Practical Strategies for Enrollment Management

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Practical Strategies for Enrollment Management

• Peter J. Partell, Director of Institutional
  Research
• Sandra Starke, Vice Provost for Enrollment
  Management
• Binghamton University
• State University of New York
• July 2001

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Todays Activities

• Introduction
• Why get involved?
• Old and new models
• Definitions
• Tools (Practical Stuff)

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Introductions

• Name and Institutional Affiliation
• What are your primary tasks related to enrollment
  management?
• Name at least one of your institutions
  enrollment goals.
• Open or Selective Enrollment?

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Why Should Institutional Researchers Care About
Enrollment Management?

• A way to contribute to one of your colleges or
  universitys primary strategic goals.
• It allows you another avenue to be involved in
  influencing policy and decision making on campus.
• It is interesting and fun. (read stressful and
  anxiety-producing).

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Traditional Model - The Islands

• Independent Offices sometimes working on common
  goals, sometimes not.

• Admissions
• Financial Aid
• Student Services
• Institutional Research
• Faculty/Deans, etc.

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Traditional Model

• Independent Offices sometimes working on common
  goals.
• Examples
• 1. Admissions wants to bring in the right number
  of new students. They may not be doing this with
  an eye towards student retention.
• 2. Financial aid interested in access and making
  sure new students have need met. May not be in
  line with the Admissions goals of quality and
  quantity.

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Traditional Model-More Examples

• 3. Orientation office interested in registering
  students for courses and not concerned with
  summer melt making sure the students have a
  good experience and attend in the fall.
• 4. Institutional Research may report demographics
  or yield rates without understanding how they can
  help influence them.

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Traditional Model

• 5. Little concern for the impact their office has
  on another.
• 6. Financial aid packaging fairly first first
  come first served. (Access and quality can be
  contradictory)
• 7. Setting office hours for staff convenience as
  opposed to student convenience.
• 8. Lack of understanding of the value of
  retaining a student.

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Traditional Model

• 9. Lack of understanding how their office can
  contribute toward the common good.
• 10. That is not my job.
• 11. I dont recruit students Admissions does
  that
• 12. Students have a full course load nobody
  gets what they want at any school.

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Traditional Model

• You get the picture

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Traditional Model

• Institutional Research can provide the analytical
  focus that gets all of these offices working
  toward common goals. Why?

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Institutional Research Already does (or could
do)

• Research to support marketing
• admissions analyses
• financial analysis (tuition discounting,
  revenue/enrollment projections)
• alumni satisfaction surveys

• Outcomes assessment
• cohort analyses (retention/graduation)
• student opinions/attitudes surveys
• evaluating program effectiveness

These are all related to enrollment management
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The Continent of Enrollment Management

• A holistic view for the institution.

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The Continent of Enrollment Management

• Offices working together toward a common cause.
• Offices looking at data and seeing how they
  impact student behavior.
• Recognition that you all have a common goal.

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Definitions of Enrollment Management

• Enrollment management is 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. --Don
  Hossler

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Definitions of Enrollment Management

• Enrollment management is the coordinated effort
  of a college or university to influence the size
  and characteristics of the institutions student
  body... enrollment is managed through a variety
  of strategies including admissions, pricing,
  financial aid, and advising. Well designed and
  well executed institutional research is the key
  to successful enrollment management.--Craig
  Clagett

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Goals of Enrollment Management (from Dixon 1995)

• Define the institutions nature and
  characteristics, using both objective and
  subjective techniques
• Incorporate into marketing plans and activities
  all relevant campus sectors, making sure that all
  parties recognize that institutional goals are
  being served

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Rebecca Dixon Goals

• Make strategic decisions about the role and
  amount of financial aid needed to attract and
  retain the right students, making certain that
  this expense serves the institutions goals
• Make the appropriate commitment of human,
  monetary, and technological resources

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Who does EM in the new world?

• Admissions
• Financial Aid
• Student Services
• Institutional Research
• Faculty/Deans, etc.
• Career Development
• Groundskeepers
• Campus Police

• Housing
• Orientation
• Athletics
• University Relations
• Registrar
• Alumni Relations
• Cafeteria Workers
• and so on and so on...

