Another Fall brings another set of enrollment goals to relentlessly pursue for many admissions teams across the nation. But how can data help delineate a stretch goal from a NBA half-court heave? In this episode of The Weightlist, Thom and Brad walk through a deep dive of five years of Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System…

[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] For universities, there exists a tension in the space between living an institutional mission and funding that mission. Ozan Jaquette is an Assistant Professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies and is fascinated by the often curious organizational behavior of colleges and universities as…

Now that May 1 has come and gone, how are enrollment planners assessing the effectiveness of their recruitment across a variety of related and interlocking tactics? As is the case in other areas, the dominant thinking in enrollment management is antiquated compared to the advanced marketing attribution models that exist in other industries. In this…

Given the breadth of new data that is generated by the modern university, what does the future of higher education look like if it were to embrace big open data? What could the transcript of the future look like, and how could admissions evaluation work? There’s big data, then there’s the Sloan Digital Sky Survey,…

In 2001, a group of computer scientists gathered at a resort to collectively rethink the methods that had dominated software development projects for decades. This rise of “agile development” emphasized cross-functional teams operating within rapid iterative cycles and fast feedback loops and has fundamentally changed not only software development, but also organizational effectiveness. Keeping up…

The enrollment management field isn’t well known for experimental design but Eric Maguire as Franklin and Marshall College’s Vice President & Dean of Admission & Financial Aid is pushing that boundary. His approach embodies the Edison Model that embraces experimentation and purposeful failure as key ingredients to enrollment success. From the use of recruitment control…

How do you recruit in new markets using predictive models that are built on your enrollment history? If you have never enrolled a student from a particular market how can a “rear facing” prediction still apply. In this episode, Thom and Brad tackle a listener submitted question that is especially important in the always evolving…

What happens when a young start-up rethinks the decades old practice of a lump sum approach to awarding financial aid? On The Weightlist this week we chat with George Kirkland, Co-Founder of Raise.me, a company that invented the concept of micro-scholarships and in so doing, has turned the financial aid industry on its head. What…

Enrollment management, at its core, is a prediction business. Annually, thousands of admissions officers polish off the crystal ball and project what the enrollment future holds for their institutions. Yogi Berra often quipped that “The future isn’t what it used to be” and no where is that truer than in higher education enrollment predictions. Thom…

Could an algorithm ever do the job of an admissions officer? How do you build a data-driven analytic culture? How can universities best utilize analytics to shift their business processes? In part 2 of our interview with Zain Khandwala, the Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Analytics at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY we…