Improve your institution’s enrollment outlook with the right data to boost applications, yields, and retention rates.
A strategic enrollment management (SEM) plan is essential. But if it’s built on a foundation of insufficient or inaccurate data, it won’t lead to desired results.
Download Hanover’s guide, 5 Ways to Enhance Strategic Enrollment Management with Data, to diagnose and solve the toughest recruitment and retention challenges with a data-first approach:
- 5 key ingredients of all enrollment management plans
- Considerations for each stage of the student journey
- Tools and tactics to deliver the data you need
“From one institution to another, SEM plans can look vastly different, and for good reason. Each college or university must build around its own needs, focus areas, and institutional goals. However, successful plans do share some common features, particularly when it comes to market research and data analysis. While these critical building blocks inform the basis of any effective plan, higher education leaders aren’t always sure where to start.”
What is SEM in Higher Education?
Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) is a cross-functional approach to higher education enrollment planning that’s been in practice for more than two decades.
At each enrollment milestone in the student journey, there are institutional challenges and student pain points that campus leaders can address to improve their recruitment and retention efforts — if they use the right data.
The most successful SEM efforts start with good data and a clear understanding of where the institution is and what it would like to accomplish with respect to enrollment.
Addressing Higher Ed Enrollment Challenges
Across U.S. institutions, the number of college applications have increased, but yield rates and completion rates have not changed much in several years.
While more students are expressing an interest in higher education, the hard truth is many will never end up enrolling or graduating. Meanwhile, many college and university leaders struggle to balance growing expenses with diminishing enrollment numbers.
To move the needle on student recruitment and retention, institutional leaders must understand how to effectively use market research and data analysis at each stage of the student enrollment journey to build an adaptive SEM plan to address their toughest enrollment challenges.
Use this guide to cut through fuzzy objectives or unrealistic ambitions to make meaningful progress on your institution’s enrollment management results.