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Lets skip to the practical part...
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The Strategic Importance to your Institution

• Reliance on revenue - for both Private and Public
  Institutions
• Financial stability
• Reputation - enrolling the students and
  collecting that revenue to enhance
  programs/services that bolster the reputation of
  your institution
• Retention it is easier and cheaper to keep a
  student than to recruit a new one

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Enrollment Management-Data Sources

• You may already have the tools, the new model
  means you look at them differently -- your goal
  is to tie the entire campus together

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How do you do Enrollment Management?

• Chances are, you are already doing some of it,
  remember these?

• Research to support marketing
• admissions analyses
• financial analysis (tuition discounting,
  revenue/enrollment projections)
• alumni satisfaction surveys

• Outcomes assessment
• cohort analyses (retention/graduation)
• student opinions/attitudes surveys
• evaluating program effectiveness

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How do you do Enrollment Management?

• The key is to use the data that you currently
  have at your disposal and look at it in different
  ways.
• Analyses need to be guided by your institutions
  strategic plan so that all the offices involved
  work towards the same goals.

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Identify the Strategic Goals of Your Institution

• Increase enrollment revenue?
• Improve quality?
• Change demographics? (diversity geographic and
  race ethnic, talent, programs, schools,
  non-traditional, traditional, e-learners,
  freshmen, transfer, graduate, etc.)
• Goals have to be aligned with the reality of your
  campus - can your institution support the
  students it is trying to attract?

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How do you do Enrollment Management?

• Example Uxs strategic goals include increasing
  enrollment while maintaining quality and
  selectivity. What sorts of indicators are going
  to be important to their enrollment management
  activities?

Yield Rates
Understanding yield in the context of quality
Where can we find more high quality students?
Understanding retention -- recruiting efforts
wasted if we do not retain the new students we
enroll.
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The Enrollment Funnel
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IRs Role in Enrollment Management

• Spearhead analysis, reporting, and data
  collection that is about how to move prospective
  students (and then students) through the various
  stages of the enrollment funnel.

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You can help tie the campus together

• Some Tools
• EPS - Enrollment Planning Service
• CIRP - Cooperative Institutional Research Program
• Alumni Surveys (e.g., AOS)
• Student Opinion Surveys (e.g.., SOS)
• College Board -- Admitted Student Questionnaire,
  Admitted Class Evaluation Service

• National Student Clearinghouse
• Surveys (e.g., US News, Kiplingers, Wired) and
  articles -- What are they saying about your
  institution?
• Campus data files
• Others that we have missed?

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Building Your Inquiry Pool Feeding Your Funnel

• You cant enroll without adequate inquiries. As
  there is pressure to grow, the inquiry pool must
  be large enough to sustain the growth. This is
  true by market segment.
• Example -- Our goal for Engineering School was
  set too high because we asked only half the
  questions - can you teach more students? Should
  also have looked at the funnel.
• Build Inquiries based on the segments you would
  like to enroll and their fit with your
  institution - what do you know about who
  succeeds? (grades, retention, etc.)

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Feeding Your Funnel (continued)

• Identifying Target Markets
• Result will assist in deciding which names to
  buy, places to travel, ads to place -- using
  resources most effectively.
• Analyses aimed at shaping your inquiry pool to
  ultimately enroll the students that meet your
  strategic goals.
• Sources to tap
• High school market research (identify target
  schools that graduate the types of students you
  want)
• Population projections (e.g., high school grads
  by state)
• Local data bases (identify feeder high schools or
  community colleges)
• Prospects/Name buys (e.g., ETS, Phi Theta Kappa,
  etc.) .
• U.S. Census

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High School Market Research

• For example, EPS allows you to locate areas of
  the country where there are pockets of students,
  based on the factors you choose, e.g., SAT, high
  school GPA, income, location, migration patterns
• Factoid Nationally 59 of freshmen are from
  within 100 mile radius of the campus they attend
  - is this true on your campus? Do you know?

