Targeting the best students can make a difference in prestige or money for the institution

By MARY ANN ALBRIGHT
Corvallis Gazette-Times

Enrollment managers are the matchmakers of higher education. They determine which students and universities would fare well together, and try to establish a connection between the two.

Campus tours bear resemblance to first dates. If the students like what they see, maybe they’ll come back for more. Students have the upper hand early in the game and when making final decisions about where to enroll. Come admissions time, however, it’s the universities that decide who gets thick acceptance envelopes and who finds single-page letters of rejection in the mailbox.

Through extensive number crunching, targeted marketing and financial aid strategizing, enrollment managers help universities attract students likely to thrive on a particular campus, and who will help the university move toward its ideal demographic makeup — whether that means increasing diversity, enrolling more National Merit scholars or expanding certain academic programs.

Oregon State University offers five campus tours a day during the week and select weekend programs. On a Friday morning tour led by Joshua Curtis, a senior from Hawaii who’s majoring in psychology and speech communication, seven families from all over the country came to explore campus and to learn more about the benefits of being Beavers.

Bryan Bell, 17, is poised to begin his senior year at Wilson High School in Portland, and he’s starting to think seriously about college. OSU has plenty of competition in Bell’s book.

Last week he visited Pacific Lutheran University, and the computer science enthusiast is also interested in the University of Oregon and possibly Minnesota schools.

“At first, I thought I should find what I’m interested in and find a school that specializes in that,” Bell said. “But then some friends said I should find a campus that looks nice and has a good community and where I feel at home, so I think I’m going to look for that.”

Managing enrollment

Strategic enrollment management has benefits and drawbacks, depending on how it’s used.

At its best, enrollment management allows a university to recruit, retain and graduate the students best suited to its institutional mission, college admissions experts say.

At its worst, enrollment management panders to the ratings game consuming colleges and universities across the nation, shutting out lower-income students in the process.

It’s a balancing act, according to Bob Bontrager, director of partnership programs at OSU. Bontrager served as OSU’s assistant provost for enrollment management until last year, and continues to work in the field as a consultant for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

“It’s a question of how to promote the success of students while at the same time maintaining viable financial outcomes for the university,” he said.

By becoming more selective, colleges can improve their rankings in U.S. News & World Reports, which publishes a much-touted list of top universities each year.

Higher GPAs and SAT scores, traditional measures of academic success, correlate strongly with socio-economic status. Therefore, making them a bigger factor in the college admissions process can put lower income students at a disadvantage.

Last November, Bontrager was quoted in an Atlantic Monthly story about enrollment managers using financial-aid leveraging to cherry pick the most prestigious classes they can, essentially buying academic prominence for universities.

The article included some controversial quotes likening enrollment managers to schoolyard bullies who set out to “eat other people’s lunches” (i.e. steal the best high school seniors from other universities).

Bontrager, 49, said the story reflected just a fraction of what enrollment management is really about and played on all the misconceptions surrounding this fairly recent practice.

Historical perspective

In the early 1980s, with the bulk of baby boomers out of college and the number of college-going high school graduates plummeting, universities turned to enrollment management to increase their headcounts.

At OSU, for example, undergraduate and graduate enrollment in 1980 totaled 17,600. By 1994, it had dipped to 13,800.

Colleges began admitting more adult learners and students of color, groups historically granted limited access to higher education. This fall, OSU expects 19,400 students.

Also around 1980, public policy shifted away from viewing higher education as a public good, and regarded college more as an individual privilege. As a result, need-based state and federal financial aid decreased, Bontrager said.

A primary tool of enrollment management was — and remains — financial-aid leveraging. Students less likely to enroll might be swayed by larger financial aid packages, whereas “sure things” would attend regardless.

This gave rise to an increase in smaller, merit-based scholarships, essential in wooing high-achieving students.

“Rather than offering aid of equal value to all students who meet certain academic qualifications, institutions increasingly tailor financial aid packages to tweak the college-choice sensibilities of individual students, taking into account their financial need, geodemographic characteristics and institutional goals for enrolling students with specific attributes,” Bontrager wrote in an article appearing in the winter 2004 issue of the College and University Journal.

Enrollment managers coordinate with their universities’ admissions, financial aid, institutional research and student affairs offices to ensure that the students best suited to that institution are attracted, retained and graduate.

Finding the right fit

Ideal enrollment demographics vary, depending on the institution’s mission.

OSU is a land-grant university, so its first priority is educating Oregonians, said Kate Peterson, assistant provost for enrollment management. It’s also committed to research that benefits the state and the global community.

Last fall, 77.7 percent of OSU students were Oregon residents. Students from other states accounted for 17.2 percent, and 5.1 percent were international students.

Peterson said she wants OSU’s student population to remain predominately Oregonians, while increasing its diversity.

That means OSU wants to attract students of various ages, ethnic backgrounds, geographics and view points, as well as students with disabilities, she added. Peterson said a diverse learning environment creates a richer college experience for everyone.

Because SAT scores and high school GPAs measure a narrow range of aptitudes and aren’t shown to correlate strongly with academic success in college, OSU relies heavily on the “Insight Resume” when making admissions decisions.

The resume is essentially six short-answer questions, a variation on the standard admissions essay. They’re designed to test eight specific traits, such as realistic self-appraisal, ability to set long-range goals, leadership and community engagement.

Applicants for fall 2004 were the first to complete this requirement, and Bontrager believes future data will show that the insight resume is a better indicator of student success than SAT scores.

Peterson said she doesn’t feel much pressure to play the ratings game. But that’s not the case for many enrollment managers, according to Tom Mortenson, higher education policy analyst and editor and publisher of the monthly newsletter Postsecondary Education Opportunity.

“Enrollment managers have consistently told me that their marching orders are to increase institutional revenue and increase institutional ranking in the annual U.S. News ranking of ‘America’s Best Colleges,’” Mortenson said.

“Never once — ever — has anyone told me their orders include serving the public interest, or broadening education opportunity, or bringing in new populations not previously well served by higher education. Not once, ever.”

Mortenson said he’s “very concerned about the practice of enrollment management when it focuses on individual welfare and ignores the public interest.”

Peterson and Bontrager said OSU uses enrollment management responsibly.

In recent years, OSU has shifted away from merit-based financial aid. More than 80 percent of central university scholarships go to individuals with at least some financial need, Peterson said.

“The goal is to still attract the highest achieving students while earmarking financial aid dollars for those who need it most,” Peterson said.

Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net

or 758-9518.