Making the Academy Market-Smart Toolkit

To ensure academic programs advance their institutions’ enrollment goals, institutions must consider market demand when assessing their performance—holding academic programs accountable for serving the academic and career needs of today’s prospective students. Explore 13 tools to ensure the voice of the market is brought into academic planning, review, and launch.

To ensure academic programs advance their institutions’ enrollment goals, institutions must consider market demand when assessing their performance—holding academic programs accountable for serving the academic and career needs of today’s prospective students. Despite its importance, few institutions prioritize enrollment performance in academic program planning. Even for those that do, the enrollment manager’s (EM) oversight, insight, and perspective are rarely included early or often enough. EMs can bring the voice of the market into academic program planning, review, and new program launch processes. About the toolkit This toolkit is a supplement to the Making the Academy Market-Smart study and designed to assist enrollment managers as they attempt to systematize market-smart practices. Each tool falls into one of three distinct categories: Grounding program targets in market realities Revitalizing stalled program performance Embedding demand validation in launch DOWNLOAD THE FULL TOOLKIT Section 1: Grounding program targets in market realities Institutions must consider market demand when assessing academic program performance—holding programs accountable for serving the academic and career needs of today’s prospective students. Align academic program planning to enrollment priorities by providing academic leaders with actionable program-level enrollment and capacity data. TOOL 1: Market-Smart Self-Assessment is the place to begin. It will help you figure out where your university is already market-smart and where there is room for improvement. TOOL 2: Sample Program Review Form streamlines the enrollment review…