As new variants of COVID-19 continue to upend the higher education landscape, colleges and universities are bracing for what could be another year of record enrollment declines. Among the sectors of higher education that have felt these challenges most acutely are regional public four-year universities. In many communities, these institutions provide pathways to upward mobility for students at a range of income levels and backgrounds. But even before the pandemic, there was a growing consensus across higher education that many regional public universities would need to retool and evolve their historic mission of inclusive access to meet changing demographics and regional workforce needs.
As a trustee at Colorado Mesa University, I’ve seen up close the challenges presented to state-supported institutions—with a regional public mission—as they navigate the ongoing impacts of the pandemic on enrollment. But, I wanted to tell a story from another part of the country and learn more about how our regional public institutions might address some of these pandemic-induced enrollment challenges. I recently talked with Jay Murray, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Services at Western Connecticut State University, a regional public institution based in Danbury, Connecticut.
Jay and his team have been using some creative approaches as they grapple with massive uncertainty around enrollment, competition with larger state universities, tight state budgets, and “brain drain” in the Northeast. A key part of their strategy involves using sophisticated predictive modeling to forecast and better understand how demographic shifts will impact applications—months sooner than traditional methods.
Alison Griffin: What are the enrollment challenges Western Connecticut has faced during the pandemic?
Jay Murray: The biggest challenges we have seen during the pandemic include the need to identify alternate solutions to communicate with students, replacing the campus visit as a recruitment/conversion tool, and making in-person high school visits and attending college fairs. It is so much easier to build relationships and get students excited about a higher education experience when we can interact face-to-face, so our team had to get creative about making virtual outreach more personal.
Alison: How has COVID-19 affected your university’s enrollment numbers and your approach to enrollment management?
Jay: The suspension of in-person learning in many high schools and the elimination of traditional college fairs severely impacted our inquiry and application pool. The inability to get face-to-face time with prospective students who lived outside of our local market resulted in a 10% decline in our application pool. In our local market, within 25 miles of campus, we saw relatively stable application numbers. However, we saw declines in all markets that were outside our immediate area. This coupled with the fact that, overall, fewer high school students are going to college—and Connecticut, in particular, is a net exporter of students. Our team has been following this trend for years and are trying to figure out how we can continue to grow enrollment, and we have started to turn our efforts to out-of-state recruiting.
Even before the pandemic, there was a growing consensus across higher education that many regional ... [+]
Alison: How have emerging technologies and the use of data helped Western Connecticut get ahead of these enrollment headwinds?
Jay: Technology has played an increasingly important role in enrollment management with each passing cycle, in part because the need for personalization is increasing even as we seek to reach larger and larger numbers of students. There’s enormous variation in terms of the communication preferences of students and how they engage during the enrollment process. How many times should we contact them? Which platforms do students want to be contacted through—text, email, print, social media? What kind of information do they need to finalize their decision?
To help answer these types of questions, we’ve been able to learn and borrow from the sort of personalization happening in the world of integrated digital marketing. Back in 2013, we implemented TargetX, a CRM that runs on the Salesforce platform, to help run recruitment campaigns that reach students with more targeted and personalized outreach and information—through email, live chat, social media and other channels. The digitization of student outreach means that we can get richer data and feedback on the enrollment funnel much earlier in the process—giving us insights into how we should adjust our strategy or engage new student segments to meet our goals.
Over the last few years, we started to leverage virtual events and partnered with PlatformQ Education while also launching a virtual tour through YouVisit, in order to provide students with a way to experience our campus while at home. However, the impact of the pandemic has diminished returns on each and every area where we’re interacting. In the last 18 months, it is more common that students will not respond at all to our messaging. Although COVID-19 has presented us with massive challenges in regard to reaching interested and prospective students, we have been able to track all our communications and serve individualized messages to different students, down to messaging by intended major.
Alison: How is Western Connecticut responding to shifts in the broader labor market and changing student expectations about the value of the degree?
