The Wildfires of College Enrollment

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, […]

How do you set tuition? How should you?

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 108-foot wave

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 […]

The Myth of Selectivity

Much of the hype in media and watercooler talk centers on institutional prestige, often using the selectivity of university in first-year admission as a proxy. Should you try to make your institution more selective to increase its prestige? If you think the answer is “yes” you might want to reconsider. From 2001 to 2023, first-year […]