It’s a big question, and one many, if not most, colleges talk about and reflect upon regularly. And of course, recent Supreme Court decisions and changing political climates have made the issue even more difficult to navigate. What’s more, we measure diversity a lot of different ways, and ethnicity (the focus today) is only one […]
Of all the things we’re asked to worry about, now people are concerned about men. Like my post earlier (the one with the headline in Russian that people were afraid to read, apparently), you should realize that the narrative about male enrollment is true, but maybe not so dire as you think. It should come […]
The reason Higher Education can’t change is simple: We all put forth very similar, undifferentiated offerings, which makes risk very, well, risky. If you take a big gamble and you win, your competitors all fall in line, and any advantage you might have is short-lived. If you take a big gamble and lose, all the […]
I recently had the chance to congratulate a colleague who announced her retirement on LinkedIn. “Well done,” I typed. “You made it out the other side unscathed.” It was, of course, a bit hyperbolic, a knowing nod from me to someone who also worked in enrollment management at a large public university. In our jobs, […]
If you’re confused by the headline, so am I. I don’t speak Russian, but I remember this from a speech given by Ronald Reagan, when he quoted a Russian proverb in a speech about nuclear disarmament. Translated, the title means, “Trust, but Verify.” Fortunately, our purpose today is a little less compelling. But it does […]
IPEDS just released data from Fall 2023 enrollment surveys, and there are some interesting trends. Here’s a snapshot of the high level data. It’s interesting to see what appears to be a post-COVID rebound happening slowly for undergrads. That’s to be expected (the slow part, I mean). It should be obvious, but a very bad […]
I can read your mind. You probably take last year’s tuition, look at how much your expenses will increase, and raise tuition by that amount. Problem solved, right? Then why doesn’t it work? It doesn’t work because the tuition colleges set carries almost no resemblance to what students actually pay. Of course, state and federal […]
The current sense of enrollment managers is that the present is hard, and the future is going to be even harder. In light of that, it’s natural to look in different directions to bolster enrollment, and it’s generally not long before someone points out that “it’s cheaper to retain a student than it is to […]
Perhaps you’ve seen the story of what might be the largest wave ever surfed (the news media are calling it the largest wave ever, but of course that’s not true.) It got me thinking about all the waves we’re dealing with in higher education: Shrinking enrollments, structural budget deficits at even some of the highly-resourced […]
Nothing is so discussed–and perhaps so misunderstood–as college discount rates. And my opinion about the meaning of discount rates is changing, to boot. You probably know that discount rates are calculated by dividing unfunded institutional aid by gross tuition revenue. So if you charge $100M in gross tuition and offer $40M in aid, your discount […]
Enrollment VP 