The COVID-19 pandemic created lingering challenges related to enrollment and made transparent the need for institutions to examine processes and remove enrollment barriers. Higher education may be perfectly poised to implement deep and lasting change that could result in increased access and improved retention. As student populations become…

The issue of declining undergraduate enrollments has received considerable national attention over the past decade. The pandemic has exacerbated these concerns as year-on-year enrollments in several states have been severely affected by the pandemic. While this period has been unique, these trends have been a feature of political science…

The chief enrollment management officer (CEMO) is often responsible for optimizing institutional enrollment in ways that exceed the direct authority and responsibility of that office. To be successful, the CEMO needs to develop a high level of influence across the campus. Three particularly effective ways that the CEMO can exert influence to…

Underrepresented minority (URM) students face unique challenges when pursuing graduate education, with some not even considering the possibility of pursuing a graduate degree. This paper describes a nontraditional approach to the graduate application process that involves identification of potential applicants by graduate faculty and staff at The…

Student data associated with the academic suspension and readmission process at the University of Northern Iowa revealed a number of equity and student persistence issues, highlighting the need to make systemic improvements including the introduction of new data-informed interventions. This article focuses on access and equity issues identified in…

This guide describes how community college presidents can embed strategic enrollment management (SEM) into mission fulfillment. It emphasizes the importance of setting a vision, ensuring adequate resources, and fostering collaboration. By leveraging data-driven strategies and continuous improvement, colleges can enhance student recruitment,…

The "institutional databases audit" addresses common challenges of retention research by viewing existing databases and key surveys as resources for analyzing persistence rates. Such an audit helps verify whether student database elements have theoretically derived research referents. Positive results show that institutions can acquire…

This article highlights the challenges, triumphs, and setbacks experienced by a mid-sized, public institution in Eastern Canada that is now more than two years into the SEM process. It shares how a team built a sense of urgency in an institution with historically-low retention rates and developed a variety of strategies and structures to improve…

This article describes the step-by-step process of how data science, marketing and communications, and higher education improved access and success for students. Over the last three years, strategic planning efforts helped develop a data-informed culture on campus. The work described within the playbook required time, energy, and a lot of…

Ten North Carolina community colleges participated in a large-scale experimental study of technology-enabled success coaching funded through the U.S. Department of Education's First in the World program. Results reveal positive impacts on longer-term retention, especially for Black students, suggesting that technology-enabled success coaching can…

Higher education institutions have the societal role and responsibility of providing guidance to their members and the surrounding community. Institutions endeavored, and are still striving, to illustrate multi-faceted practices that can be integrated into the founding principles of an educational institution. And that can pave its way through the…

College student retention constitutes a long-standing and critical problem for many colleges and universities. Although the average national rate of first-to-second year persistence stands at 68.5%, rates for types of colleges and universities vary from a low of 56.4% for 2-year public colleges to a high of 81.5% for private PhD-granting…

Graduate schools and offices play a critical role in elevating the quality and impact of individual graduate programs. With a hybrid model of graduate administration,institutions' and graduate programs' enrollment needs are identified. Developing a graduate enrollment management plan is challenging, especially with limited prior institutional…

This article seeks to make the case for how relationships are essential to meeting the tapestry of student needs by examining experiences and challenges of several student threads in that tapestry, using both two-year and four-year institutional perspectives. How faculty, staff, and administrators respond--or don't--in building rapport and…

In this article, the author describes her personal journey at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C). Early in her career, the author often focused on the immediate projects and priorities that she was asked to lead. The author gave much less thought to what the next leadership opportunity might be. While experts may advise against this lack of…