Throughout my career, I experienced strategic enrollment planning managed in multiple ways. At some institutions, the process is incredibly strategic, at others, haphazard would be a kind description. Some of the process depends on institutional culture – are people on the same page aligned to achieve common objectives or are they more concerned with their own functional silo? I served one institution that, while toxic in culture, was collaborative in approach to problem solving. I chaired a strategic enrollment committee that brought together all key stakeholders at multiple times during the academic year in projection and planning work. I cannot say the process was always collegial, but it was always productive.
For effective enrollment planning committees, my experience, at traditional four-year institutions, is that you need to have your enrollment leads – admission and financial aid – lead out the conversation as these stakeholders are closest to the management and execution of enrollment. In addition, key stakeholders in the planning committee should include representatives from finance and budget, including the CFO, as well as residential life. I found it valuable to have Provost representation, to balance the finance team while providing academic context, as well as Institutional Research members. To take the planning committee more broadly, depending on the institution and if graduate enrollment is a consideration, having graduate and online representation as well as student success representation is also valuable.
From a timeline perspective, the process should begin before the academic year – July or August – to begin addressing metrics and priorities for the coming academic year. These initial meetings involve a series of iterations. For instance, initial conversations involve – what is the optimal overall enrollment for the coming year, full-time enrolled, by level, based on overall residential or classroom capacity? Tied to this, considerations could include – is the institution trying to grow enrollment? If so, how does this tie to classroom and residential capacity? Does the institution have the student demand to grow? This gets into discussions around populations of students – residential or commuter as well as graduate, part time or online versus traditional undergraduate. And where do transfer students or alternate enrollment terms fit into this mix?
Within these early conversations, work should also be done to project current student enrollment, returning students, for the coming year. This will help inform conversations tied to capacity that will lead to planning conversations regarding new students.
In addition to conversations about optimal enrollment numbers tied to level and residential status, depending on the market position of the institution, tied to student demand, other enrollment priorities should be discussed. For instance, is there a gender balance conversation tied to residential capacity or Title IX gender equity compliance? What role does student diversity, in all its forms, play in enrollment planning? Is there an interest in improving academic credentials of incoming students? Of meaningful importance, financial aid spending is an important conversation that influences all the above.
My experience has been that some institutions become overly concerned with the rate of financial aid spending also known as the discount rate. In particular, the finance team often looks at financial aid spending as a cost versus an investment in students tied to enrollment decisioning or persistence. I have even seen some institutions include Board of Trustees mandates to cap financial aid spending. This is incredibly short sighted and hamstrings institutions from achieving enrollment targets. For fun, let me give an example. Let’s say an institution wants to enroll 1,500 new students and spend forty cents on the dollar on financial aid. From a finance perspective, if forty-three cents on the dollar was spent on financial aid, that would be overspending. However, if 1,800 students enrolled, the revenue achieved by the increase in enrollment would be more than the original 1,500 and forty cent target. Seems to me, from a bottom-line financial perspective, as Martha Stewart would say – that is a good thing. My experience has been that this is a difficult conversation for many finance teams to reconcile. Hence the importance of a strategic enrollment planning committee to talk through scenarios for educational purposes so everyone is aligned with a similar level of understanding.
How often should this committee meet? After the initial summer meetings to plan and set targets, at least once in the fall to assess student demand progress. In the spring, the number of meetings should accelerate as the May 1 new student deposit deadline approaches to assess deposit behavior progress and to course correct if necessary. These are also opportunities for the institution to assess current fiscal year financial health or any changes in institutional priorities that would cause a need for a plan B or course correction.
In the end, while a strategic enrollment planning committee, I believe, is a best practice, as it pulls stakeholders together forcing them to work together while jointly looking through an institutional lens, I have seen this process work ad hoc, without a formal committee, depending on institutional culture. The point is to ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page with mutual understanding of objectives and priorities, knowing the tradeoffs. Misalignment at this level signals meaningful institutional disfunction without common strategic objectives – a more serious issue.
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