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Have you read Robert Fulghum’s “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”? The first thing on his list is “share everything.” There are many people on college campuses whose professional positions require that they provide reports and data analysis. These professionals can often be categorized into two groups – data sharers and data hoarders. As their “types” would indicate, data sharers are quick to provide charts, tables, and reports to their colleagues to keep them informed about topics of common interest. Many of them are genuinely excited to share data and presentation techniques.
Then there are the data hoarders. At times, they may get hung up on the power of information and tend to hold data close to the vest.…Read more
administrative
Data Sharers and Data Hoarders - Monday Musings
This Season's Conferences: Where We'll Be - Monday Musings
The conference season is approaching, and we’d love to connect with you! As you make your plans for professional development activities, consider a number of conference and webinar presentations S&K staff will be making over the next few months:
Kathy Kurz will present financial aid webinars on May 9 and June 14. Click here for more information and to register.
Shari Gnolek, a new member of our research team, will be presenting at the AIR Forum May 18-22 in Long Beach, CA.
Mary Piccioli and Jen Wick will be presenting at the NACCAP Annual Conference May 29-June 1at Messiah College, Grantham, PA.
Jen will be presenting at the ACT Enrollment Planners Conference July 10-12 in Chicago, IL.
Kathy will be presenting at the NASFAA National…Read more
Adding Web Metrics To Your Key Performance Indicators - Monday Musings
It’s become essential for enrollment managers to use a collection of critical metrics – a dashboard, key performance indicators (KPIs) or some other set of measures – to monitor their institution’s progress throughout the recruitment cycle. These commonly include statistics like the number of inquiries, applicants, admits, deposits, campus visitors and FAFSA filers, as well as ratios like acceptance rate, yield, net tuition revenue per student and discount rate. Back in the days of the horse and buggy (when I got my start in admissions) the original dashboards prevented unpleasant surprises from hitting you in the face and they helped you to clearly see the road ahead – pretty much the same thing we’re using these statistical dashboards…Read more
Professional Development Opportunities for Enrollment Managers, Part 2 - Monday Musings
Professional development is an important component of any leader’s career. Ongoing professional development and growth not only benefit the individual leader, but also the university. When leaders are intentional about developing themselves, the ripple effects can be powerful. A professionally developed leader will quite often result in a professionally developed staff.
Kathy’s last post provided a comprehensive list of conferences and other training opportunities enrollment managers should consider attending. As she noted, not only do conferences provide great content, but they also will give attendees opportunities to rub shoulders with other individuals who do similar jobs. I’ve often found the networking and, in some cases, commiserating…Read more
Professional Development Opportunities for Enrollment Managers - Monday Musings
We are often asked what we would recommend for professional development opportunities for new enrollment managers (or those aspiring to be enrollment managers). To some extent this depends on the skill set the new enrollment manager already brings to the job. If they are already well steeped in recruitment and admissions, but need to learn more about financial aid, we often suggest that they start by spending a day with us to get an overview of key issues in financial aid and an understanding of data driven financial aid leveraging. Then for those who feel the need to get more in the “weeds” on compliance and financial aid management issues, the annual FSA conference sponsored by the Department of Education is probably the best option. (Note,…Read more
Social Media for Higher Education - Monday Musings Guest Post
If you want to effectively communicate with students, employ students to help you!
In the last two years the Rochester Institute of Technology has been in the midst of significant change with the implementation of a new student information system and the conversion from a quarter calendar to a semester calendar. We needed to effectively keep students informed about the changes that would directly impact them. We knew we needed to use social media, but we did not have the expertise.
We decided to hire two co-op students to essentially work full-time on the project team to implement and manage a social media campaign. The results were impressive and we want to share some lessons learned with others.
Click here to read a blog post written by…Read more
Social Media for Higher Education - Page Two
(You can read an introduction to this guest post by RIT's Assistant Vice President and Registrar Joe Loffredo here.)
