Strategic Enrollment Planning at
IUPUI: Is it Worth It? What Will it
Take to Develop a Plan?
Don Hossler
Educational Leadership and Policy
Studies
Hossler@Indiana.Edu
Defining EM
• Influence enrollments and total campus
revenue.
• Organized by strategic planning & research
• Concerned with college choice, the transition to
college, student retention, & student outcomes
• Guide campus practices in new student
recruitment & financial aid, student support
services, curriculum development, & other
academic areas to influence enrollments,
student persistence, & student outcomes from
college
Characteristics of Successful
EM Activities
• Linked with
Strategic Planning
• Data Driven,
Analytical
• Enrollment,
Positioning, &
Budgeting Strategy
• Being at the Table
• No single org.
model, but strong
leadership &
coordination
– Admissions marketing
– Financial aid
– Retention programs
– IR
– IT
– Interfacing with academic
& student life units
Another Way to Think About It
• Revenue
• Prestige
• Access
• Diversity
The Certainties of Focused,
Intentional Enrollment Efforts
• More institutional and academic unit time
and resources will be focused on
enrollment concerns
• You will spend more than you are
spending now
• You will achieve more of your enrollment
related goals
• You will have a richer understanding of the
conflicts among your various goals
The Complexities of Enrollment
Management at Large,
Decentralized, Complex Institutions
• Holding together the common good
• Enabling academic units to respond the
their intellectual, human resource, and
market mission and needs
• Creating incentives for academic units to
care about both the common good and
their own imperatives
Necessities
• Strong analytical capacity
– Who are your students (s)?
– Where to they come from?
– What motivates them to come? How do they see the
campus and/or your academic unit?
• If you want to change your profile or who you
attract quickly (less than 5 years) you need to be
prepared to buy them.
• Therefore you need to know how financial aid
awards affects their enrollment decisions?
Some Observations About IUPUI
and Its Challenges
• Given your history and mission, managing the
nexus between diversity, access, and quality will
be tough.
• Requisites for meeting your goal of being a
national urban institution for health and science
means recruiting out of state and larger aid
packages.
• Be aware, national public policy may well be
shifting back toward a stronger focus on access
and equity with respect to financial aid.
Essentials on Success
• Keep senior campus administrators informed
• You need a senior enrollment planning
committee that brings credibility, influence, and
ability to make decisions about substance and
costs of enrollment plans
• Making plans
– 5 years time periods
– expect them to have direct effect on effects and
strategies for no more than 2-3 years
– Unless you SPEND, expect modest shifts over 3-5
year periods.
Ultimately…you will have to
collectively take some risks, no
sure thing