On November 16, 2008, college and university chancellors, presidents, provosts, chief enrollment management officers and their executive level team members will convene at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel in Anaheim, California, for the third annual AACRAO Executive Symposium. Attendees will explore the fundamental institutional changes necessary for Strategic Enrollment Management to succeed in today’s challenging economic environment.

AACRAO’s Executive Symposium will include forward-thnking presentations and dialogue, including:

• Strategic recruitment and retention strategies
• Integration of enrollment management and institutional budget planning
• Actionable ideas for achieving enrollment success for the long term
• Targeted input from leading higher education professionals

Dr. Shirley Reed, President of South Texas College, will deliver a keynote address. The American Association of Community Colleges awarded South Texas College the MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award in the spring of 2008, another accolade in its growing list of achievements. We are honored to highlight Dr. Reed at this year’s AACRAO Executive Symposium.

Please mark November 16, 2008 on your calendar. For more information regarding AACRAO’s Executive Symposium and registration please visit http://www.aacrao.org/symposium/.

AACRAO’s Executive Symposium will be held in conjunction with the AACRAO Strategic Enrollment Management Conference. Following the event, Symposium attendees are encouraged to take advantage of the full SEM Conference.

As college costs continue to rise against stagnant family incomes, the pressure to provide more financial aid from an institution’s operating budget has also risen. This rise in aid is accompanied by questions of its place in the financial health of the university. Are we spending too much? Is it being spent on the right students? These are common questions in university board rooms, faculty senate meetings and enrollment management committees. A strategic analysis of financial aid can help the enrollment manager and his or her institution to answer these difficult and sometimes elusive questions. It can also lead to an improved financial aid strategy, which is an important component of attracting and retaining students the institution seeks to serve.

Like many enrollment management techniques, leveraging uses data to inform decision-making. In a rare place within the realm of data utilization, leveraging rivals predictive modeling and retention analysis in its complexity and use of data across variables from different data areas of the institution and (in best practices) external data, as well. Leveraging may be defined as an analysis of student enrollment behavior through the lens of financial aid that leads to confirmation of or changes to institutional aid strategy. It is also a Continuous Quality Improvement process that uses analysis to refine and improve the institution’s financial aid strategy within the constraints of its available resources.

Financial aid leveraging seeks to achieve three goals:

1. Provide aid packages that yield the optimal mix of students, including those who may not otherwise enroll at the institution (recruitment);
2. Help close gaps between costs and resources that may prevent students from persisting to degree (retention); and
3. Meet net tuition goals.

Before embarking on a leveraging analysis, there are two preliminary steps that you must take. These are more conceptual and strategic in nature than the process steps that follow them. First, you must determine the lens through which you will examine the gap between resources and costs (“need gap”). Will you look at the cost of attendance through the lens often used by the financial aid office, which includes direct and indirect costs? This is a common calculation of costs and is also known as the student budget. It includes estimates for books, transportation, miscellaneous costs and room and board when the student does not live in campus housing. Or, will you look at costs through the lens used by many students and parents to include just those paid directly to the university — tuition, fees and campus housing for your residents? There are good arguments for both lenses but the way in which you leverage aid will have different results, depending upon your answer to this question.

Second, you need to have clear enrollment goals that go beyond the number of students you seek to enroll. These goals will form the inquiry questions that impact the design of the analysis and variables included in the data set. For example, if a college seeks more out-of-state students, state of residence must be included in the data set. If it seeks more math majors or men, intended major and gender, respectively, must be included.

The process of financial aid leveraging is then broken into four additional steps that comprise the process of leveraging financial aid: data gathering and cleansing, analysis, implementation and review.

Step One: Getting Your Ducks (Data) in a Row
Possibly the most difficult of all the steps is gathering and cleaning data in preparation for the leveraging analysis. It is critically important to include the correct variables. You will need to know who enrolled and who did not and the financial aid packages offered to students who were admitted. Some financial aid offices delete aid packages for those who do not enroll, requiring these to be recreated in simulated packaging, a time-consuming task. It is also common to find incomplete and inconsistent records with the assembled data set. Old codes that were supposed to be inactive have a strange way of appearing, once the data is examined for consistency.

