Enrollment is primarily built through awareness and reputation. And a major factor in building reputation is ‘word of mouth’ advertising from your current students. Focusing on retention and providing quality services, both in and out of the classroom, supports your recruiting efforts. Satisfied students stay at your college, and they tell others about their positive experiences.

So how do you impact retention? The eight categories outlined below provide a foundation to build and maintain an effective retention strategy at your institution.

1. Institutional Commitment. Everyone plays a role in retention…everyone. Students chose a college based on the how well they feel they can achieve their personal goals at that particular institution. Colleges should take this obligation seriously. This attitude needs to be ingrained in your culture and an expectation for everyone. Without institutional commitment beginning at the very top, it will not become an institutional priority.
2. Strategy Alignment. Make sure your recruiting and retention strategies align with your Mission—and don’t stray! Don’t be tempted to divert from your uniqueness in an effort to recruit more students. Your goal should be to recruit students who are the best fit for your college and who can truly benefit from the educational experience you provide. Institutions that focus solely on increasing new students don’t retain them, and that negatively impacts enrollment.
3. Integrate Your Data. In order to best customize and personalize interactions with students you need to have all your data in one ‘pot’. Otherwise, you will not be able to see the entirety of the student’s needs or their institutional experience. In addition to improved administrative efficiency, the level of service you can provide to students will increase dramatically.
4. Data to Knowledge. Collecting and integrating your data is only beneficial, however, if you do something with it. Turn your data in to knowledge that is useful in designing services of value to your students. Do you know enough about your students to retain them? Are you making assumptions or performing analysis? Many colleges make the mistake of treating the symptoms of attrition rather than identifying and resolving the real causes.
5. Process Analysis. Once you understand more about your students you then need to review your administrative processes from the student’s perspective. Many effective practices have fallen by the wayside because they took some extra administrative effort. The result is often a decrease in service resulting in diminished student satisfaction. The student’s perception is their reality and that is what they will be telling their friends and family about when they return home on break.
6. Implement Comprehensive Systems. You are now ready to design and implement a system to consistently interacting with your students. Quality service crosses departmental boundaries and includes both their classroom and out-of-class experiences. The use of technology is vitally important in your enrollment system. However, it should be viewed as an accelerator for your processes, not the answer.
7. Effectiveness Measures. Colleges need to identify the key measures of their success and develop reports that provide them with some indication of how well they are performing. These should compare actually performance to established goals and to previous years so that appropriate conclusions can be drawn on new initiatives and institutional effectiveness. Be sure to include regulatory measures from state, federal and accrediting agencies. Regular review of measures provides colleges with the opportunity to make adjustments along the way.
8. Start all over! Effective enrollment programs are never done. They are a process of continuous improvement. Your effectiveness measures should result in review of strategy alignment and back through the entire process.

Enrollment management is a series of processes combined to create a system of quality, personalized interactions with prospective and current students. There is no single, perfect system for all colleges. It should be defined by each institution to maximize their unique characteristics, culture and mission. Using these guidelines will provide a framework for designing your own effective system.