications management, financial aid, and enrollment yield projections. Student flow embraces activities and issues related to attrition and retention, student satisfaction, curricular attractiveness, student support services, and campus climate. More recently, assessment of student learning and student/alumni success have been recognized as important extensions of an integrated enrollment management program. Thus, in my years as an institutional researcher, I always thought of enrollment management as a three-stage process.
Three Stage Enrollment Management Model
Stage One
The first stage, constitutes the Traditional EM Core, where analytical and administrative activity concentrates on
- Student College Choice and Fit
- Admissions Marketing
- Applications Management
- Tuition Pricing
- Financial Aid Packaging
- Strategic Niche Building
Stage Two
The second stage, concentrates on the crucial First-Year Experience, and EM activity focuses on facilitating student adjustment, enculturation, and integration into the institution.
- Orientation
- Advisement
- Curricular Access
- Remediation
- Support Services
Stage Three
The third stage, emphasizes student educational success and Institutional Effectiveness.
- Student Academic Performance
- Satisfaction, Institutional Commitment, and Campus Climate
- Student Tracking, Persistence, and Graduation
- Alumni Studies
Thus, enrollment management and institutional research are joined at the hip, because good EM depends on extensive and effective IR. Enrollment management research is productively directed toward understanding admissions marketing and yield, tuition pricing and financial aid packaging, student choice and fit, enrollment and revenue projections, assessing the student experience, campus climate, support services, student tracking and persistence, and feedback from alumni and employers.
Conclusion
From the Huddleston (2001) chapter, we can see that enrollment management and IR are tightly intertwined, when examining the enrollment offices mission statement and the organizational models (pp. 133-144). As a mental exercise, try to map the different offices on the organization charts with the three-stages of the enrollment model. Having a comprehensive strategic enrollment plan will help coordinate the various offices around campus to improve institutional effectiveness collectively. The benefits include (Huddleston, 2001, p. 147):
- The successful integration of an enrollment management model strengthens an institution's opportunities for optimal enrollment
- The institution comprehensively develops its enrollment based on strategic, integrative plans that include the identification, attraction, selection, encouragement, registration, retention, and graduation of targeted student groups.
- The institution enhances the quality of the students' collegiate experience based largely on the academic environment, operational excellence of the institution's transition programs, student services, and personal development opportunities.
- Professionals strategically develop an enrollment management organization that understands the institution's broader enrollment context and shapes and influences particular units that have a significant impact on a student's decision to enroll, persists, and graduate.
- A Strategic management focus complements the institution's mission, goals, and strategic directions.
- The successful enrollment enhancement ensures a competitive advantage for the institution and its graduating students.
By covering the three-stage enrollment model and its importance, we hope that you have enough preliminary knowledge to evaluate the enrollment management process within an higher education institution. In preparation for the following enrollment management units, the homework assignment will ask you to evaluate an institution's enrollment management (the choice of institution is up to you). This will prepare you for the next unit and the rest of this course as you begin to design a strategic enrollment management plan.
Lesson Readings
From the Textbook(s)
- Huddleston, T. (2001). Building the enrollment organizational model. In Black, J. (ed). Strategic, enrollment, management revolution. Washington DC: American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
- Owens, R. R. (2001). SEM as a driver for institutional change. In Black, J. (ed). Strategic, enrollment, management revolution. Washington DC: American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
From Electronic Reserve or Course Readings Folder ("Student Resources" tab, Library Reserves link)
- Brinkman, Paul and McIntyre, Chuck (1997). Methods and Techniques of Enrollment Forecasting. Chapter 5 in D. T. Layzell (Ed.), Forecasting and Managing Enrollment and Revenue. New Directions for Institutional Research, (No. 93). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers. pp. 67-80.
- Day, James. (1997). Enrollment Forecasting and Revenue Implications. Chapter 4 in Daniel Layzell (Ed.), Forecasting and Managing Enrollment and Revenue. New Directions for Institutional Research, (No. 93). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers. pp. 51-65. ISBN 0-7879-9850-8.
- Kroc, R. & Hanson, G. (2001). Enrollment management and student affairs. Chapter 1 in Howard, R. D., [Ed.], Institutional research decision support in higher education , (pp. 1-59). Tallahassee, FL: Association for Institutional Research.
Lesson 2 Activities
Evaluating Your Institution's Enrollment Management
This two-part exercise is based on the above readings by Huddleston (2001) and by Kroc & Hanson (2001). Both chapters discuss some of the common organizational arrangements for EM at institutions of higher education (see especially Kroc & Hanson pp. 41-45). First, at your own campus (or one of your choosing), please describe and compare the EM function with the 4 models described in these chapters (including the possibility that EM doesn't exist outside of the admissions office). What are the advantages and disadvantages of the EM structural arrangement that you see? [NOTE: If you carried out this exercise for the IR Foundations course, you should revisit or re-evaluate what you said at the time.] Second, continue the EM evaluation by downloading the Enrollment Focus - Program and Activity Review form. This form is based on Figure 7.9 in the Huddleston reading. Use the form to evaluate the enrollment management office or function at your target institution. Summarize your evaluation (1-3 single-spaced pages) and respond to at least these questions:
- Which of the EM models best describes what you found?
- What ranked high and what ranked low in your evaluation?
- How would you improve the institution’s enrollment management structure and processes?
Drop Box
After you've completed this analysis and examination of EM, place it in the Lesson 2 Drop Box and attach your completed form, if you are able to share it.
Discussion Forum
After reading the submissions from the other members of your DF group, comment on them and interact in the discussion forum. Be sure to respond to the posts in your DF group, and keep the conversation going by identifying similarities & differences, strengths & weaknesses, expected results & surprises.