Dear College President,

Despite what IT vendors and enrollment consultants may tell you, enrollment management is about community, not computers. No database, no matter how sophisticated, can do more than measure your gains and losses in enrollment. A computer can’t listen to students or their parents, can’t create a friendlier staff, can’t encourage administrators to work together more effectively. If you are employing an enrollment management approach on your campus, or thinking about creating one, don’t be misled into thinking that you should start with databases, CRM software or advanced prospect statistical analysis systems. All of these are important, but they are only the tools of a good enrollment manager.

Enrollment management is a relatively new concept, often misunderstood, one that views enrollment and retention strategically and comprehensively with a recognition of the part that every person in the organization plays. Effective enrollment management is instrumental to the survival and growth of colleges and universities as we leave behind the current “black box” model of highly insular departments and functions. Enrollment management is a developing field within higher education and has been given several definitions, related and overlapping. Below are three, drawn from professional literature in the field. The first is a widely used standard definition:

Enrollment management is the coordination of the functions that directly affect the recruitment, admission, financial decisions, and retention of the students the school most wants to serve. Managing enrollment includes: (1) the analysis of factors influencing enrollment (including what attracts students and why they leave); (2) the establishment of a good student-institution match in recruiting and admission; (3) an orientation that facilitates the students’ transition into the university; (4) adequate advising and counseling; (5) an attitude of service to students; and (6) promotion of an overall responsive environment. (Philip Kotler and Karen Fox)

Another standard definition also includes forecasting:

Enrollment management assesses the policies and practices that impact all areas of recruitment and retention, anticipates changes that are likely to affect, and/or occur in, higher education, and persuasively articulates to the campus community the need for change within the institution. (Marguerite Dennis)

One of my favorite definitions is simple, but to the point:

Enrollment management is a holistic approach to the recruitment and retention of our students so that they can meet with success. (SUNY Rockland)

You’ll notice that none of these definitions include a numbers-oriented approach. Each of these definitions is built around a common theme: community.

Enrollment management is equal parts admissions, marketing, student finances and financial aid, campus stitch-in, retention and human resources. Most of these require a high degree of cooperation and integration on the enrollment management team and with other departments in the college/university administration. Nearly all enrollment management functions involve people far more than numbers.

In fact, good enrollment management is a move away from the numbers-obsessed admissions directors of the recent past. It is a movement toward quality rather than quantity. Marketing is adapted to find better matches and higher quality leads rather than pure prospect counts. Admissions officers become as concerned with customer relationships as sales and paper pushing. Financial aid is transformed from interpreting a book of regulations to becoming a true service in the aid of aspiring students.

Communications, collaboration, customer relationships, community. To the future student of your school, these ideas are what help make one campus more interesting and inviting than another. These are ideas that make students and parents more comfortable, better understood, and lead to easier, better decisions.

And that is the point of good enrollment management.