Many enrollment managers want to know if their aid packages are competitive with peer institutions. It is possible to complete a competition analysis using National Student Clearinghouse data. Data requests can be made to the Clearinghouse by member institutions for an annual research fee, which is usually a bargain for what can be learned from it when wisely studied and incorporated into a data set with other variables.

Assembling a data set for analysis requires expertise that may be beyond even experienced enrollment managers. It is important to partner with the institutional researchers at your institution and you will need someone on the project with experience and skill in working with large data sets, statistical analysis and the accompanying software required to assemble and assess your data. For this reason, it is common for institutions to enlist the help of a consultant.

Step Two: Making Sense of the Data
Analysis of the data can answer several questions. The most common analysis performed is the assembly of a “grid” that places the student’s ability to pay against the student’s willingness to pay. Ability is usually measured as the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Students who do not send FAFSA results to your institution can also be assess but they are placed into their own category on the grid. It is also important to separate out those students who come to your institution through special financial incentives. These could be athletic aid offers, institutional employee benefits or special talents, such as art or music. The behavior of these students within the context of financial offers is so different from the majority of students that leaving them in the analysis with other students may skew the results.

Willingness to pay may be expressed through academic preparation data. Those students with higher academic preparation levels will have more options for enrollment at various institutions and will likely receive merit aid offers from your competitors. Students with lower preparation levels may be thankful to be admitted to your institution and jump at the chance to enroll with less financial incentive to do so.

The grid of need and ability will contain many cells where these two variables intersect. There are multiple ways to assemble these data into the grid but standard for any assessment is the inclusion of institutional gift aid and total gift aid for each cell, along with the number and ratio of students enrolled to those admitted. Smaller institutions will need multiple years of data (also a good idea for larger ones, as one year’s data may be anomalous to overall performance) to avoid problems resulting from small sample sizes. Separation of student cohorts (freshmen, transfers, graduate, adult learners, in-state or out-of-state, etc.) is an important step, as different cohorts may react quite differently to various aid offers.

Each cell in the grid is carefully analyzed to determine to what extent financial aid may play a role in student enrollment decisions. For example, in the highest ability, lowest need cell, students may be receiving full-ride offers and yielding at very low rates. There may be no financial issue that improves this and these results may be a function of institutional position and/or recruitment techniques. Other students with very high need may not be yielding at high rates because they lack the basic financial resources to cover costs. At this stage, it is a good idea to have someone with extensive experience in financial aid analysis to take a look at these data to help the enrollment manager and institution walk through the questions and possible reasons for low or high yield rates. Using an analysis tool such as an Excel pivot table to construct the grid will allow analysts to “drill down” into each cell and examine the cases that comprise its summary averages.

There are several additional analyses that can add to the understanding of student enrollment behavior through the lens of financial aid. With large enough sample sizes, it is possible to assess behavior between academic programs, seeking to understand if the same merit or need awards elicit similar or different behaviors for engineering or history majors, for example. Behavior may also be different between students from varying regions of your recruitment territory, such as in-district or faraway states. A leveraging analysis can also be used to view the retention of students at your institution, substituting return to studies for initial enrollment as the dependent variable in the analysis.

Step Three: Adjusting Aid Strategies to Meet Institutional Enrollment Goals
From the analysis of institutional aid performance, changes to institutional aid may be made to help improve the yield of students desired to achieve institutional enrollment goals. One example of this is that institutions may decide to meet a higher percentage of the need gap for more desirable students than those less desirable to meet the qualitative enrollment goals of the institution (academic profile, geographic diversity, etc.).

