I recently followed up with a client, and we had a good conversation about the work I did and how it helped the college refocus some of their efforts. It was a fairly quick and straightforward consultation, and it wasn’t intended to transform the institution. (I’ve never heard of a consultative relationship that actually transformed […]
We’ve heard a lot about college affordability, and the topic frequently generates discussion about tuition cuts or tuition resets. This discussion is often focused exclusively on private colleges, not without good reason: Using 2023 data (the most recent available in IPEDS) we can see what sticker price actually means for new students (hint: not much.) […]
My last post asked you if you know why your competition is changing, if you are at a private college. One of the things I’ve noticed in visualizing IPEDS and Clearinghouse data is the increased competition private colleges are facing from public institutions, often (but not always) in their own state. So I looked at […]
If you work at a private college, you already know things in hyper-competitive market for students are. But have you wondered why? Here is a chart I did for a client private institution, showing where their admitted, non-enrolling first-year applicants enrolled. The orange part of the bar shows public institutions, and the blue bar shows […]
I’ve written before about what it means to be “data driven” in Enrollment Management. Since I posted this about ten months ago, people have asked me to clarify: If knowing stats is not data driven, what does it mean? To me it means seeking, finding, and learning from the patterns and trends you see in […]
If we were starting the college admissions process today, no one would design it the way it is. There is a lot wrong with the process of obtaining something that many of us believe to be a public good, and while I’ve written thousands of words about the other problems, the worst part is almost […]
Admissions and recruitment (two different functions often combined into one office) are hard: Much harder than people on the outside can understand. That, of course, doesn’t stop everyone from having an opinion about how you should do your job. Trustees, faculty, staff, and even students have lots of opinions. To be sure, some of them […]
If you follow admissions, you’ve heard by now about the Tulane University decision to “put a reluctant pause” on Early Decision admission offers to students from schools where some students had violated the terms of ED in the past. The article identifies only one, Colorado Academy, but suggests there are at least a few more. […]
You’ve almost certainly heard people who say that their job is mostly “putting out fires all day.” Unless you’re a firefighter (the kind that puts out literal fires), a police officer, or an Emergency Room Physician, it’s not optimal to always be focusing on the “tyranny of the urgent.” But knowing it’s becoming the way […]
This week much of the admissions and enrollment profession will be heading to Columbus, Ohio, for the NACAC Conference. I hope to see many of my colleagues there. If you listen to conventional wisdom, you’ll frequently hear that you need more data, better data, and–especially this year–more AI. (Just be sure not to mix it […]
Enrollment VP 