Strategic Enrollment Management

Who am I To Present On This Topic? Texas Tech University Public, 4-Year IHE Highest Research Category (Carnegie Classification) 38,000+ FTE Baccalaureate/Masters/Doctorate/Juris Doctor 150+ majors Tier 1 institution in Texas Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Undergraduate Admissions, Office of the Registrar, Student Financial Aid & Scholarships Office Currently deployed Strategic Undergraduate Enrollment Plan

Agenda What is Enrollment Management? What makes Enrollment Management Strategic? What do we need to know to be Strategic? How does Student Financial Aid belong to this conversation? Caveat: This is an overview conversation; if you like it, maybe we’ll do more in the future.

Enrollment Manage(d) Essentially, we talking about headcount and tuition revenue; and Academic profile; and Class Diversity (e.g., underrepresented, low-socio economic, first generations, etc.); and Predictable Persistence; and Timely graduation; and Etc.

What makes this so…Strategic? Data Analysis Comprehensive Participation Agreed upon Outcomes Mission Consistency Proactive; Forward Planning

Death By Data

Is There Such a thing as too much data? Potential Data Elements: New students Continuing students (Retention) Graduation rates Tuition Rate/Tuition Revenue Discount Rate Student Housing Capacity Hospitality Course Availability/Scheduling College Capacity Accreditation Institutional Grant Aid Semester Credit Hour EXTERNAL INFLUENCERS Also, …zzzz…

Put This All into the pot & Stir! We begin to cultivate the questions we need to orient the strategic plan… How many students do we need? How are we going to get them to apply? What is our market penetration/brand recognition? What does overall enrollment need to be in year 20XX? What will tuition be over the next X years? What will appropriations (State) be? Will housing occupancy be adequate? What is the capacity of our “in demand” majors? Underutilized programs? Where are “bottlenecks” in degrees? How do we cultivate retention? What does the President want? What do the Regents want? What do the State/National Government want? Etc.

Some Assembly Required

What Are We Trying To Do Here? 𝐸𝑛𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡= 𝑝 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝑆𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 + (𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑖𝑛𝑔) 𝐺𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑢𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑅𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠 Note: This is not a real mathematical formula

What We Can Do! Shape the targets for practical interpretation and cohesive design Example: Set Enrollment Goals for New Students, based upon Retention & Graduation Establish Tuition Rates (within tolerance) to meet institutional operational standards Plan for Faculty allocation in high demand majors; market and promote under enrolled programming Provide for Institutional Funding of Incentive and Need Promote the Cultivation of Institutional Development Scale resources with the enrollment projections (Facilities & Services) Maintain constant monitoring of targets and adjust

Student Financial Aid

This is Great and all …But Where…? Maxim of Student Aid Unequivocally, Student Financial Aid provides the resources or avenues to students for educational attainment There is a place for strategic involvement of Student Financial Aid in SEM, but secondary to the first statement

Strategic Student Financial Aid The intersection of influence and duty provokes the value addition of Student Financial Aid to the conversation of Strategic Enrollment Management Influence includes college choice and commitment, respecting the burden that the cost of education entails To exam this intersection, is to delve into the realm of probability

Student Financial Aid Leverage Whenever we talk about SEM and SFA, we inevitably talk about leveraging student aid To leverage, we are examining the potential to influence student choice by increasing the probability of matriculation/retention To design leveraging, we must understand the predictability and probability models

The Art of Prediction Historical Data promotes patterns which we can extrapolate into a future scenario (i.e., regression) y x 𝑌 𝑖 = 𝛽 𝑜 + 𝛽 𝑖 𝑋 𝑖 + 𝜀 𝑖 Note: This is an actual mathematical formula

But Wait…

Down The Rabbit Hole… Linear regression doesn’t really work well for this conversation; we’ve got to “up the logit” – and get personal! y x p x 𝒑= 𝒆 𝜶+ 𝜷 𝒏 𝒙 𝟏+ 𝒆 𝜶+ 𝜷 𝒏 𝒙

Nice Pictures…but what? How leveraging works… p x 100

What Have We Learned From All Of This? SEM is entirely too involved and convoluted; but This is an opportunity to inclusively develop operational strategy impacting the future of the institution This doesn’t have to be an all or nothing; beginning simply is effective Student Financial Aid is a key element in the strategic development of enrollment of new and continuing students

Questions?

THANK YOU