This may be as simple as “tweaking” awards in certain cells to achieve marginal improvement in several areas or as radical as an overhaul of the institution’s aid scheme. Expected results are placed into a model matrix as targets for the entering class for whom these aid awards will be available. Documentation of the rationale for each change in awards should be made and kept, so that there is a record of why these new expectations were set. From this model, the expected net tuition revenue for each entering cohort can be modeled and incorporated into the overall tuition revenue projections for the institution. Needless to say, the timing of the entering classes should be far enough in advance that the awards have an opportunity to play a part in the recruitment of and yield of the entering students.

It is important to consider how these changes will be communicated to key audiences, including students, parents, guidance personnel, faculty, recruitment staff, financial aid staff, alumni and others who may have a vested stake in the recruitment and enrollment of your students. Making changes to scholarship or grant programs but failing to promote them may minimize the overall enrollment results you hoped to achieve.

Step Four: Rinse and Repeat – Continuous Quality Improvement
Once the entering class has matriculated, it is important to assemble the leveraging matrix for that cohort against the numbers you expected to achieve in each cell. Where expectations were different in any significant way, it is important to review the documentation for the assumptions made to see why the results over or under-performed the expected levels. From this review, additional changes can be made for the next entering classes.

As the institution gains experience with leveraging, it will be better able to forecast the impact of changes in aid strategy on net revenue for new and continuing cohorts of students. It may take several years of purposeful changes to acquire the desired results, especially if they require the infusion of significant new financial aid resources. It may not be prudent to add these new resources in a single year and enrollment managers must be mindful that increased discounting has a long-term rollout as students persist toward their degrees.

It was tempting to title this brief “Financial Aid Leveraging: Six Simple Steps to Enrollment Health” in hopes that readers would quickly see its irony – financial aid leveraging is anything but “simple” and it is not a magic elixir to improve the institution overnight. It is, however, a potentially powerful tool that can be employed by enrollment managers in combination with other proven enrollment techniques. As pressures mount to provide greater amounts of aid to students, having a firm grasp of aid at your institution and a purposeful plan for awarding it will be important assets for enrollment managers.

If you are interested in learning more about financial aid leveraging at your college or university, plan to attend the half-day workshop, “Expending Your Repertoire: Leveraging Financial Aid to Optimize Enrollment” at the SEM XVIII Conference this November in Anaheim www.aacrao.org/sem18/. For consulting assistance, please contact consulting.aacrao.org.

Registration for AACRAO’s 18th Annual Strategic Enrollment Management Conference is now open online at http://www.aacrao.org/sem18/registration.htm.

SEM XVIII will be held November 16 – 19, 2008 at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel in Anaheim, California. Take advantage of the early bird special and make your plans today!

For more information on the SEM conference including featured speakers, the conference program, or registration information please visit http://www.aacrao.org/sem18/index.htm.

• Analyze admissions office procedures.
• Evaluate organizational structure, staff utilization, and technology.
• Provide action-oriented recommendations for improving service and efficiency.

For more information please contact us at consulting@aacrao.org or (202) 355-1056.

Recent webinars include:

Implementing Direct Lending for Community College
Hear experts from direct loan schools and the U.S. Department of Education explain the process for community colleges to switch to direct lending. Visit http://webinar.aacrao.org/comcoll/ to log on.

Proactively Identifying At-Risk Students Using Predictive Analytics: Part I and Part II
Learn how AACRAO Consulting’s industry expertise, combined with techniques for predictive analytics from SPSS, can help your institution devise a successful strategy to proactively identify students at risk of failing or leaving the school environment.

Part I of the webinar is available at http://webinar.aacrao.org/spss/ and Part II can be accessed at http://webinar.aacrao.org/spss2/.

AACRAO Consulting will exhibit at the AACRAO Technology Conference , July 10 – 12, 2008 in Baltimore, Maryland. Please stop by and see us at booth #217.

For more information on the AACRAO Technology Conference including featured speakers, the conference program, or registration information please visit http://www.aacrao.org/tech08/index.htm.

