Recruitment and Enrollment
Challenges and Strategies
When it comes to college recruitment and enrollment, South Carolina is better positioned than many neighboring states to the north, where the traditional college-aged demographic is declining. The third fastest-growing region in the nation, South Carolina has benefited from a high-tech automotive and aerospace manufacturing boom created by BMW, Volvo, Boeing and many of their suppliers. However, even with the population growth generated by great manufacturing jobs, the number of eighteen-year-olds graduating from high school is flat rather than increasing, and competition for those students remains a challenge. Some institutions struggle to enroll enough qualified students. Other institutions with more robust enrollment still face questions about attracting and serving students that reflect the demographics of the state.
Smart Strategies We Encountered
Many of the universities we visited had ways of stabilizing and expanding enrollment that included one or more of these strategies:
- Connect with students in high school through dual credit, scholars programs and summer bridge opportunities.
- Use accessible language, simplify websites and processes, and provide students with step-by-step guides to help them navigate the enrollment process.
- Expand and diversify the potential pool of available, qualified students by focusing on adult degree completion. Create greater flexibility for those adult students with more entry points and self-paced/competency-based programs.
- When marketing programs, tie them to labor market data so that students can see the regional demand for credentials.
- Offer more spring campus visits later in the season.
Common Challenges and Proven Solutions
The greatest challenges discussed during our interviews fell into the categories below. We have addressed each challenge with proven strategies and best practices:
- How to best use limited staff/resources
- Enrollment management teams may be small and under great pressure to increase yield. Student employees or others on campus who are not experienced recruiters may fill staffing gaps during peak times. This can result in uneven quality and results. In some cases, it may make sense to invest in high-quality outsourced support for prospective student coaching, which can pay for itself by accelerating the achievement of enrollment targets. When vetting providers, make sure their team is able to integrate your institutional identity and goals into their approach.
- To support effective outreach to prospective students and successfully meet enrollment goals, small teams may also require access to extra resources, such as external marketing support and multi-channel communication methods.
- An occasional audit of institutional processes may help identify ways to strengthen the prospective student experience and refine practices that support efficient, effective recruiting.
- Successful enrollment management teams usually have a common, clear and effective methodology to support consistent, high-quality connections with prospects and support them through the enrollment process.
- When to automate
- When using technology that automates communication with prospects, institutions must be strategic about which parts of the recruitment process best lend themselves to automation. While automation may allow recruiters to manage larger rosters, it may also be detrimental to the development of relationships with prospects if not applied with care and personalization.
- Technology and automation can make a powerful impact, but some institutions are finding that valuing and updating staff skills has a greater return on investment.
- Automated nudging can be valuable when paired with individual customized outreach.
- When to personalize
- It’s important for conversations to be timely, targeted and personally relevant to each student’s interests. Prospects who feel a personal connection to the college or university, who feel that your staff knows them and cares about them, are more likely to enroll.
- The role of data
- Data is one key element in a successful strategy. The ability to understand the student experience is fundamental to improving outcomes, and that comes from qualitative and well as quantitative information.
- A healthy balance between centralized and local data capacity, and sharing across common divides, is essential.
- Response time
- We heard varying reports of processes for communicating with students and a wide range of response times, often depending upon the resources available at the institution. The most competitive colleges and universities provide immediate, personalized responses to all student interactions, rather than delaying personal responses until a specific benchmark in the enrollment process. This is especially true for adult and online programs.
- Working with faculty
- Faculty can provide a powerful, positive impact on the recruitment and enrollment process. By appealing to the faculty desire to have highly engaged students, you may be able to leverage faculty at key points in the process and strengthen a student’s feeling of connection to your institution. It is important to brief faculty on your recruitment strategy and methodology so that messages to students are consistent across faculty and staff.
- Multi-channel communication
- Prospective students may respond to a variety of communication methods. A combination of email, phone and text messaging increases the likelihood of reaching and engaging prospects. With all methods, the human touch is important and impersonal approaches are less effective. Text messaging gives you the ability to communicate key reminders and other information, such as upcoming deadlines and invitations to visit campus, that will encourage greater engagement with your university. However, it is crucial to personalize text messages. Automated nudges and other stock communications are generally ignored if they appear to be generated en masse with no tie to individual needs and interests.
- Class shaping and demographics
- For many institutions, there is no longer a “typical college student.” Changing demographics require a targeted approach to recruiting more diverse and less “traditional” student populations. Institutions often attract a specific type of student, with each institution being a bit different than the next. As a result, building a diverse student body means different things to different schools. An institution will need to focus efforts on ensuring the incoming class brings perspective from students of all backgrounds.
