Enrollment Management Archives - Page 26 of 29 - Ruffalo Noel Levitz Blog: Higher Education Enrollment, Student Retention, and Student Success

Compensating admissions and financial aid personnel after changes to “Safe Harbor” laws

May 25, 2011 by Cliff Neel 17 Comments

Changes to educational "safe harbor" laws mean colleges will have to be cautious in how they compensate admissions and financial aid staff for performance.

How can you compensate your admissions and financial aid staff for their performance while complying with new federal regulations?

Note: This post was co-written with my Noel-Levitz colleague Craig Engel.

On July 1 of this year, for institutions participating in the Title IV federal student aid program, a new law will go into effect eliminating any compensation to college personnel specifically based on the enrollment or continued enrollment of a student. This law arises primarily from compensation and promotion practices of at a number of for-profit universities, but also stems from practices at some not-for-profit institutions as well. As a result, the new regulations have implications for admissions and financial aid offices throughout higher education.

A little background: In 1992, changes to the Higher Education Act forbid colleges and universities from offering any bonuses, commissions, or incentive payments to employees based on enrollment or financial aid goals. In 2002, this ban was revised and 12 “safe harbors” were created, allowing some compensation for enrollment or financial aid performance of an institution. During the last couple of years, as violations were confirmed at 31 college institutions, the federal government moved to eliminate these safe harbor exceptions.

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Do your enrollment goals include enrolling better-prepared students? 6 more types of data to explore before raising admissions standards

May 17, 2011 by Dr. Jim Hundrieser Leave a Comment

Here are six data points to consider before deciding to raise your admissions standards.

The decision to raise your admissions standards should be guided by a thorough analysis of relevant data.

As I discussed in my earlier post, the process of raising admissions standards while maintaining or increasing enrollments requires careful and thoughtful consideration that should be grounded in thorough data analysis and careful coordination among key campus constituents. Six additional areas for data exploration include the following:

The search process. Given the current search function and systems used in the admission office, how many student inquiries meet the planned higher criteria? How many active high-ability prospective students inquire and actually enroll? What are the predictive model scores of these students and what is the likelihood that through advanced enrollment and scholarship practices, the institution will yield more high-ability students?
Scholarship levels. What are the current yield rates with current scholarship programs? What are the dollar implications of narrowing the gap to yield more top-tier students?

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Do your enrollment goals include enrolling better-prepared students? 3 factors to consider before raising admissions standards

May 12, 2011 by Dr. Jim Hundrieser Leave a Comment

This is the first part of a two-part blog post on strategic enrollment planning. Watch for the continuation to be posted soon.

Is the enrollment MO (modus operandi) at your campus to basically just fill seats—or are you also seeking to enroll students who are better prepared academically and a better fit for your academic programs?

In 2009, a survey asked several hundred campuses for their top priorities related to enrollment management. The results were no surprise. Administrators wanted to recruit students with higher academic abilities and students from more diverse backgrounds. Most respondents also wanted to increase their incoming class size. (Source: Next Step Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1).

However, based on our consulting experience, we know that these aspirations are generally not connected to a continual review of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) which could serve to resolve competing priorities and guide goal accomplishment. Performance indicators provide a thorough understanding of the complexity to making such decisions. Further, we know that the aspirations are often not aligned with potential fiscal, resource, physical plant, curricular, technology, or co-curricular impacts resulting from increasing or shaping the entering class.

3 factors to consider before raising admissions standards

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Avoiding the campus service run-around: How staff service training impacts student satisfaction

April 29, 2011 by Julie Bryant, Associate Vice President for Retention Solutions, RNL 2 Comments

Analysis of satisfaction data across multiple campuses shows that quality service training programs are like to spur significant increases in student satisfaction levels.

Analysis of satisfaction data across multiple campuses shows that quality service training programs are likely to spur significant increases in student satisfaction levels.

In working with campuses to assess student satisfaction and priorities, campus service often appears as an area of challenge. Simply put, subpar campus service has a direct, negative impact on student satisfaction.

So what happens if a campus conducts quality service training? Does making a commitment to training campus staff in service make a positive impact on student satisfaction?

I and my colleagues at Noel-Levitz were curious about this, and we had the means to conduct a quick investigation. We reviewed the results from campuses that administered the Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory™ (SSI), and then followed up by implementing the Noel-Levitz Connections NOW™ quality service training program. The data sets were compared in our standard year-to-year reports which reflect the statistical significance of the comparisons (with confidence levels of 0.05, 0.01 or 0.001).

