Student enrollment stands as a high priority for almost all higher education institutions. Practitioners who work directly in enrollment management are far too familiar with the broken-record-like repeating the question, “What are you doing to increase enrollment?”
According to the Ruffalo Noel Levitz 2016 Report: Cost of recruiting an undergraduate student for four-year and two-year institutions, the number of full-time admissions/recruitment staff at four-year public institutions is 125:1, while the ratio is 225:1 at two-year public institutions. In other words, two-year admissions/recruitment staffs must be equipped to handle a larger influx of prospective and new students with half the professional staffing capabilities.
Ten years ago, I was a new director of admissions at the University of Michigan- Flint with an enormous goal: to grow enrollment at a school that had many competitors in the state. I was encouraged because we had strong leadership, a good product, great staff, and a strong infrastructure. We also had a customer relationship management system (CRM) with a bridge to our student information system (Banner). In admissions, we had a CRM manager, a business analyst, and a Banner specialist. This team was supported by a divisional ITS person who was very forward-thinking. In all, the team was small but mighty.
