If you follow the news in Higher Education, you are hearing a lot about Demographic Cliffs and Discount Rates and other business angles on what we do. But, as always, you need to be careful about whom you listen to and what you believe. I saw a great example just this morning in the Chronicle […]
It seems a whole segment of higher education social commentary revolves around college closings, and while much of the information is accurate, it is–frankly–not very insightful. There have been stories in recent years about the shocking number of closures happening across the country. These have ranged from the ridiculous (12,000 in the past 20 years) […]
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.) […]
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 […]
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. […]
Too often, people assume Enrollment Management is just a fancy name for admissions, or that it’s just recruitment on steroids, or that it’s a sign of never-ending administrative bloat. With regard to the first and last observations, well, let’s save those for another post. But with regard to recruitment, it’s among the first, and perhaps […]
If your university enrolls a lot of undergraduates, April can be the cruelest month. Typically, May 1 is the deadline most institutions use as their candidate’s reply date, when students offered admission must let the college know if they plan to accept the offer to enroll or not. The percentage of students who accept your […]
In January, 2017, in the middle of a rare snowstorm in Memphis, I presented to the students and parents at three private high schools. Part of my talk focused on the paradox of complexity in college admission: Everyone says we hate it, but the institutions that introduce more of it tend to be rewarded with […]
Enrollment VP 