Is your institution having challenges reaching your enrollment goals for certain groups of students? Perhaps you have initiatives for online curriculum or competency-based education that are not getting traction. Your institution’s culture could be setting you up to fail and you may not even be aware of it.
I recently had a discussion with the director of enrollment services for a large institution's online college where we discussed challenges this person is facing in optimizing enrollment for that area. These challenges were a direct outgrowth of the overall admissions culture at that institution -- which is something that I've seen at other institutions.
Let's start by describing why I mean by admissions culture. For this article, I am using the following definition:
Culture is a way of life for a group of people -- The behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them
From an admissions context, I've seen two different types of culture by which organizations operate.
These differences are ingrained throughout the institution and are driven primarily by traditional freshman enrollment demand.
Let's delve into more detail on the scarcity admissions culture. As previously mentioned, this culture is most often driven by institutions where the number of qualified traditional (freshman) admissions applications far outstrips the institution's capacity to teach them in a traditional manner. In this circumstance, there may be many qualified candidates who could be admitted, but most of those candidates must be eliminated from consideration.
In many of these circumstances, outside factors drive a candidate's interest in the institution, such as rankings in news publications -- and the admissions process does not need to prioritize engaging with candidates at an individual level. In some circumstances, whether a candidate is able to navigate a complex and difficult process is considered helpful in making an admissions decision.
This means that the admissions process is often organized around multiple rounds of sorting and ranking candidates; eliminating candidates at each round. Once the pool matches enrollment targets, offers are sent out. Admissions organizations with this culture often do the following:
The other type of culture exists where there isn't scarcity in an institution's ability to instruct qualified candidates. In a similar manner, this culture is most often driven by the traditional (freshman) admissions process -- where the capacity is in line with the pool of qualified candidates likely to enroll.
Interestingly, higher education's trends are moving in the direction of increasing the capacity to reach new students, increasing representation of nontraditional and under-represented groups, and adopting innovative education models. This means that even in institutions with limited capacity for traditional students; there are many places where that scarcity doesn't exist. Here are some examples:
In this circumstance, the admissions process is generally organized around qualifying candidates and then engaging them throughout the attract-to-onboard process. Admissions organizations with this culture often do the following:
As mentioned above, we believe that all institutions have scenarios where they would like to attract and admit more students than they are. However, the culture of many institutions can prevent this from occurring; especially when the culture is ingrained to a degree that people don't recognize it. Here are a few drivers of this in those organizations:
The first step in moving forward is recognizing what is blocking progress. Because culture is generally accepted without much thought, you will need to shift peoples' thinking -- at least as it relates to the initiatives affected by it. This means that often your job changes from project / initiative management to evangelism.