Blog

After participating virtually in 2021, it was refreshing to reconnect with old colleagues and make new connections at the 2022 FACRAO Annual Summit in Daytona Beach last week. 

It’s that time in the admissions cycle again - summer melt. As a former admissions counselor, I fully understand the anxiety, stress, and frustration that comes with this part of the admissions process. You have nurtured fantastic relationships and gained commitment from your candidate pool. You are riding high as the spring semester ends. Then, as it happens with every admissions cycle, commitments start getting softer, and your candidate pool starts to shrink. 

This past April many community colleges across the county joined in celebrating Community College Month (#ccmonth). The Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) coordinated a grassroots campaign to “increase awareness and understanding of the value of community colleges both locally and nationally.”  As we followed the celebration around the country, we wanted to share some highlights and takeaways from the great work these two-year institutions are doing.

After two years of being virtual, it was great to reconnect with HEUG colleagues in-person at Alliance.

Spending nearly a decade as an enrollment management professional until recently, I experienced the challenge that the impending traditional enrollment cliff presents for universities and colleges. I was often faced trying to find solutions to the same recurring questions: 

It’s a wrap. We just finished our first event of 2022 – the SACRAO conference in Little Rock, AR. 

If you work in the higher education industry, you probably don't need a report to tell you that 2020 was a challenge for colleges and universities.  However, the most recent report put together by the National Student Clearinghouse (link here) gives insight into how COVID has affected enrollment in each type of school and demographic -- and it's not all doom and gloom.

Today, Business Insider had an opinion piece about Google's Career Certificates program, which allows non-degree learning to help people (especially people in IT) gain critical skills that can help them advance their careers.  In our blog, we've previously discussed how the higher education market is has recognized the opportunity growth of lifetime learning and the nontraditional student.  

This afternoon, CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White announced that with limited exceptions, virtual-only learning will continue through the fall term.  This means that close to 500,000 students won't be returning to campus until 2021 at the earliest.  However, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

As the discussion about re-opening businesses gets underway, one of the most challenging areas to consider is re-opening our campuses.  How do you balance public health with the realities of campus life?  Where do you start as you develop these plans?