My higher education career has been all about Strategic Enrolment Management or SEM. From the beginning to now (and more to come!), I have learned about SEM, implemented SEM, and taught others about SEM. So, from being a practitioner, practitioner-scholar, and now a scholar, SEM has been at the centre of my professional life. Normally, I would not write about such things, but I couldn’t resist. It is my own way of starting off 2023 with a smile and a sense of pride.

Following a six-year run as director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) SEM Conference, Melanie Gottleib, AACRAO’s executive director, provided me with a special gift during our Toronto conference. It is a hooded sweatshirt with just three words imprinted on it, “AACRAO Professor SEM.” It fit 2022 perfectly with my promotion to professor last summer, being named editor-in-chief of Strategic Enrollment Management Quarterly, and the publication of the AACRAO book, “The Effectiveness of SEM in Canada: Reflections from the Field,” with long-time writing colleague Susan Gottheil. I will cherish it always!

Before rambling on, let me thank the many colleagues at AACRAO and my home institutions (the University of Maine at Augusta, Tallahassee Community College, State University of New York College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill, and the University of Windsor) who provided me with so much support over the years. Let me also thank the folks at Royal Roads University who allowed me to bring forward an idea we have been talking about in Canada for a long time; namely, the new Graduate Certificate in SEM (a shameless plug!).

Some of you may be wondering what this SEM thing is all about. Well, let me share a few thoughts.

While there are many definitions of SEM, the one penned by Hossler and Bean (1990, 5) is commonly embraced by the SEM community:

[Enrolment] management can be defined as an organizational concept and a set of systematic activities designed to enable educational institutions to exert more influence over their student [enrolments]. Organized by institutional research, [enrolment] management activities concern student college choice, transition to college, student attrition and retention, and student outcomes.

Subsequent writers have incorporated these words into their SEM definition: concepts and processes, institutional mission, and students’ educational goals (Bontrager, 2004); comprehensive process and academic contest (Dolence, 1993); comprehensive and coordinated process, and integration (Kerlin, 2008). The fundamental premise of SEM is that we must look at our enrolment health and sustainability throughout the entire student experience. Today, SEM has evolved to being a strategic component of institutional planning, resulting in:

• Instructional programs and services designed with intentionality, purpose, integration of effort, service efficiency, and positive interventions with students
• Integrated cross-campus collaborations and partnerships between faculty, administrators, and staff
• Use of assessment information-driven decision making
• Understanding how campus cultures impact enrolment management efforts
• Importance of shared leadership at multiple levels

Let’s simplify. The Cheshire cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland says, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” Yogi Berra, of New York Yankees fame, adds “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” And today, we have got some great places to go!

With my glass is half full approach, I can see some magical destinations. The first one is all about social justice. When we started doing SEM in the late 1970s, higher education was still a place where only some could go. Today, the door is open for many more, but not all. We need to put our collective heads together to ensure that our doors, both at the front end and at completion, are open to all who wish to continue their education. This includes Indigenous and racialized students, low-income and rural students, first-generation learners, and so many more. Second, we need to find ways to mature SEM into what many of us hoped it would become; namely, a managerial and educational framework. We are pretty much there with the former but have more distance to go to achieve the latter. SEM could be and should be a contributor to both of these goals.

Let me end with a passage from “The Effectiveness of SEM in Canada: Reflections from the Field” (2022, 53) that captures a possible future direction that the SEM community can traverse in the years ahead.

As the changing economy, politics, and student demographics have hit our institutions, it is ironic that we have been reluctant to explore difficult decisions and be truly strategic. Over the past few years, we have seen institutions of all types respond to these shifting pressures in similar ways–looking to international markets to replace domestic students, trying to rebrand and evolved into a different type of institution (changing from two-year to a four-year college, or an undergraduate into a graduate research institution), focusing on student retention. Can we use the SEM toolbox in new and innovative ways? We hope that the insights provided by SEM professionals across Canada will help higher education colleagues in institutions coast-to-coast build strategic plans that support students and institutions.

-Clayton Smith

References:

Bontrager , B. ( 2008 ). A definition and context for current SEM practice. In B. Bontrager (Ed.), SEM and institutional success: Integrating enrollment, finance, and student access. Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Dolence, M. G. (1993). Strategic enrollment management: A primer for campus administrators. American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and Datatel.

Hossler, D., & Bean, J. P. (1990). The strategic management of college enrollments. Jossey-Bass.

Kerlin, C. (2008). Community college roadmap for the enrollment management journey. College and University, 83(4), 11.