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Segmenting Targeted Markets

• Buy names from the markets you identified based
  on how you choose to segment them (again,
  strategic goals)
• Examples may include - gender, geography, income,
  schools/programs, race/ethnic and socio-economic
  diversity, SAT/ACT Scores, GPA
• Are they willing to come to your school?.
• Personalized mass communication

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Mining Local Databases

• Now that you know your target markets - can your
  alumni help (cover recruitment programs, meet
  with students, etc.)? Mine your alumni database
  - where do they live?
• Feeder schools
• Understanding which schools give you the highest
  numbers of students and which could give you more
  - analyze through the lens of the funnel
• Shape the message to each high school (CIRP ASQ)

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Turning Inquiries Into Applicants Qualifying
Your Inquiry Pool

• Are you collecting inquiry data? Are you
  collecting appropriate/useful inquiry data?
• How interested is the student?
• How often and in what form have they inquired?
• Inquiry Source - self-initiated v. school
  initiated - Would you expect there to be a
  difference?
• Early indicators of the quality of the student -
  self report gpa, psat score, etc.
• What are your yield rates based on inquiry type?
• May want to use multivariate analysis, such as
  logistic regression (are there interactive
  effects?)
• Whats the dependent variable?

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Distribution of student interest
Least likely to enroll at your school no matter
what you do.
Most likely to enroll at your school no matter
what you do.
Influence
C
A
B
Students falling in this area will not enroll
unless the institution does something to
influence their decision. - Noel Levitz
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Turning Inquiries into Applicants - Marketing

• Understanding why students apply. What they
  respond to (Academic Programs, Financial Aid and
  Scholarships, etc.) Who does not apply and why?
• Who are your competitors?
• Again, may vary by your target groups!!!
• How do students learn about colleges?
• Data on success, strengths, e.g., grad rates,
  placement rates, surveys, rankings, USP,etc.
• Understanding who will persist or succeed.
• Which inquiries are the most promising?
• Arm your admissions recruiters to the teeth.

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Turning Inquiries into Applicants - Marketing

• Market to the needs of your inquiry pool to get
  them to apply.
• Do they like it here
• Unique selling points (retention rates, grade
  rates, license pass rates, etc.)
• Shape messages who we are. CIRP, ASQ, etc.
  (E.g. Students come for Academic reputation if
  they are from Bronx Science. But other people
  come because we are affordable.)

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Application Analysis

• Year to date - early warnings
• This year many schools saw a rise in early
  applications. We made the mistake of thinking
  students just applied earlier. We initially over
  offered then more students applied. More
  students are using the common application Help,
  ease of use. The economy.

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Competitors Sample of data from Enrollment
Search (National Student Clearinghouse)
Remember Your competitors are likely to be
different for different types of students
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Turning Applicants into Admitted Students

• Who should be offered admission to shape your
  class (strategic goals of size, quality,
  diversity, etc. ) -- projection, projections,
  projections.
• Example Always tuned to the quality of our
  freshmen, yet our forecasting of yield did not
  involve quality at all -- only school of
  application -- our actions were not in synch with
  one of our strategic goals.

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Admissions Index

• College qualification -- often based on
  combination of
• high school performance (GPA, Rank, etc)
• test scores (SAT, ACT, TOEFL)
• rigor of high school coursework (AP?)
• applicants interest in attending? (see Wall St.
  Journal 5/29/2001).

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Why Use an Admissions Index? to influence the
size and characteristics of the institutions
student body - Claggett

• It ties your strategic goals to you admissions
  decisions because what you put in it, should be
  what matters to your institution.
• Aids in more consistent admission decisions
  across counselors.
• Gives you a more accurate yield analyses/class
  projection.
• Allows for the control and tracking of the
  students you want.
• If you are making competitive offers, you have to
  analyze the supply and demand.

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Turning Offers into Enrolled Students Analyses
to Assist with Yield

• What do we mean by yield? -- deposits versus
  enrollment - which should you use?
• General rule the more refined your look at the
  yield data, the better able you are to directly
  impact your strategic goals Go to spreadsheet
  example
• Be careful that analysis not too refined so as
  numbers are too small to be meaningful.

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Enroll (yield)

• Turning offers into enrolled students.
• Financial Aid
• Who you can and cant impact
• How much money it takes to affect a students
  decision.
• Monitoring deposits melt rates

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Financial Aid and YieldAll Students
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Financial Aid and Retention
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Financial Aid and YieldWhatever group is of
Strategic Importance
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Financial Aid and Yield
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Enroll (yield)

• Deposit Analysis - monitor deposit rates to
  determine whether youre on track to yield the
  class (Summers are hot, whos melting?)