Join a free webinar sponsored by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), and the National Direct Student Loan Coalition (NDSLC) on June 26 to learn more about implementing the Direct Loan Program on campus. Hear experts from direct loan schools and the U.S. Department of Education explain the process for community colleges to switch to direct lending.

In recent weeks, a number of student loan companies have announced that they would no longer make student loans to community college students. While other lenders indicate that they remain committed to making loans to all eligible students for the coming year, some institutions may be concerned about future disruptions to their long-term enrollment management and financial aid plans. The Direct Loan Program offers all eligible institutions a reliable financing alternative to the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP), and the Department of Education has committed itself to a significant expansion of the program in response to the turmoil in the bank-based student loan market.

This webinar will provide an overview of the steps institutions must take to rapidly implement direct lending and will provide community college decision-makers with the information they need to decide whether and how to convert to direct lending. While implementation at community colleges is the primary focus of the presentations, all interested institutions are welcome to participate.

Date: June 26, 2008
Time: 2:00 - 3:00 pm Eastern Standard Time
Registration Cost: Free of charge to the higher education community

Presenters:

Eileen K. O’Leary, Asst. VP for Finance and Director of Student Financial Services, Stonehill College
Sue O’Flaherty, Senior Advisor of Program Operations for Federal Student Aid, U.S. Department of Education
Heidi Granger, Director of Financial Aid, College of the Desert

For more information, please visit http://webinar.aacrao.org/comcoll/
Register Online at http://webinar.aacrao.org/comcoll/reg.php.

Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Time: 2:00 - 3:00 pm Eastern Standard Time
Registration Cost: Free of charge to the higher education community (Please note that you must register for Part II separately from Part I. Register online here).

Be sure to log in to the second part of the webinar series on the use of predictive analytics to identify at-risk students, hosted by AACRAO Consulting and SPSS. This special two-part webinar series is geared toward college and university staff officers interested in learning strategies for proactively identifying and retaining at-risk students and for those seeking methods to prevent the attrition of students. The second webinar in the series will take place on June 11, 2008.

Part II will explain how to integrate and analyze student and prospect data from multiple sources across campus (e.g. student information system (SIS) data, ERP system data, admissions e-mails, online submission forms, notes from face-to-face interactions, etc.) using predictive analytics. This will enable your institution to:

• Gain a better understanding of your current students and what they value about your institution
• Combine these date with prospects’ behaviors to identify and target the students best suited for your school
• Increase your success in converting a prospect or applicant to an enrolled student

Presenters:
Bob Bontrager, Director, AACRAO Consulting and the AACRAO SEM Conference
James E. Parry, Systems Engineer, SPSS

Register Online

System Requirements: Broadband internet connection and computer audio (sound card and speakers required—the webinar does not use conference calling). You may test your system to see if it meets the requirements.

Please note: the webinar is audio-only and does not include video feed. For questions about the event please contact AACRAO at webinar@aacrao.org or call 202-293-9161.

Part II of the series is scheduled for Wednesday, June 11, 2008. For additional information, please visit webinar.aacrao.org/.

The Webinar on May 21st covered the following topics:

• How predictive modeling helps you to identify at-risk students
• How to prepare for your first predictive retention project, including:
     • Data sources and variables to consider
     • Questions to ask your IT staff to get access to the right data
     • Steps to successful data preparation
     • Questions to ask to assess your team’s readiness

Presenters:
Bob Bontrager, Director, AACRAO Consulting and the AACRAO SEM Conference
James E. Parry, Systems Engineer, SPSS

We feel so good about our experience with AACRAO Consulting that we have budgeted for another year of services. The consultants were accommodating as to the number of meetings they were willing to have with our staff as well as the various program reviews to improve operations throughout the institution. They took a very collaborative approach so that no one felt left out.

What makes these individuals special is that they walk the walk every day themselves. They live what they share, their reports are not boiler plate, and the fees are affordable and more than competitive.

Mary Jo Sekelsky
Vice Chancellor for Student Services and Enrollment Management
University of Michigan-Flint

For additional details and registration information, visit
webinar.aacrao.org/spss/.

