Enrollment Management Insights

July 2024 by Bob Massa and Bill Conley Two major 21st century events have impacted college enrollment trends and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.  The great recession of 2008-09 and its aftermath saw the number of births in this country fall by more than 500,000.  Then enter 2020 and the COVID-19 […]

by Bob Massa and Bill Conley If we listen carefully to New America’s Stephen Burd and read the new book he skillfully edited, Lifting the Veil on Enrollment Management: How a Powerful Industry is Limiting Social Mobility in American Higher Education (Harvard Education Press), we’re informed that the “industry” of enrollment management has harmed higher […]

by Bill Conley and Bob Massa Enrollment Intelligence Now         May, 2024   May is the month of reckoning for first year enrollment metrics.  Not so long ago, it was a single day- May 1 (Candidates Reply Date-CRD)- that signaled the likelihood of hitting the enrollment target (read: tuition revenue goal). In […]

by Bob Massa and Bill Conley, Enrollment Intelligence Now       March 2024   The annual presidents’ survey by Inside Higher Ed revealed major concerns facing colleges and universities in 2024 and beyond. College presidents identified a myriad of concerns (e.g., AI, the political environment in the nation and on college campuses, the impact of the […]

by Bob Massa and Bill Conley       The June 2023 Supreme Court ruling striking down the consideration of race as a factor in college admissions has reignited calls for the elimination of legacy preferences and early decision (ED) programs. Yet by no means is the rallying cry to dispose of ED “new” news.   […]

by Bob Massa and Bill Conley (Published in Inside Higher Ed, April 10, 2023) In January and February of this year, Inside Higher Ed published two opinion pieces by John Roberts, an engineering recruiter at the University of Kentucky.  In the first piece, Roberts argues that admissions counselors should not be held responsible for hitting […]

By Bob Massa and Bill Conley  Are faculty and staff members at our nation’s colleges and universities leaving their positions in higher numbers because they are no longer fulfilled in their careers and see better opportunities elsewhere, or are they throwing in the towel due to frustration, stress, and disillusionment? We pose this question, acknowledging […]

“We want to create as much opportunity for as many academically talented young people as possible, regardless of financial background or legacy status.”  So said Amherst College president Biddy Martin when she announced last fall that the college was abandoning the practice of favoring children or grandchildren of alumni in admissions.  A similar announcement was […]

Bill Conley & Bob Massa As published in Inside Higher Ed, February 28, 2022 Much has been written about the “Great Resignation”. The sheer scale is obvious: about 25 million workers left their jobs in the second half of 2021 alone. More ambiguous is the downstream impact on the labor markets.  Where will people choose to […]

By Bob Massa and Bill Conley (published 1/24/22 in “Inside Higher Ed”) In a paper released last September by the Brookings Institution, author Alex Engler suggests that the use of algorithms to determine the amount of scholarship (i.e., discount) support students should receive does, in fact, hurt students.  He claims that the “prevailing evidence” suggests […]

by Bob Massa, Bill Conley and David Holmes from The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 6, 2021 In his recent Chronicle Review essay, “The Abiding Scandal of College Admissions,” Matt Feeney decries college admission officers as administrators, not educators, who take it upon themselves to probe an applicant’s character and authenticity. Among the small group […]

by Bob Massa and Bill Conley You have heard it all before.  The media has been replete with observations on how the current admissions season and undergraduate enrollments are being impacted by the pandemic.  Wild trends in application volume – up, up for the elites; down, down for almost everyone else- foretell a volatile spring […]

  By Bill Conley and Bob Massa In our December 2020 article (Standardized Testing and College Admissions: Plan for a New Relationship) we observed: “For decades, the purchasing of student test-taker names has been fueling college recruitment’s time-honored funnel.”  We went on to discuss the many ways a long-term shift away from requiring standardized testing […]

By Bob Massa and Bill Conley This past fall, we wrote about how Early Decision (ED) programs would play an increasingly important role in helping colleges meet their fall enrollment goals.  With the financial fallout of the pandemic making enrollment levels more difficult to achieve, we suggested that getting a larger group of enthusiastic students […]

by Bill Conley and Bob Massa Is standardized testing dead? Or, to paraphrase Mark Twain, are the reports “greatly exaggerated?” In March 2020, about one thousand of the 2300 private non-profit and public Bachelor granting colleges and universities offered students the option to apply to their institutions without submitting SAT or ACT scores, and several […]

by Bob Massa and Bill Conley Exactly a year ago, and in the shadow of a Department of Justice threat, members of the National Association of College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) reluctantly voted to remove from its Code of Ethics language that prevented colleges from recruiting students who had committed to another institution.  They also struck […]

Bill Conley and Bob Massa                                     Principals, Enrollment Intelligence Now   By August 2020, more than 10 million cases worldwide were reported, and 500,000 deaths were attributed to Covid-19.  Vast multiples of those staggering numbers have been touched by the […]

Bob Massa and Bill Conley July 24, 2020 “Cost is not always related to price.  If it were, we’d have to charge a lot more in tuition.”  So is a traditional stance taken by colleges whose costs are underwritten by endowments or public funding in defense of their “sticker price.” No two colleges arrive at […]