Jay: Having proactive conversations with students about outcomes and return of investment on their degree is more important now more than ever before. As a regional public comprehensive university, we enroll a very high percentage of first-generation students. Conversations that center around how a degree from Western Connecticut can positively impact a student's intended career pathway are very impactful. Aligned with the conversations about outcomes and return on investment, our team actively engages with students about the features and benefits offered by our Center for Career Success. Building a relationship between enrollment, advising and career supports are critical for students to understand the value of their discipline and credential and how it extends to future success in the labor market.
Alison: As we head into the school year—at a time when the new delta variant has forced many traditional in-person admissions fairs and events to be cancelled—how is Western Connecticut reaching prospective and new students?
Jay: At Western Connecticut, we made a complete pivot to virtual recruitment last fall. We were leveraging virtual meeting technologies to schedule high school “visits.” These were meant to simulate the one-on-one or group meetings typically held in high school guidance offices. As I mentioned, our partner, PlatformQ Education, enabled us to hold evening and weekend virtual information sessions, interactive student panels, and “how to” presentations about the college process. These were meant to simulate the previously held in-person college visits.
I will say that while we had success with many of the virtual events early on, ”Zoom fatigue” is real.
In response, we held an accepted student day in the spring, using both of our campus locations and breaking attendees up by school and major. As we enter the third school year impacted by COVID-19, I expect travel to be a mix of “traditional” face-to-face recruitment supplemented by virtual events and information sessions.
Alison: At a time when first-generation and low-income students are experiencing additional financial hardship and uncertainty, what advice do you have for your peers about ways admissions and enrollment management leaders can best support this critical population of learners?
Jay: It’s important for enrollment leaders and managers to be available as a resource to students and families who need help gaining access to postsecondary education. Oftentimes we’re not just recruiting students to the university, but educating students on the process of how to apply to colleges and universities—and that teaching is much harder to do in a virtual setting. Whether it is participating on a “College 101” panel or helping with financial aid application completion, many students need additional support and guidance. Sometimes it is easy to forget that not everyone understands the “lingo” we use, and it is important to take the time to spell things out.
Students who are first-generation and from families of lower socioeconomic status are the most impacted by COVID-19. I have observed that many of these potential students are sitting on the sidelines, deferring their college plans or deciding not to go to college at all. This is especially the case for students whose parents are hourly, rather than salaried, workers. It is critical that we do everything we can to make college an accessible, affordable, and appealing option for these students.
The Western Connecticut student body is 21% Latinx students, and that doesn’t reflect the students who are choosing not to report their race/ethnicity. As such, with this growing Latinx population; we are an emerging Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), and anticipate receiving additional federal resources as that population continues to grow. Nearly 30% of our students are Pell-eligible, which means we are finding that many of these students require additional guidance and support. Oftentimes, we have the financial aid resources they need to access and afford college, yet they don’t know to pick up the phone, or stop by our office and seek assistance.
Alison: What lessons has the team at Western Connecticut learned about this year’s enrollment cycle that are important to share with other institutions, and keep in mind for the future?
Jay: First, no enrollment leaders have degrees in crisis pandemic management. The lessons we have learned have been learned on the fly, with teamwork, with the support of our institutional leadership and through partnership with outside organizations. As I reflect back on the last 18 months, the biggest lesson our team learned is how important traditional recruitment has been to our enrollment funnel.
Although the pivot to virtual recruitment for Western Connecticut was seamless, it was not a substitute to “hitting the road” or offering the old fashioned campus tour. At the end of the day, virtual recruitment will always supplement what we do face-to-face with college affairs. So much of what we do is relationship building. The one-on-one conversations in a high school cafeteria, particularly for students in urban areas, often result in a happy student and ultimately a proud alum. And if we can figure out the right mix of in-person and virtual events to reach students and grow our enrollment funnel, we will be successful.
