Over the next 10 weeks, I will be wrapping up one of my longer, most intense consulting projects to date. I had the wonderful opportunity to roll my sleeves up and jump back into the world of admissions.
I joined a mid-sized, two year institution for about 15 months, serving in the chief enrollment officer's seat while they planned and prepared to hire a full-time Dean for the role.
During our time together, the enrollment team and I really got things turned around. For the first time in almost four years, there wasn't just an increase in the number of new students enrolling at the college; we had over a nine percent increase in new student enrollment.
That isn't earth-shattering, but for this team, it was a significant improvement considering that enrollment was down over 22% over the past three years.
In addition, we made the improvements without adding staff; without spending more on
advertising; without buying lists of names and email addresses.
Growing their enrollment was a piece of cake!
Some enrollment leaders I speak with prefer the tactics I listed above over the methods I teach. But those tactics are short-term initiatives that go away when the money does. They are also much easier than the approach I generally take.
When it comes to higher education recruitment, growing enrollment is a piece of cake, but like most bakers will tell you, baking a cake isn't easy.
It's messy work, and if you don't meticulously follow the ingredient measurements and baking directions, things can quickly go awry.
There's a reason though, that we prefer homemade cakes. How often do you find yourself preferring the grocery store cake over your neighbor's, mother's, aunt's, cousin's (insert that person's name you know all too well here) homemade cake?
Now, what if that person you know so well taught you how to bake your own cakes just like she/he does? Would you ever buy dessert at a grocery store or restaurant again?
I'm happy to share with you that we're offering baking lessons. Well, sort of. We aren't getting anywhere near food for this! But we are teaching folks how to become an enrollment chef with our higher education recruitment training.
Want to know how to turn enrollment around more permanently without growing your annual budget by $50-100,000? Let us teach you.