This is by no means a full study. We had nine institutions that met our specific criteria—three four-year privates, three four-year publics, and three community colleges. But we found some interesting and significant results.

The SSI has a scale, Campus Climate, which covers items related to campus service and student satisfaction. When we examined this scale as a whole for these nine campuses, six had significant improvements in the overall Campus Climate scale. The average increase in satisfaction was 0.44 at these six campuses, while the remaining three had no significant increase or decrease in satisfaction. While any positive movement at a significant level is a plus, we see typical increases at the scale level closer to 0.25, so this is an even stronger indicator of improved satisfaction in this category.

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Private colleges facing sustained pricing pressure: Five strategies for monitoring and meeting enrollment and financial goals

April 27, 2011 by Galen Graber Leave a Comment

Galen Graber, Associate Vice President of Noel-Levitz, specializes in helping campuses grow their enrollment through the implementation of strategic financial aid awards programs.

Galen Graber, Associate Vice President of Noel-Levitz, offers five strategies for private colleges feeling continued pricing pressure.

We’re seeing signs of improvement, but private colleges are not yet out of the woods when it comes to dealing with the post-recessionary environment and the pressure it is bringing on pricing.

For an up-to-date reading on this critical area, we recently completed a study of 139 private colleges that sheds some light on what is happening (see our 2011 Discounting Report.) The private colleges in the sample, from across the U.S., all partnered with Noel-Levitz during 2009-2010 to strategically manage their financial aid awards and pricing.

On the positive side, last fall’s average overall discount rate for the sample increased only a modest 1.2 percent while freshman enrollment grew an average of 5.2 percent. This good news, following a subpar year in 2009, showed that these private colleges may be finding a “new normal” in today’s economy.

It is also clear, however, that changes in family income during the recession have fundamentally altered families’ ability to pay for higher education. New student enrollment last fall saw a dramatic increase in students with higher levels of need and a substantial drop in students who demonstrated no need for the institutions in this study. Specifically, the number of students with the highest level of need increased 17.8 percent in fall 2010 over the already-high levels from 2009 while the number of students with no need dropped 9.3 percent from the 2009 level. On top of these changes, the average amount of need increased 8 percent over the previous year.

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How many transfer student applicants can you expect to enroll?

April 26, 2011 by Ruffalo Noel Levitz 1 Comment

This admissions funnel graphic represents the rate at which college and university transfer students progress from the application stage to the enrollment, deposit, and matriculation stages.

Click on the image to enlarge.

For every 100 transfer student applicants at your institution, how many can you expect to admit, to send in a deposit (or otherwise confirm their intention to enroll), and to actually matriculate? The above graphic provides a basis for knowing what to expect, based on the admissions funnel benchmarks in the Noel-Levitz report released last fall, 2010 Admissions Funnel Benchmarks for Four-Year Public and Private Institutions.

For example, at four-year public institutions, at the national level, 88 of every 100 prospective transfer applicants who complete their applications at the median (88 percent) can be expected to be admitted and approximately 58 of the 88 admits (66 percent) can be expected to enroll/matriculate. In addition, 88 percent of the admits who send in a deposit or otherwise confirm their intention to enroll can be expected to enroll.

As shown in the report, transfer students move through the admissions funnel at different rates for public versus private institutions at the median, at the first quartile, and at the third quartile. In addition, their rates of movement through the funnel are quite different from freshmen, international students, and other student segments. Further, the report identifies trendlines that indicate specific rates that are rising or falling. For example, among private colleges and universities, the admit-to-enroll yield rate has been steadily declining.

To project future enrollments as accurately as possible, these benchmarks serve as a solid starting point. However, it is imperative that campuses track and compare their institution’s own historic admissions funnel rates daily and weekly at each decision stage, so you can know where your future enrollment will most likely end up as each day and week of the admissions cycle unfolds. For guidelines on using admissions funnels, see pages 12 and 13 of the report.

For a copy of the report, visit www.noellevitz.com/changingfunnel.

Students bringing higher financial need

April 14, 2011 by Ruffalo Noel Levitz Leave a Comment

According to Noel-Levitz's 2011 Discounting Report findings, the need for financial need amongst college students has continued to increase significantly since 2010.

