Enrollment Management and Financial Aid: Seeking a Strategic Integration

• Published in: College and university 2008, Vol.84 (1), p.2
• Main Authors: Kalsbeek, David H, Hossler, Donald
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic Achievement; Administrative Organization; College Administration; Educational Opportunities; Enrollment Management; Higher Education; Institutional Evaluation; Institutional Mission; Reputation; Student Financial Aid; Student Recruitment
• ISSN: 0010-0889

Enrollment management has become an important leadership function on many college and university campuses. It is also attracting critical attention here and abroad among observers of the system of postsecondary education. With this essay, the authors continue a series that examines policies and practices that are central to campus-based efforts to manage enrollments and achieve enrollment goals, thereby clarifying an "enrollment management perspective" on issues ranging from admissions marketing, to rankings, financial aid, and student success. Increasingly, the focus on financial aid as a part of enrollment management efforts is raising two important questions. One focuses on internal policy and planning. Campus leaders at private and public institutions must weigh how much tuition revenue they can and should commit to financial aid as a means to achieve wide-ranging goals of prestige, diversity, and net revenue within the context of their academic missions and institutional capacities and economics. As a result, enrollment management leaders increasingly not only have to understand the use of financial aid as a means to achieve narrowly defined enrollment goals, but they also must actively participate in and inform the campus dialogue of the role and impact of financial aid on the institution's mission and academic goals. Moving beyond these internal, institutional considerations, as a profession, enrollment management leaders have an obligation to engage actively in the national (and increasingly international) dialogue about the role of financial aid policy and practice in the pursuit of broad societal goals of access and equity of educational opportunity. In this essay the authors focus on those internal policy issues, to bring perspective to the integration and intersections of financial aid with enrollment strategy and institutional priorities. [For previous article in series, see EJ794567.]