The education world is constantly evolving to meet changing strategies and technologies in the digital space. The education world is constantly evolving to meet changing strategies and technologies in the digital space. Social media adds a new marketing medium for educators, recruiters, and students to use. The digital space is too often thought to be an easy marketing tool and strategies are not thought out within the college space. Problems with social media have plagued colleges during the digital era. Educators and college departments have made attempts at grabbing the student’s attention with whatever platform they currently…Read more
What it Means to be a Leader - Monday Musings
All too often newly minted managers, namely directors of admissions and financial aid, think that in order to establish their leadership status that they have to “leave their mark” by changing a process or procedure, revising a policy, terminating a program. This is frequently a big mistake. For the most part, processes and procedures, policies and programs are put in place and established for a reason, even if they are not accomplishing everything they were intended to, or in fact need to. To dismantle without assessing the impact can yield unintended consequences. In like fashion, leading is not about imposing your authority. If you have to claim you are the leader, you are not the leader.
Leadership is not about telling people what to…Read more
CRMs: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Monday Musings
A client recently asked me for my perspective on a particular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software product. As more and more institutions realize they need to communicate in a much more targeted, personal way to prospective students, and capture their responses, interest in such systems is growing. So I gave a lot of thought to this question and realized that I actually think that the question itself is the wrong question. I have seen successes and failures with almost every CRM on the market, which makes me think a particular institution’s experience is less about the product and more about the implementation process and the skill sets and training of folks on campus.
Making the decision to buy a particular CRM product is not…Read more
Saying No When Admissions Said Yes - Monday Musings
As concerns about debt increase and passing credit checks for parent loans becomes more difficult, more and more financial aid officers are finding themselves in the position of having to say “no more aid is available” to students that have been wooed and admitted but are finding it hard to make ends meet. Some financial aid offices are hitting this issue head on, sending letters to students with large amounts of unmet need to fully inform them of their obligations before they enroll with language like the following:
Compare the total budget on your aid letter to the total financial aid offered. There may be a substantial gap between your cost of education and the grant and scholarship funding we are able to provide. The gap must be met…Read more
Merit vs. Need-Based Aid - Monday Musings
When I was at the CIC Presidents Institute earlier this month, there was a lot of buzz about the most recent call for an agreement to focus institutional resources on need-based versus merit aid and to reduce the amount of “negotiating” of aid offers. The most surprising announcement in this session was the news that conversations had been held with the Justice Department about the legality of a possible agreement between colleges on these matters. (For more details on the conversation, see Inside Higher Ed’s Baby Steps for Need-Based Aid.)
Some believe that if the Justice Department were to allow collaboration on certain principles, it may reduce the competitive pressure to continue with aid strategies based on merit rather than need.…Read more
Enrollment Management Resolutions for the New Year - Monday Musings
Resolutions for 2013:
Never try to control the social media conversation. Rather, work tirelessly to create points of contact or links.
Never send a new recruiter on the road without proper training regardless of when the “newbie” was hired. Throwing a new recruiter “into the deep end of the pool” will not serve the institution well in the long run.
Always be sure that admissions and financial aid leadership share the common goal of a net tuition revenue target generated by new students.
Check regularly to be sure your net price calculator is a good marketing tool in support of making your case for affordability.
Always have the alumni admissions volunteer program be housed and overseen in admissions, led by a seasoned admissions…Read more
Happy Holidays from Scannell & Kurz!
Everyone at Scannell & Kurz wishes you a safe and happy holiday season! We hope to see you in the new year.
Look for us at the following 2013 conferences:
Jim Scannell and Bill Berg will be attending the CCCU Chief Enrollment Officers conference January 2-6 in Phoenix. Bill will also be presenting on January 5th.
Kathy Kurz, Mary Piccioli, and Rita Haschmann will be attending the CIC Presidents’ Institute January 4-7 in Innisbrook, Florida.
Jim will be presenting at the Academic Impressions conference January 23-25 in St. Louis.
Kathy will be presenting at the NASFAA conference July 14-17 in Las Vegas.
Scannell & Kurz staff will be presenting at the RuffaloCODY enrollment management conference in Denver July 23-24.
Please check…Read more
A Monday Musings Crossword Puzzle!