Click on the image to enlarge.

The above graph shows the escalating financial need among freshmen at private colleges. Specifically, the graph shows that freshmen with greater need enrolled in greater numbers in fall 2010 while freshmen with greater capacity to pay enrolled in smaller numbers, as reported in the Noel-Levitz 2011 Discounting Report. The report is based on a sizable sample of 139 private colleges across the U.S. that partnered with Noel-Levitz to strategically manage their financial aid and discounting during 2009-2010.

As the graph indicates, the proportion of enrolled freshmen that demonstrated financial need increased 11.4 percent in fall 2010 while the percentage of no-need, merit-aid-only students declined 9.3 percent. This continued a shift that emerged in fall 2009 when the proportion of enrolled students that demonstrated financial need increased 18.8 percent and the percentage of no-need, merit-aid-only students declined 17.4 percent.
The graph further shows that the proportion of enrolled freshmen with “high need” increased 17.8 percent in fall 2010. “High need” was defined by the institutions in this study as the highest fifth of incoming freshmen in terms of need and typically included Pell-eligible enrollees.

In response to the increased need, the institutions in the study were able to meet 75.4 percent of need while limiting their overall discount rate to an increase of 1.2 percent.

For details, download the 2011 Discounting Report.

Five ways professional development strengthens colleges and universities

April 4, 2011 by Kevin Crockett 1 Comment

Kevin Crockett is president and CEO of Noel-Levitz. He has consulted with more than 150 campuses on all aspects of enrollment and student success, and he has also served as dean of admissions and enrollment management at Cornell College in Iowa.

Kevin Crockett is president and CEO of Noel-Levitz and a former enrollment manager at Cornell College (Iowa).

Campus professionals have a lot on their minds. With reduced budgets, increased enrollments, changing demographics, rising college costs, and increased financial need, you are primarily focused on the students you serve and the resources you need to serve them. Those concerns can cause you to overlook one of the most important resources at your disposal: yourself and the campus colleagues who work beside you.

When the budgetary reins get tightened, professional development for campus staff is often one of the first expenses on the chopping block. Campuses certainly have to make many painful cuts in times like these, but professional development cuts can often have long-term repercussions that far outweigh the minor, temporary budget relief that they bring. In fact, it’s during times like these, when you’re forced to do much more with much less, that training, knowledge, and teamwork become paramount to working efficiently and meeting your goals for enrollment and student success.

There are many big benefits to professional development, but here are five particularly strong ones:

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Is student retention an expense or an investment?

March 24, 2011 by Dr. Tim Culver, Vice President of Consulting Services, RNL 1 Comment

The art and science of enrollment management has many performance indicators that drive the investment decisions of colleges and universities. Some campuses invest resources into increasing the size of the incoming class in order to increase both immediate and long-term revenues; these campuses may make investments into their marketing and recruitment budgets, or they might increase their financial aid budget for new students. Two-year colleges might be more concerned with investing in the best outreach services available to ensure access to their institutions; these campuses want to support more high school students and their families in making the decision to go to college.

However, many institutions still do not invest in student success and retention activities that can also provide an immediate as well as a long-term return on investment (ROI). In addition to the short-term gain you can achieve by retaining new students to the second term, you also realize an additional, longer-term ROI when these students continue, year after year, to graduation.

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Raising completion and graduation rates: 2 clues for action beyond the first year

March 16, 2011 by Dr. Lew Sanborne Leave a Comment

Our latest research studies on second-year college students have me thinking about how important it is for those of us involved with student success and retention to be working on programs that focus beyond the first year of college. Don’t misunderstand me: I appreciate how important the first year is, and I am glad we have so many resources to help us build first-year programs. It’s just that our ultimate goal should really be completion. Job one should be doing everything we can to help the students who enroll at our institutions to complete whatever their educational goal may be.

The good news is there’s a growing body of research and resources for us to help students beyond the first year. At Noel-Levitz we’ve just released the results of a national pilot study, The Attitudes of Second-Year College Students. I won’t repeat what’s in the report here, but I do want to mention a couple of things that really struck me.

What I noticed in the data

First some really good news: Across institutional types (two-year and four-year, public and private), second-year students in fall 2010 reported high levels of academic and social motivation. Consistent with these findings, most second-year students were satisfied with their overall experience (5.71 on a 7-point scale).

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