I am sitting in my office listening to the muffled sounds of staff members work the telephones, trying to reach admitted students and encourage them to file the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. This is a familiar autumnal soundtrack for me, having worked in admissions for 25 years, and I’ve been around long enough to remember when students actually answered their phones.
Many things are different today — not just how we communicate. I feel more pressure now than at any time in the past. That pressure comes from within — the ever-present desire to achieve that often-elusive enrollment goal of just the right number of students who are academically talented, are diverse, and bring with them enough revenue to maintain the institutional operating budget.
The pressure also emanates from the Board of Trustees, the president, the faculty, other offices on campus, and even tuned-in alumni, all of whom understand that our institution’s future hinges on our ability to continue to attract, retain, and graduate strong, capable students.
I heard David Kalsbeek, then chief enrollment officer at DePaul University, speak at a College Board colloquium probably a decade ago, and I still regularly reflect on a prophetic statement he made: “It is important to remember, in times like these, that there have always been times like these.” However, I’m beginning to doubt, in 2021, if that maxim still holds.
At this time of year two years ago, we were furiously reading applications so we could relax and enjoy holiday gatherings in the coming weeks. We had no idea how quickly we would need to pivot (or how soon the word “pivot” would come to dominate our vocabularies).
Today, Covid-19 lingers as we sit on the cusp of other potentially monumental changes. Data recently released by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show an almost 8-percent decline since 2019 in undergraduates enrolled. These were supposed to be the relatively good times — the years to prepare, from a position of strength, for 2026’s dreaded “demographic cliff.”
We face an increasing number of prospective students with mental-health challenges. We’re trying to communicate with students on TikTok and other platforms in a communication and social-media market crowded with strongly competing messages. With changes in the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s Code of Ethics, competition is even more fierce, as colleges offer added incentives to entice potential applicants and troll for transfer students. More students are questioning the value of a college education, and the cost of that education continues to rise. Today, many colleges are financially out of reach for large swaths of the population. The abrupt decline in standardized testing is yet another major change confronting admissions.
On top of that litany of external challenges, college admission offices also are dealing with internal issues, especially the “pandemic shuffle” — an increasing number of staff members opting for jobs with greater certainty, less required travel, or more opportunities for remote work. The challenges seemingly have never been more intense.
After more than a year of Zoom meetings and webinars, I finally packed my bags this past September for NACAC’s yearly conference, in Seattle. My colleagues — normally an energetic, exuberant crowd — were jubilant over being together in person. And yet I would categorize the mood as mixed.
DJ Menifee, vice president for enrollment at Susquehanna University, agreed. “I think the anxiety in the air [at the meeting] was in relationship to the sluggish start to the application season,” he told me. Robert Alexander, dean of admission, financial aid, and enrollment management at the University of Rochester, said every conversation with colleagues at the conference touched on concerns about admissions teams — “they’re nearly burnt out.”
Others, however, were more upbeat, anticipating a return to more-normal operations bolstered by promising early admissions numbers this fall. Scott Schultz, vice president for enrollment management at Baldwin Wallace University, summarized the dichotomy well:
“I think there is a definite divide between the haves and have-nots … If you are selective, you are generating more applications and students than ever. The majority of institutions are facing the early stages of a reckoning, struggling to build a funnel as test-taker records dry up, and knowing they do not have the brand recognition and value add to justify their cost … If there’s not anxiety, it’s probably because someone isn’t paying attention.”
On my campus, at least, we are paying attention — and there’s ample anxiety to show for it. Even among our faculty members there appears to be a growing realization that it is an “all hands on deck” kind of year. A few weeks ago, I had an energizing conversation with a professor who wanted to discuss how she could advocate for more faculty involvement in the admission process.
However, not all of my enrollment colleagues at other institutions are hearing the same overtures. One told me that some faculty members had refused to consider renaming a major to appeal more to digital natives, calling it a “sellout.” That sort of obstinacy could prove detrimental in these challenging times.
Ashley Browning, vice president for enrollment at Hollins University, told me about her experience in communicating up the chain of command:
“The pandemic has accelerated challenges which before Covid-19 felt more distant or hypothetical. In our cabinet meetings, there is greater urgency around the various levers a tuition-dependent university must engage to offer a high-quality academic experience for students. For me, it feels like the pandemic has reinforced for my cabinet colleagues the interconnectedness of our work; the weight that sometimes felt unduly shouldered by undergraduate admission pre-pandemic now feels more like a shared responsibility.”
So what’s the bottom line? As Ken Anselment, vice president for enrollment and communication at Lawrence University, put it in an email, “The job is only getting harder. And the recent discoveries of new variants of Covid-19 (hello, Omicron) only make an uncertain future even less certain.”
In short, enrollment challenges are here to stay. While a small number of institutions have seen a minimal pandemic-related impact as they continue to successfully enroll their desired number and composition of students, a majority of chief enrollment officers probably spend fitful nights (as I often do) weighing the potential benefits of employing new outreach strategies in a Covid-weary market. Most of us can agree — from faculty colleagues to cabinet members — that the challenges of today carry a weight and complexity that’s different from the past.
Perhaps more-appropriate guidance for today would be what one of my graduate-school professors cited about how to market an institution: “Tell your story. Tell it often, and tell it well.” The institutions that know what they do best and whom they best serve — and that capture the attention of a distracted public in a crowded, noisy market — will be those that most successfully weather the storms ahead.