The Webinar on May 21st will cover the following topics:

• How predictive modeling helps you to identify at-risk students
• How to prepare for your first predictive retention project, including:
     • Data sources and variables to consider
     • Questions to ask your IT staff to get access to the right data
     • Steps to successful data preparation
     • Questions to ask to assess your team’s readiness

Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Time: 2:00 - 3:00 pm Eastern Standard Time
Registration Cost: Free of charge to the higher education community.

Presenters:
Bob Bontrager, Director, AACRAO Consulting and the AACRAO SEM Conference
James E. Parry, Systems Engineer, SPSS

The second part of the series is scheduled for Wednesday, June 11, 2008.

The Webinar on May 21st will cover the following topics:

• How predictive modeling helps you to identify at-risk students
• How to prepare for your first predictive retention project, including:
     • Data sources and variables to consider
     • Questions to ask your IT staff to get access to the right data
     • Steps to successful data preparation
     • Questions to ask to assess your team’s readiness

Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Time: 2:00 - 3:00 pm Eastern Standard Time
Registration Cost: Free of charge to the higher education community.

Presenters:
Bob Bontrager, Director, AACRAO Consulting and the AACRAO SEM Conference
James E. Parry, Systems Engineer, SPSS

For additional details and registration information, visit
webinar.aacrao.org/spss/.

Specific consulting services include:

• Strategic Aid Allocation Review
• Business Practice Review
• Compliance
• Ethics Review

For more information please visit http://consulting.aacrao.org/financial-aid-planning/ or contact us with questions at consulting@aacrao.org or (202) 355-1056.

AACRAO Senior Consultant Stanley Henderson was presented the Founders Award for Leadership at the 94th AACRAO Annual Meeting. The award is presented for vision, leadership, and longevity of service to the profession. This award is named in honor of those who founded AACRAO to meet the needs of the profession.

Stanley Henderson is Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management and Student Life at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, where he leads an institution-wide enrollment management and student engagement initiative. He began his work in the enrollment field as an admissions counselor at Michigan State University in 1970.

Through benchmark contributions to the transition from traditional admission and registrar teams to strategic enrollment management/services on an international level, Stan is one of the most recognized professionals personifying the scholarly activity of SEM. He was one of the founders of the Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Conference, which has become the premier educational experience for enrollment managers.

From Kansas ACRAO to other state and regional organizations, Stan served the profession. Rising out of the state and regional realm Stan served AACRAO on the Board of Directors as Vice President for Admissions and Enrollment Management, and also as President, as a Task Force Chair, and as an author and session contributor. He is currently a senior consultant with AACRAO Consulting.

Stan authored the chapter “On the Brink of a Profession: A History of Enrollment Management” in The SEM Revolution; “Admissions at the Front Door: From Gatekeeper to Strategic Partner” in The College Admissions Officer’s Guide; and the article “Refocusing Enrollment Management: Losing Structure and Finding the Academic Context” in College and University journal. He also edits and contributes to the Handbook for the College Admissions Profession.

As Chair of the AACRAO Centennial Committee, Stan received the AACRAO Distinguished Service Award in 2007. A member of Who’s Who in America, he is a frequent national presenter and has consulted at a wide range of institutions, including public research extensive universities, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), regional state universities, and small private colleges.

Wayne Sigler has been Director of Admissions at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities since 1992. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, his work in higher education included serving as Associate, then Director, of Undergraduate Admissions at the University of Maryland, College Park and Dean of Admissions/Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Services at the University of Houston. He received his master’s and doctorate degrees from the George Washington University. He is a nationally respected author, speaker, and consultant on transformational leadership, enrollment management, customer service, and recruitment.

