The authors use the skilled trades shortage as a unique context to pilot transformative approaches to changing culture and practice around equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in recruitment, progression, and retention of previously-excluded student groups, focusing on gender. To demonstrate how this approach can help achieve the necessary rapid…

The pandemic left an indelible mark on higher education. This study is the second of three, focused on how a college navigated enrollment challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial study examined the perspectives of college administrators on why the institution did not suffer from enrollment decreases. This follow-up study incorporated…

Graduate enrollment management (GEM) is a relatively new organizational concept and discipline. As an emerging profession, a common body of knowledge to structure and regulate the profession is critical to its professionalization. Identifying competencies is one method to create that knowledge and is a well-established method of measuring a…

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…

Every year, the national high school graduation rate is declining and impacting the number of students applying to colleges. Moreover, the majority of students are applying to more than one college. This makes a lot of colleges to be highly competitive in student recruitment for enrollment and thus, the necessity for institutions to anticipate…

This article presents a practitioner-defined research agenda for enrollment management. This agenda consists of 45 topics for research identified by enrollment management practitioners as the most pressing topics/issues that they regard as ones that would benefit from a study conducted by researchers. Implications of this agenda for practitioners…

We investigate operating costs at 682 public community colleges in the United States over a 15-year period (2004-2018). The results reveal that costs are spatially correlated across neighboring institutions, indicating the need for a spatial analysis. An institution's actions are associated with changes in costs for that particular institution…

The study addresses the widening income and racial access gap in higher education resulting from enrollment management teams' operationalization of academic capitalism. The study focuses on the local, micro level, emphasizing how enrollment management leadership teams make sense of enrollment management, recognizing that enrollment management and…

Enrollment management (EM) has been a focus of higher education since the 1970s. There is a large base of empirical research on EM, a coordinated effort to support undergraduate students from admission to graduation that has been widely researched. However, there is limited academic research on graduate enrollment management (GEM). What is missing…

This study analyzed data from 674 institutions collected through an AACRAO 60 Second Survey to investigate the levels of institutionalization of SEM in U.S. postsecondary institutions. Both Resource Dependency Theory (Pfeffer and Salancik 2003) and Institutional Isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983) were used to frame the study. The researchers…

Strategic enrollment management (SEM) initiatives benefit when SEM committees are inclusive and collaborative. When financial aid professionals are excluded, the risk that certain initiatives will fail increases, especially if those initiatives involve academic changes. Here, the authors explore the reasons financial aid offices and academic…

This study examines the impacts of Chicago's Universal Pre-K (UPK) expansion on the operational dynamics of preschools across setting types from the perspective of administrators. Specifically, we explore how Chicago Public Schools (CPS) principals and and Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) directors experienced the implementation of UPK.…

Strategy and research are essential parts of strategic enrollment management (SEM), yet little information exists regarding how to use research and predictive analytics for effective strategy. It is often easier to react to what is happening in the moment, rather than be proactive in predicting the future or developing long-term plans. This…

Enrollment management has been adopted by many institutions not only as a strategy, but also as an administrative division responsible for managing enrollment. This study aims to understand how institutional goals and environmental factors contribute to the organizational structure of enrollment management divisions, as well as how the composition…

The number of international students that travel abroad for their tertiary education has increased dramatically in the last twenty years. Responding to this increase in international student demand and internal motivations for prestige and financial resources, universities in the US have developed international enrollment management offices to…