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
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 process by minimizing the number of enrollment targets to only those that matter most. It can be deployed as a standardized template for all programs.
The following three tools are individual PowerPoint slides that serve as templates. To use the templates, download the PowerPoint file, click on the chart, navigate to the “Design” pane at the top, and select “Edit Data.” This will allow you to input your university’s data into the charts.
Put it into practice: Compare program-level enrollment growth to determine if your university is market-smart
TOOL 4: Demand-Capacity Opportunity Maps
Put it into practice: Identify mismatches between supply and demand for academic programs
TOOL 5: Course Proliferation Index
Put it into practice: Identify programs who are creating more new courses than generating new enrollments
Section 2: Revitalizing Stalled Program Performance
Under- and over-enrolled programs tend to receive a disproportionate share of resources, diverting resources from mid-performing programs, which actually have the largest growth potential. Meet enrollment goals by strategically managing growth across the academic program portfolio and engaging academic leaders in surfacing programs with the greatest market opportunity.
TOOLS 6 and 7: Pipeline Vital Sign Monitoring contains two Excel sheets. The first identifies programs poised for growth through mismatches in program admissions pipeline date. The second is a comparison of that program to university averages to identify areas of improvement.
Put it into practice: Explore program performance based on allocated resources and enrollment metrics
TOOL 8: Enrollment Share Variance Reports identify programs poised for growth (and how to realize that growth) by comparing program percentages of enrollment and applications to regional averages from the College Board or ACT.
TOOL 9: Student Centricity Website Diagnostic contains a checklist that delineates the criteria for ensuring academic program websites are targeted to and appealing for prospective students.
TOOL 10: Workforce Alignment Review Discussion Questions lists those questions department chairs should pose to their workforce alignment review committees to ensure sessions are focused on critical thinking about the program’s enrollment.
TOOL 11: Post-Workforce Alignment Review Report to Academic Planning Committee provides a template for reporting back to senior academic leadership those ideas from the workforce alignment committee review that would be most valuable to adopt.
Section 3: Embedding Demand Validation in Launch
Most new program design and approval processes fail to consider regional enrollment trends and student preferences, resulting in programs that are misaligned with institutional priorities. Harness faculty-led innovation for enrollment gains by integrating enrollment managers’ perspectives into new program launch—evaluating the revenue, enrollment, and marketing implications of proposed programs before they are stamped for approval.
TOOL 12: New Program Pre-Proposal Form is a template for faculty to use as part of a pre-proposal process for new academic programs. The second page provides critical questions the proposer needs to answer as part of the pre-proposal process.
TOOL 13: Self-Developed Major Form identifies the critical component of a self-developed major proposal form and provides guidance on how universities should structure the five critical components of the proposal.
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