Across
Down
4. Original acronym for Perkins 5. Alternative to clock hour 6. COA minus EFC = 8. Original acronym for PELL 9. Things you sleep in or process 12. Precursor to FWS 13. Which Senator originally proposed Constitution Day 14. All aid officers dread a program _____ 16. It is all about _____ and cents 18. If he is elected, bank-based loans may return 19. Senator Pell's first name 20. Original precursor to FAFSA 21. Theme of this puzzle 22. Interview required at graduation for loan borrower 24. Original name for student loan program now called Direct 26. Considered in IM but not in FM 27. What did the D in NDSL originally stand for?
1. What allowance is determined by the age of the older parent 2. Kathy Kurz's graduate…Read more
More Applications NOT a Good Thing? - Monday Musings
When are more applications not a good thing? We recently visited a campus that had increased its applications for admission five- fold over the last few years. That sounds like a good thing, right? But there can be some risks involved.
First, if your internal processes and infrastructure aren’t prepared for the increase in volume, application processing will be log jammed and turnaround time will be poor. This can make an institution that purports to be small and personal feel like the DMV.
Second, if your sales force is now all consumed with application review, they won’t have time to sell. Building relationships and taking the time to make the case for value is critical to high conversion rates, especially at high- cost, private institutions,…Read more
Making the Boss Happy - Monday Musings
Whether you are a counselor, a director, a vice president, or even a president, you are reporting to someone, and here are seven pointers for building a good relationship with that person or group.
Come to them with possible solutions, not just the problem. Ideally, you will have gathered some data about the issue, brainstormed for some ideas to address the core challenge, and thought about the pros and cons of each approach.
Play well with others. Often you will need to work with staff outside your own unit. Be proactive in working across office lines to enhance processes, service to students, or develop strategies to support enrollment and revenue goals. And, within your own unit, be a team player.
Be transparent and think about your…Read more
Training & Evaluating Financial Aid Staff - Monday Musings
What sort of training and evaluation program do you have for your staff? I frequently visit financial aid offices that take a “trial by fire” approach to training, do not periodically audit work product or counseling sessions, and do not routinely conduct performance appraisals. Consequently, it is not surprising that a refrain we often hear in student focus groups is that answers to their questions vary from staff member to staff member. In higher education institutions, people are typically the biggest asset; salaries are typically the biggest line item; and yet programs to ensure maximum effectiveness and productivity from staff are often not in place. The real irony, at least in the financial aid profession, is that there are many resources…Read more
National Student Clearinghouse - Monday Musings
If you are already using the National Student Clearinghouse’s (NSC) many services, you can stop reading this blog now. However, I continue to be surprised by the number of institutions that are not taking advantage of this valuable source of information.
First, a brief primer about the NSC: They were originally founded in 1993 to serve as a clearinghouse for verifying enrollment, initially primarily for loan deferment purposes – a function that previously was handled by individual registrar’s offices. Since that time, they have expanded to offering many other services including degree verification, the StudentTracker service which is discussed more below, electronic transcript exchange, and now student self-service options. Per the NSC…Read more
The Shopping Sheet - Monday Musings
I was just looking at the final version of the Department of Education and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “Shopping Sheet” and wondering how many of our clients are planning to use it. My biggest concern with it is that the “what you will pay” section includes total cost of attendance minus gift aid, rather than direct costs minus gift aid. When I was a financial aid director, families found the whole concept of indirect costs versus direct costs very confusing, so I finally listed only direct costs (tuition, room, board, and mandatory fees) at the top of the award letter, with an estimate in a later paragraph of the other costs they would have for books, transportation, personal expenses, etc. That solved the problem, but doing…Read more
Remaking the American University: Market-Smart and Mission-Centered - Monday Musings
Earlier this summer, I re-read Robert Zemsky, William F. Massy, and Gregory R. Wegner’s 2005 Remaking the American University: Market-Smart and Mission-Centered. What continues to make this book so relevant is its analysis of college costs and the forces that drive them. Despite the fact that the authors write from the vantage point of pre-recession 2005, their analysis remains compelling. They coined the terms “administrative lattice” and “academic ratchet” to describe the internal factors contributing to college costs. The administrative lattice describes the growth of administrative structure that arose in response to:
faculty consignment of traditionally academic service functions to administration;
increased regulation from…Read more
And The Financial Aid Office Reports To... Monday Musings
Where should the financial aid office report? To Enrollment Management? To the CFO? Student Affairs? Somewhere else? We are frequently asked this question, largely because the aid office does not have one natural home. No matter what area oversees it, the financial aid office will have responsibilities outside of its direct reporting line. The aid office provides support and interacts closely with several different areas, including: recruitment and admissions, budget management, advancement, institutional research, registrar, student accounts, and student affairs, all while providing customer service, keeping up with processing, and ensuring compliance with federal and state regulations.