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One last point on yield

• Segmented Marketing Messages
• Unique Selling points
• Data made sexy - IR as PR
• defining your image
• defining your message
• using data to reinforce your image

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Analyzing and Supporting Retention

• Identify who left and why - use data! Do not
  rely on conventional wisdom
• Example - IUT denials leave - internal pressure
  was based on conventional wisdom - data didnt
  support
• Analysis may incorporate
• National Student Clearinghouse
• Surveys (homegrown, CIRP, SOS - verify
  reliability - Recent SOS Results)
• Exit Interviews/Focus Groups
• Look at impact of financial aid
• Look for courses - Killer Courses

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Analyzing and Supporting Retention

• Identify who stays and why - analyze your
  satisfaction ratings, your alumni surveys.
• Benchmark your results against peer norms
• Provide the right people with the data to help
  them build on institutional strengths (read
  satisfaction) and take steps to address
  institutional weaknesses.

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Conclusion

• Enrollment Management is at the heart of success
  for every type of institution
• Analysis of data provides the keys to successful
  enrollment management
• Who has the potential to impact data collection,
  analysis, and dissemination to the people who
  make decisions Institutional Researchers

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Conclusion

• Become the campus expert on the available tools
• Analyze data with an eye towards marketing and PR
  and the enrollment funnel
• Work to develop and support a campus culture of
  shared information and shared goal setting
• Be recognized as THE resource for enrollment
  management expertise
• Insist that IR is at the table when key decisions
  are made.

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Conclusion

• Knowledge is Power!

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Thank you!

• Contact us
• Sandra Starke
• Vice Provost for Enrollment Management
• Sstarke_at_binghamton.edu
• Peter J. Partell
• Director of Institutional Research
• partell_at_binghamton.edu
• Binghamton University
• State University of New York
• July 2001

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Resources

• CIRP Freshman Survey Offered by HERI 
• CIRP Cooperative Institutional Research Program
•  Higher Education Research Institute (HERI)
• Graduate School of Education Information
  Studies
• University of California, Los Angeles
• 3005 Moore Hall, Box 951521
•  
• Phone [phone] Fax [phone]
  E-Mail HERI_at_ucla.edu
•  
• Website http//www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/heri.htm
  l
•  -------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  ---------
•  Alumni Outcomes Survey Student Opinion Survey
  Both offered by ACT
•  ACT - American College Testing
•  American College Testing
• 2201 North Dodge Street
• P.O. Box 168
• Iowa City, Iowa 52243-0168
•  
• Phone [phone]

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Resources

• The Enrollment Planning Service (EPS) and
  Admitted Student Questionnaire (ASQ) are offered
  by the College Board  
• Middle States Regional Office
• 3440 Market St.
• Suite 410
• Philadelphia, Pa 19104-3338
• Phone [phone]
• Fax [phone]
• www.collegeboard.org
•  
• The contact information for ETS is
•  
• Corporate HeadquartersEducational Testing
  ServiceRosedale RoadPrinceton, NJ 08541
  USA(609) 921-9000FAX [phone]E-mailmoets
  info_at_ets.org
• www.ets.org
•  
•  

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Resources

•  
• National Student Clearinghouse
• National Student Clearinghouse2191 Fox Mill
  Road, Suite 300Herndon, VA 20171-3019
• Phone [phone]
• Fax [phone]
• Email service_at_studentclearinghouse.org
• http//www.studentclearinghouse.org/
•  
•  

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Funnel by High School Within Recruiting Region
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• In god we trust. Everybody else bring Data
• Anonymous

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Students reason for attending
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The Timing of Inquiries
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Group Activity 1

• How will you proceed with enrollment planning?
• How do you plan to get involved?

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Group Activity 2

• Recall the enrollment goal you gave during
  Introduction. For each persons goal, as a group
  determine
• What analyses does the institution need to
  successfully achieve the goal?
• What data would need to be collected for you to
  do these analyses?
• Does the institution have the required data?