A few decades ago the technological promise of a new direction in higher education came with excitement and with concern. The excitement came first and may have hidden the concern. Now we have to be concerned! What first appeared as a straight highway to tomorrow is now bedeviled with twists and turns. Bill Gates in his The Road Ahead explains that many of the early technology companies ceased to exist because they did not anticipate the curves in the road and so went off the road. Institutions of higher learning, driving on the educational highway to tomorrow, must learn to navigate this highway lest they suffer the same fate as the early and unsuccessful technology companies. Let me explain by focusing on my own experience.
Throughout my career, I have had one foot in the academic side and one in the enrollment side. I lived in two worlds because I loved teaching so much that I was afraid of running out of students. To supply students to the academic side, I immersed myself in program development and enrollment. I moved from full-time faculty to full-time administrator, and ended up as a president for 20 years. During my presidency, my institution, Benedictine University, was named by The Chronicle of Higher Education as “the fastest growing university in the country” since 2000.
In my presidential journey, something interesting occurred. When it came to finding new populations of students, I used to refer to myself as a “diviner”— one who can use a forked branch to find water beneath the ground. Instead of finding water, I had the ability to uncover new populations of students—obviously, without the stick. We were able to build new programs, identify new students, and find untapped pockets of students on which to build new programs and thereby increase our university population by thousands. However, it became increasingly difficult to find students for new and even existing programs. With the demographic shift in college-aged students, my executive vice president once said “we are no longer recruiting students; we are stealing them from each other (other institutions).”
As president, I knew that fiscal stability is dependent on enrollment. What I learned over twenty years, sometimes the hard way, is that enrollment growth has become a science unto itself. This is a new age of digital marketing, data analytics, PPC, CRM, etc. Institutions like Benedictine have wonderfully talented people working in their various centers from marketing to IT to admissions, etc. In the evolving world of enrollment management, that is not enough. Institutionally, we could not afford the expertise our competitors used against us. I found it necessary to reach out to individuals who had the expertise that Benedictine did not. My goal was not to replace existing talent in Benedictine’s enrollment area but to enhance its reach. This outside expertise and capability became the hub of our success.
Through the years, institutions of higher learning have spent millions of dollars on administrative software. It makes no difference the software brand, the pattern is the same—huge upfront and on-going costs, implementation challenges, never realizing the full potential of the software, and continuous upgrades to software yet to be mastered in the older version. Prior to the implementation of the administrative software the administrative areas were siloed; I strongly suggest that after the implementation, they are still siloed—each area doing its thing and protecting and owning its data.
Many institutions are similar to an orchestra without a conductor. Each section is playing, but harmony is difficult without the conductor. What may have been a popular melody years ago, no longer is. We cannot continue to do the same old media buys, the same worn paths for prospecting students, etc. The times are not changing; they have changed. In the academy, we have learned to teach in a certain way and to administer and provide services in a certain way. Change is difficult. In my years in administration, I have been approached on several occasions with the request "please do not change things until I retire." Really? Change is necessary lest our institutions die.
Who initiates change? In my mind, the number one change agent at any institution is the president. This does not mean she necessarily initiates every change but provides a "license" for changes to make the institution the best it can be. I fear, and believe experience validates this, that without this presidential "license," the institution will not change, become stale, and even cease to exist as a relevant institution of higher learning. Our staff in all areas tend to be extremely loyal to how things have been done. It is the responsibility of the president to relieve them of this loyalty to the status quo and tune them to the future.
How does this impact enrollment management? Admissions (enrollment), IT, marketing, etc. must all be on the same page, must be harmonious. The state of enrollment science for 2016 and beyond demands an integrated approach to achieve the successful enrollment of students.
When one attends an annual meeting of academic associations, one immediately runs into a large hall with many booths of vendors selling their services. These booths continue to silo the industry because, for the most part, they are selling marketing, enrollment/admissions, IT management, etc. as separate commodities.
Returning to the orchestra analogy, higher education institutional culture is like a booth for the woodwinds, the brass, the strings, etc. Tuning one section without involving and tuning the other sections does not an orchestra make. What is needed is someone to transcend the individual sections and weave them together; this is the job of a conductor. An institution’s various departments is an orchestra in need of a conductor—in need of an integrated approach to enrolling and retaining students.
What does an integrated approach to enrollment management look like? Essentially, all departments at an institution are working in concert together to build sustainable, long-term enrollment growth – from the marketing and technology teams to the academic program development and retention efforts. Enrollment growth isn’t just about garnering more applications – it integrates all your strategies to carry a student from that first step on campus to their last steps across the graduation stage.
It starts with a cohesive marketing plan – one that optimizes your digital marketing efforts and capitalizes on online behaviors that have become the norm for traditional and nontraditional students alike. But, your marketing can only go so far – admissions teams need to mobilize with a student-centric, process-driven approach to their recruitment efforts. As prospective students consider your institution, your admissions team is on the front line. The student experience starts with them, and branches out into academic life through faculty, staff and administrators.
There are companies that will seek to help institutions grow enrollments through various efforts – but a true partnership like I had at Benedictine will approach solutions holistically. In addition to Benedictine’s success, by using the holistic approach, a Midwest university has experienced a 20% growth in adult students; a Southern university has experienced a 90% growth in its business programs; and an East coast university has seen its largest enrollment in a decade.
Admittedly, these are difficult times in enrollment and enrollment management. Competition for students has never been more intense. In a growing number of instances, institutions that are doing well knew they needed to augment their enrollment capabilities. Like an orchestra, they had all the instruments in house but many needed to go outside to find a conductor. Who are these conductors? They are companies with extreme expertise in integrated enrollment management; they are software agnostic. Every institution has the pieces. Do they have the expertise in-house to move from siloed instruments to a symphony orchestra?