Often, the financial aid office is short on resources,…Read more
Not All Applications Are Created Equal - Monday Musings
Tracking yield rates by various subpopulations is a standard procedure for most admissions offices. In-state and out-of-state; male and female; minority and non-minority; aid filers and non-filers; early action and regular decision; high school GPA levels; SAT/ACT levels. You get the picture. Yields vary by subpopulation, therefore as the application cycle progresses and admissions/enrollment is being asked for projections, it is important to understand how changes in the admit pool in certain categories may affect yield.
When an institution embarks on a new application-generating approach, such as a pre-populated application from the search pool, membership in the Common Application, or other methods, it is with the expectation that the number…Read more
Organizational Effectiveness - Monday Musings
When institutions create silos, customer service suffers. Stated another way, when colleges and universities organize and create policies and practices from an internal point of view (e.g., administrative convenience, job security, etc.) versus a vision of how the institution looks from the outside, navigation can be a nightmare, service gaps are routine, and redundancies are rampant.
Let me cite two examples of administrative dysfunctionality, one that crosses divisional boundaries and one that exists within an administrative unit.
First, registration policies that do not take into account the unique need for timely course availability for newly enrolled transfer students can add considerably to time to degree. At a minimum, the admissions…Read more
Benchmarking Dos & Don’ts - Monday Musings
Higher education institutions love to benchmark with other institutions on a variety of factors such as faculty salaries, endowment per student, research dollars garnered, tuition charges, etc. But often institutions don’t conduct the type of benchmarking that we think is most important. Here is our top list of enrollment management benchmarking “dos” and one “don’t”:
When attempting to gain an understanding of your market position through benchmarking, DO benchmark with competitors, rather than peers or aspirants.
DON’T just compare yourself to competitors on sticker price—compare discount rates; “prestige measures” like test scores, U.S. News rank, and accept rates; and measures of socio-economic and ethnic diversity,…Read more
Future Thinking in Higher Education (Part 2)
Yesterday we talked about three mega-trends that could be game changes for higher education and enrollment management: Transparency, credentialing, and virtualization. (You can read yesterday's blog post here.) Two other emerging trends that could rock our world are:
Speed: Everything happens faster today. People expect immediate responses to their inquiries; new consumer products and services are introduced more rapidly; data for decision making is updated constantly; etc. Yet, in many higher education institutions, and even enrollment management areas, the pace has not “kept pace.” Here, non-profit institutions have a lot to learn from their for-profit counterparts, where inquiry responses are sent within the same hour; where curricula…Read more
Future Thinking in Higher Education (Part 1) - Monday Musings
In a recent article for AACRAO, Marguerite Dennis, former Vice President for Enrollment and International Programs at Suffolk University, talked about Anticipatory Enrollment Management — stressing the need for enrollment managers to monitor emerging trends that may signal significant change for their institutions and higher education in general. We believe she is absolutely right, and wanted to talk about five emerging game changers and the implications we see for enrollment managers. Today we’ll cover the first three. Be sure to come back tomorrow as we’ll cover the last two.
Transparency: Increasingly colleges and universities are being required to provide more information to consumers about net costs; graduation rates; outcomes;…Read more
New Recruiter Training - Monday Musings
Whenever interviewing a team of admissions recruiters, there is likely a “rookie” or two in the group. I always ask the “rookie” how they were trained to meet the challenges of their first tour of duty and on a scale of 1 – 10, with 1 being petrified and 10 being confident, how prepared they felt in the first week or two of fall travel. The response in the vast majority of cases is typically a shadow experience or two, and then it’s pretty much on the job training (OJT) and self-rating of 2. By the way, OJT is a proxy for no training program at all.
