Perfect Storm is Brewing for Making 2015 Your Banner Year for Focusing on Relationships and Retention

2014 was a painful year for many higher education institutions due to the drop in enrollment from its peak in 2011. The Census Board reported that in 2013 enrollment dipped a half million students from 2012, marking a two year decline in enrollment. While this dip hit two year colleges the hardest, a number of four year institutions missed their enrollment goals and some colleges closed their doors.

The most at risk colleges are institutions that are more dependent on tuition revenue for their survival. However, enrollment experts believe there are clear and manageable steps higher education institutions can take to improve their enrollment outlook for 2015 and beyond. If you’ve put off streamlining new student outreach, retention and relationship building with improved systems and processes, it’s definitely time to dust off those plans in 2015. Below are three areas to focus on:

Retention
Ed Venit, senior director with the Education Advisory Board, explained to Dawn Papandrea in “Outlook on enrollment; Perfect storm of challenges ahead” that the future “enrollment predicament is like an iron triangle, with enrollment, revenue and selectivity/quality as the three points.” In order to increase enrollment, colleges are faced with the decision of either having to admit students they wouldn’t normally accept or to drop the price enough to make the school attractive financially. Both options have downsides he explained: “Dropping the price hurts the margin, and dropping the quality could be bad for your reputation and also impact graduation rates.”

But Venit, like many other higher education officials, believes that greater attention needs to be made to retaining students and that can help offset smaller freshman classes. To retain students, colleges need to form academic teams that can identify and then intervene with students who are struggling. Kevin Kruger, president of NASPA, Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, “sees institutions continuing to use early warning systems that leverage data to identify attrition risk.”

Transfer Students
Another critical area for higher education institutions to focus on in 2015 for enrollment growth is transfer students. According to a study by National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, one third of all college students transfer at least once in a five year period.

And with President Obama’s just announced America’s College Promise plan, four year colleges may see an increase in students transferring from community colleges if the plan is approved. That is due to the fact that the President’s plan mandates that for students to qualify they “would have to attend at least half time, maintain a 2.5 grade-point average while in college, and make steady progress toward completing their program. The money could only be used for academic programs that fully transfer to public four-year colleges or to job-training programs that have high graduation rates and also lead to degrees and certificates in high-demand fields.”

International Students
One bright spot for enrollment continues to be international students. 2013-14 was a record-breaking year with U.S. colleges, which enrolled 886,052 students beating the previous academic year by eight percent. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently dug deeper into the data and found:

  • Chinese students represented nearly 60% of the foreign student growth at U.S. colleges;
  • Half of the Chinese student population are undergraduates with nearly an equal percentage who are graduate students;
  • There was a rise in the number of Chinese students enrolled in U.S. high schools; and
  • Kuwait, Brazil and Saudi Arabia are all sponsoring government scholarship programs to send their students abroad.

While higher education institutions may feel the troubling signs ahead, there are also many opportunities to increase their enrollment goals by being more strategic about where to find growth across the entire student lifecycle. 2015 promises to be a prime year for growth and excellence in enrollment management.

How you engage with students during enrollment – and throughout all phases of the student lifecycle – continues to change. So it’s important that you have a system of record to manage your relationships and engage with prospective and current students no matter what those changes are. Colleges and universities that recognize this and continue to find innovative ways to connect with new students will be sure to come out on top.

How is your institution tracking your enrollment management goals for 2015?