Wayne has been an active participant in AACRAO for approximately 35 years, where he has served as program committee member, committee chair, session recorder, session presenter, workshop presenter, and Webinar presenter. He has authored several publications, his most recent one focusing on higher education leadership and management. Managing for Outcomes: Shifting from Process-Centric to Results-Oriented Operations was published by AACRAO in the summer of 2007. Previously, his article “Outcome-Oriented Operations (Tri-O3): Thriving in a Highly Competitive market” was published in College and University journal in 2003. “The Age of Outcomes” will be published in the upcoming edition of C&U

Wayne has embraced the enrollment management concept and has been instrumental in helping to establish enrollment management as a standard in higher education. He is one of the original founders of the AACRAO Strategic Enrollment Management Conference and a long-time leading practitioner and conceptual developer of the national enrollment management movement and profession. Wayne has made over a dozen presentations at both national and regional meetings and was elected MSACROA Honorary Member in 1980.

Annual Meeting participants represent a range of professional roles from every sector of higher education, and from countries around the world including enrollment managers, admissions professionals, academic advisors, presidents, provosts, registrars, deans and faculty, student service professionals, and financial aid professionals. Learn how other institutions have transcended change by revolutionizing facets of their business, including best practices, technology, and day-to-day operations.

The AACRAO Annual Meeting is your call to action to make a difference on your campus. The meeting will provide you the opportunity to learn how to manage change to achieve your professional and institutional goals; develop insights and ideas that will position you and your institution at the forefront of the profession; earn about best practices, new techniques, and cutting-edge technology; stay abreast of policy matters affecting higher education; network with colleagues and forge dynamic alliances across administrative departments.

“AACRAO Consulting was able to provide our institution the benefit of an ‘outsiders’ perspective while spending enough time reviewing and listening to understand the ‘insiders’ point of view. They worked collaboratively with us through the review planning phase to ensure critical pieces would not be overlooked. The review and recommendations we received allowed us to prioritize our options, direct resources to areas of highest impact, energize our operations, and build a foundation upon which any of our decisions are still being made years later.”

John B. Lehman
Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Services
Michigan Technological University

As the twenty-first century continues to unveil new challenges for higher education, enrollment planning and management strategies offer a pathway for community and technical colleges (CTC’s) to sharpen their focus, optimize their resources, and achieve enrollment goals that support the health and viability of their enterprises. While there is no single formula for strategic enrollment management, several of the steps suggested in this article may help college leaders get started on their own unique journey.

Community and technical colleges face a number of unique enrollment challenges. First , as open door institutions, community and technical colleges address the question of “controlling” their enrollment quite differently than baccalaureate institutions, which may utilize various selectivity tactics to increase or decrease their enrollments, and to match those they admit to their offerings. By and large, CTCs are enrolling most of the students who walk through the door, and are meeting wildly varying levels of needs, interests and preparedness for college work. To manage enrollment and/or to focus on different populations that are matched with special programs, CTCs may find it helpful to develop segmented marketing and recruitment plans, and may rely on faculty and staff from different segments to utilize their community connections to assure healthy programs and
enrollments.

Second, though CTCs are open door, many of them do provide programs that have restricted entry; this is often seen in health science programs. In those cases, it can be very helpful to observe the practices of the baccalaureate institutions to find successful models of strategic enrollment management. Practices such as focused marketing, application processes, analysis of access to pre-requisites, and waiting list management should be examined.

Third, increasingly, CTCs are finding their “niche” being nibbled away by other institutions and learning organizations. This calls for a serious review of the institution’s market position, a review of the viability of current programs, and an entrepreneurial approach to new program development. The challenge is not only in the area of certificate and degree programs. The ability of some competitors to offer 24/7 service, non-traditional delivery modes, and other benefits may exceed the available resources of a typical CTC. However, a number of CTCs are developing model programs of re-organized student services, as well as aggressive partnerships with business and industry to expand their program relevance.

Fourth, community and technical colleges, which historically have flourished because of their focus on their local community, are challenged to expand their vision to global concerns: the ability of their graduates to function in international work environments, the ability of their faculty to infuse global issues into their materials, and the ability to occupy a positive position worldwide as an effective education provider. This goes beyond the notion of managing (growing) enrollments by attracting more international students. Opportunity beckons the CTCs to assure their local residents that they can “think globally and serve locally”.

