strategic planning

Cultivating Advising Success: Should You Restructure Your Advising?

The solution to a struggling advising unit is not always a redesign; while restructuring can be an obvious way to show students you as an institution are addressing the challenges, it can be less effective than taking a more strategic, holistic approach to understanding the units’ challenges.

Beyond the Strategic Enrolment Plan: Examples of Target Setting Processes in the Frameworks

Aside from assessing the weight-bearing capacity of the framework, introducing a new process or task for strategic enrolment management differs between the four frameworks. In this post we’ll review how institutions who want to implement enrolment targets would do so in each of the frameworks.

Beyond the Strategic Enrolment Plan: Indicators of a Resilient Framework

The more highly structured a framework, the more decision-approval and accountability is transparent, and data is evident in proposal development and assessment. An institution with a SEM plan can be responsive regardless of framework.

Beyond the Strategic Enrolment Plan: Framework Challenges & Knowing when to Restructure

When SEM becomes a struggle beyond a single process, or when multiple targets seem unachievable, the framework may no longer be able to bear the weight the institution requires.

Beyond the Strategic Enrolment Plan: Uniting Academics and Administration in SEM Frameworks

Many post-secondary institutions struggle with bridging communication and decision-making between the Academic Units and Financial or Administrative perspectives. SEM plans are tools to align perspectives and priorities, and frameworks provide the structure for building together.

Beyond the Strategic Enrolment Plan: An Introduction to SEM Frameworks & Why They Matter

As the car picked up speed and passed the other, I couldn’t help but see the parallels with Strategic Enrolment Management planning and structure theory in higher education. A SEM plan is built appropriately for its frame, supported by an effective pit crew, and steered by a skilled driver.

Enrolment Forecasting in Support of SEM

SEM prompts consideration of the many variables, both academic and administrative, that impact a student’s experience, progress, and future enrolment. Data, or the lack thereof, influences an institution's ability to define what future student populations may look like.

Effective Partnerships Between Academic Units and Central are Key

Answering, “How many students are we going to have?” involves not only predicting the future but defining the parameters in which it is possible. Neither central administration nor academic units can successfully forecast future enrolments without the other.

Tips for Moving to Near-Real-Time Data in Higher Education

Learning to work with daily or real-time data feels like learning to drink from a firehose. As more universities and colleges move to having near-real-time data, we offer these helpful tips.

Getting Your Intakes Approved

If you work in Institutional Analysis, Institutional Research or similar, you know getting your five-year plan approved can often be more of a marathon than a sprint. There are consultations (and consultations, and consultations…), new directions, and almost always a surprise or two.