Abstract
A relatively new organizational structure that first appeared in the mid-1970s, enrollment management has its roots in tuition-dependent private colleges and universities. Several decades of deep budget cuts in public higher education in the 1990s and 2000s created similar tuition-dependent behavior at public colleges and universities. As a result, departments that directly affect institutions’ ability to generate tuition revenue are being reorganized into divisions of enrollment management. Admissions, financial aid, registration, orientation, and retention support services are commonly found within this new administrative structure. These units are charged with enrolling and retaining a group of students that will produce a specific amount of tuition revenue for the college or university.
This charge has the potential to shift an institution's view from regarding students as learners to regarding them as dollar signs. The commodification of the college student is nothing new and not the fault of enrollment orga-nizations. We only have to look as far as athletic apparel or fast-food restaurants on campuses to see that students are frequently treated like consumers in a mega-mall. As this thinking spreads to the enrollment realm, financial gains and losses are emphasized over learning gains and losses. The criteria for recruitment of students to a college or university are no longer based on academic, athletic, or artistic quality alone—or, in some cases, at all. More often than not, the criteria also include the average credit score of families in a student's zip code and other financial factors. Frequently, recruitment plans are based on financial data received from predictive modeling software designed to help institutions focus attention on students most able to afford to enroll. In this time of institutional financial need, this software increasingly emphasizes credit scores and the like. Basing the recruitment of students on financial profiling allows colleges and universities to propagate a so-called need-blind admissions process when, in fact, recruitment has become extremely “need-aware.” Emphasis is increasingly placed on recruiting students who have low to no financial need.
Financial ability does not always translate into the ability to be successful at the college level. The success of a college student is a complex mix of academic, cocurricu-lar, and personal development factors that combine to produce well-rounded students whom we all want to count among our incoming and graduating students. Enrollment management organizations have the responsibility of sorting through this complexity to identify the students who are ready to enhance the learning environment for themselves and their peers. Merely identifying students who can pay the tuition until graduation is detrimental to the learning goals of undergraduate education. The financial pressures placed on enrollment management tend to negatively affect student learning by increasing the homogeneity of the student body while decreasing the diversity of background and experience critical to an ideal undergraduate learning environment. As passengers on the same ship, student affairs educators, faculty, and enrollment managers need to begin to take steps to create new sails that strike a healthy balance between financial goals and learning goals. Enrollment management organizations may be here to stay, and ensuring that their focus is on students as learners is the challenge.
As the two primary campus groups focused on student learning, faculty and student affairs educators need to be deeply involved in the enrollment management process. Bringing these groups to the table of discussion and decision should yield the campus collaboration necessary for an effective, student learning–focused enrollment management program. Injecting the values of student affairs into the enrollment process can promote a greater emphasis on the retention of students. Student affairs educators enhance retention and learning by socializing students to the campus's academic and cocurricular culture. In partnership with faculty, student affairs educators design meaningful experiences that help students develop realistic expectations for college, help them meet their goals, and help them develop skills and values that will serve them well after graduation. When students’ expectations match their experience, retention—and the continuing tuition revenue those retained students bring—results.
Student affairs educators can also play a significant role in establishing an enrollment process that has holistic student learning outcomes at its center. When learning outcomes such as critical thinking, decision making, values clarification, and communication are part of their experience even before enrollment, students have a greater likelihood of being academically prepared for the rigors of a collegiate education, developmentally primed to meet the challenges of a new learning environment, and aware of the expectations the institution has for their scholarly and leadership contributions. As experts on the student experience, student affairs educators can also help design an admissions process that allows for the assessment of factors related to student retention, including motivation and emotional maturity.
Decisions about where to administratively place traditional retention functions such as learning centers and tutoring centers have also been affected by the emergence of enrollment management organizations. Retention functions made part of an organization that disproportionately favors recruitment in terms of dollars and faculty and staff time may operate at the expense of the very students recruited. These functions are perhaps best placed in a student affairs division with a focus on learning and retention.
Another central player in all of this is, of course, the faculty. Because faculty-student interaction is a key factor in student learning and success, creating numerous avenues for faculty involvement should begin with the enrollment process. The investment in turning a first-year student into a college graduate is much greater if faculty have a role in evaluating admissions applications, establishing admissions standards, and providing input on a student's potential for success at the college level. Devoting precious time away from teaching and research is only possible under a system that rewards such activities. Tenure guidelines should include faculty service to university admissions and enrollment committees that make decisions about who will constitute the student population.
Recognizing that the enrollment process is not purely administrative may draw senior faculty into leadership positions of enrollment organizations. Experienced faculty are more likely to understand the skills necessary for a student to succeed in humanities versus biochemistry and can help institutions establish specific admission criteria for individual academic programs. Admitting students to diverse academic programs with a one-size-fits-all approach to requirements does a disservice to students, the learning process, and the institution. Experienced academic faculty can prevent this by helping create admission standards that draw the right students to the right programs of study.
Senior administration also plays an important role in supporting the enrollment organization and the student learning process. Top-level administrators should engage the campus community in a broad and open discussion about enrollment goals and priorities. Discussion allows learning factors to be widely discussed and debated and may help members of the campus community understand the tensions inherent in the enrollment process. Although conflict and challenge as a result of engaging multiple perspectives is to be expected, such dialogue can help an institution establish its expectations for students and for those who work with them.
A successful enrollment process can be achieved by employing the principles of shared governance and by committing to a process that focuses on student learning. At the same time, senior campus leaders must work aggressively to develop multiple streams of revenue that promote financial stability and reduce the reliance on tuition.
In the case of enrollment management, institutions cannot just adjust their sails and move on. In many instances, new sails are needed. All members of a campus community play important roles in the recruitment, retention, and learning of students and share responsibility for the enrollment process. If any one member of the community abdicates this responsibility, the entire institution threatens to veer off course.