Though the list of challenges could become quite long, only one more will be identified here: inadequate funding. Typically funded at a lesser rate than their sister public four-year institutions, many CTCs are trapped in an environment of needing to enroll more students in order to gain more tuition income and/or state and local funding, yet never having enough income to catch-up to the expenses of that enrollment. This challenge goes to the heart of strategic enrollment management, which is the ability to identify strategies and practices that match resources with wants and needs. In other words, CTCs should carefully identify their different funding streams and expenses, and match the emergent needs with their prioritized missions. Analyses of program mix, of class scheduling routines, and of budgeting methodologies, for example, are central to optimizing, and growing resources.

Building an Effective Strategic Enrollment Management Plan

Notwithstanding the goal of imbuing every member of the college with a sense of responsibility for enrollment management and success, an enrollment management plan, usually developed within some sort of collaborative group, helps the college focus on key initiatives that intentionally move the college toward its goals. There is no strict recipe for developing a SEM plan; a college’s unique culture, opportunities and challenges should drive its formulation. However, the following steps are offered as a suggestion for both method and format.

1. Establish relevance. Identify the portions of the college’s strategic plan that are relevant to the enrollment position of the college. The SEM plan should support the strategic plan.

2. Conduct an environmental scan. Analyze internal and external enrollmentrelated
data that expand understanding of the issues raised by the strategic plan, as well as related strategic enrollment issues. SEM findings can also be used in a feedback loop to overall strategic planning.

3. Identify and explain the issues.

4. Select the most critical issues and identify key strategies that respond to those issues. Focusing on a limited number will enable the college to concentrate its attention and resources toward achieving the biggest impacts.

5. Set goals, using measurable elements wherever possible.

6. Identify tactics. Brainstorm, use data, assess resources, and be selective about the tactics that will have the most positive response to the issues. Identify the commitments and the accountabilities for those tactics.

7. Create an assessment, feedback and revision schedule.

8. Communicate. Periodic meetings, a campus feedback mechanism, and sharing of the plan help assure collaboration and follow-up.

Strong executive leadership and broad participation are the key elements in the success of the development and execution of an strategic enrollment management plan. Re-visiting the college’s strategic plan, analyzing data, and identifying issues that affect enrollment are the foundations of a strategic enrollment management plan and are well-suited to the role of college leaders in starting their institution on the road to enrollment health and viability.

Written by Christine Kerlin, Senior Consultant for AACRAO Consulting.

Contact us to schedule a cost-effective review of your registrar’s office.

Specific consulting services include:

Strategic Aid Allocation Review
We will review the timing, communications, and amounts of your financial aid awards to ensure that you are achieving the maximum influence on your students’ enrollment decisions. We will recommend improvements that will enable you to improve your recruitment and retention rates. The most impressive results have been achieved when timing adjustments, improved communications, strategic reallocation of funds, and modest increases in funding are combined.

Business Practice Review
Many institutions have increased both operational efficiency and enrollment outcomes by improving business practices in their Financial Aid Office, enabling them to provide the just-in-time services today’s students expect. Drawing from AACRAO’s century-long status as the leading provider of enrollment services, our consultants provide expert analysis of existing business practices and will make recommendations for achieving action-oriented, leading-edge improvements.

Compliance
We offer an in-depth review of the financial aid management, office procedures, staffing and structure, technology systems, process flow and reports, forms and publications. We will determine compliance with federal regulations and identify any areas of non-compliance such as file verification, cash management, award policies and consumer information requirements. A detailed report of recommendations is provided to promote effective change and corrective actions in order to minimize potential financial liabilities, establish improved inter-office coordination for managing student aid, and enhance student service.

Ethics Review
The newest area in the ever-changing rules governing student financial aid deals with institutions’ lender relationships. We will assist schools to ensure adherence to the latest regulations, to avoid conflicts of interest and position the institution for compliance with the highest ethical standards.