With turnover of recruiters in admissions offices being the norm, you’d have thought that admissions leadership would have figured out how to introduce a new team member to the profession.
We…Read more
Increasing Funding for Federal Work Study - Monday Musings
While I certainly don’t agree with everything President Obama recently proposed related to higher education financial aid programs, the idea of increasing funding for federal work study can be a win–win–win for students, their universities, and their future employers. Some believe that doubling work study would simply subsidize universities, not really provide additional funding for students. I disagree. Many of our clients would like to open more on-campus jobs for their students, but lack the funding to do so. And working on campus provides benefits that go well beyond simply putting money in students’ pockets. It provides students with a resume building experience, in some cases related to their future careers.
We know from freshman…Read more
"Call the financial aid office!" - Monday Musings
OK, I admit it. I am addicted to the television show "Parenthood." So imagine my husband’s surprise a couple of weeks ago when I began shouting at the TV during a recent episode...
“CALL THE FINANCIAL AID OFFICE.”
One of the characters, Hattie, had just gotten accepted into Cornell, and her parents were thinking they would have to tell her to withdraw the application because the father had lost his job and was now working with his brother in a start-up company. It occurred to me that shouting at fictional characters on the TV was probably not the best way for me to express my concern – hence this blog.
I urge you all to take another look at the communications you have regarding affordability and financial aid to be sure that you have…Read more
Abrupt Staffing Changes: Are You Prepared? - Monday Musings
I was recently talking with someone from an institution where a key leader in admission and financial aid had given very short notice of his departure during a critical part of the enrollment cycle (application evaluation time and the beginning of financial aid awarding).
This discussion got me thinking about another situation I encountered a few months ago at a small institution where financial aid packaging was done manually by one individual who had not documented the process. How reliant are you on key individuals with specialized knowledge? What would happen if these people were suddenly not available? Since financial aid packaging season is here, and you can’t afford inaccurate or delayed offers of financial aid, take a moment to evaluate…Read more
New Year’s Resolutions Every Enrollment Manager Should Make for 2012 - Mondays Musings
Here are our 12 for '12:
Will always base marketing, recruitment, and awarding decisions, as well as retention interventions, on empirical evidence and data analysis.
Will create a “culture of evidence” among the enrollment management leadership team.
Will mentor and provide professional development opportunities for the enrollment management leadership team.
Will be sure that the admissions office and financial aid office share the common goal of net tuition revenue for new students.
Will ensure that the admissions office appropriately resources the recruitment and enrollment of transfer students based on the transfer market share of new students.
Will make sure the admissions office is armed with proof statements of the return…Read more
Planning, Decision-Making & Good Communication - Monday Musings
We recently encountered an auxiliary service that decided in May to charge a room deposit of $750 for new and returning students. Rather than incorporate it into the student billing system, they simply mailed out their own bills. Students and parents were aggravated, wondering why they were getting a separate bill and why the amount was so high. Another institution reported that they routinely sent bills with the wrong tuition to students enrolling in one particular program because the registrar wanted to be sure the students were really coming before correcting the tuition charge. The correction (as much as $8,000 higher) left the financial aid office scrambling to adjust aid awards. Similarly, sending out bills without informing financial…Read more
Higher Education Entrepreneurship: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly - Monday Musings
Not-for-profit higher education institutions have the reputation of being slow to change; unresponsive to market demand; and unimaginative with respect to delivery modes. This is beginning to change, however, and one is starting to see more interest in approaches that differ from the standard 12-15 credits, semester-based, course delivery method.
While this change is positive in many ways, it is important for the entrepreneurial minds developing new approaches to remember that federal financial aid regulations, and most higher education software systems, in many ways are still driven by traditional delivery modes. Consequently, it can be very difficult to ensure compliance with federal regulations when providing financial aid to students in…Read more
