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    Pathways to Post-Pandemic Enrolment Growth in Higher Education

    Recently, Stefanie Ivan, an enrolment management consultant and Royal Roads associate faculty, and I had an opportunity to facilitate a webinar on “Pathways to Post-Pandemic Enrolment Growth in Higher Education.” This is a follow-up webinar to the one we conducted on post-pandemic higher education enrolment trends (see my earlier blog) in February.

    We asked participants to share their most effective strategic enrolment management (SEM) strategy efforts. We then asked them to describe strategies for enrolling and supporting international, Indigenous, and domestic learners. Lastly, we asked them to say a bit about the learner and student support they provided.

    When asked to provide one word that describes the effectiveness of current SEM strategy efforts, the most frequently mentioned were disconnected, work-in-progress, and growing. Others identified include developing, unsure, hopeful but slow, disjointed, uninformed, innovative, ongoing, challenging, deepening, modest, and uncertain. It appears that the experience with SEM is quite variable with some saying it is stalled while others report it as in progress or growing.

    We then asked about strategies in use to enrol/support specific types of students. Below are some of the comments we heard.

    International Students:

    • Work closely with our key agents and agent relations management; strengthen relational networks
    • Develop a personal connection to the institution and community
    • Targeting markets that connect with Canada’s labour shortage areas
    • Provide incentives that are appealing to international students
    • Optimize admissions processes
    • Utilizing a group effort to recruit international students
    • Develop personal communications
    • Have not returned to accepting international students yet

    Indigenous Students:

    • Focused listening and working with communities to address their concerns and needs; engaging communities through partnerships
    • Developed an Indigenous strategic plan
    • Established an Indigenous scholars’ circle
    • Increasing and deepening supports
    • Going to communities with incentives, application forms, and testing formulas for completion on-site
    • We are not currently recruiting Indigenous students

    Domestic Students:

    • Balancing in-person and online events
    • More first-year transition strategies to help retention and success
    • Target movement in the job market and second-career students
    • Utilize a blended delivery model for full-time and part-time students
    • Work toward understanding what students and employers
    • Reach out to withdrawn student
    • Establish better support services, create more webinars/engagement, partner with community organizations, and follow-up strategies
    • Treat in-country ESL/ELL students as domestic prospects

    Learner and Student Support:

    • Online advising
    • Development of non-academic learning communities
    • Increased/streamlined communications (phone, email, forums, chatbot, extended hours, weekends)
    • 1:1 wellness check-ins
    • Alternative accommodations for learners who need it
    • A strong return to in-person and social and co-curricular activities
    • Entering students into classroom settings right away to determine learning needs

    Here is the Video from the webinar.

    With so much to do to stabilize and grow enrolments during these post-pandemic days, it will be important to be strategic and there is no better way to do this than through adopting and implementing SEM!

    -Clayton Smith

    Canadian Post-secondary Enrolment Trends

    Recently, Stefanie Ivan, an enrolment management consultant and Royal Roads associate faculty, and I had an opportunity to identify enrolment trends facing Canadian higher educational institutions for a series of Royal Roads University webinars. In this blog, I will share what we found.

    Let me describe our methods. First, we reviewed publicly-available data on the web that included provincial data reports as well as those compiled by Higher Education Strategy Associates, Globe and Mail, Statistics Canada, Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium, and the Council of Ministers of Education. Second, we collected comments from our social media network and Canadian colleagues. Third, we received input from students currently enrolled in the Royal Roads University Graduate Certificate in Strategic Enrolment Management.

    Here are some of the aggregate enrolment trends we uncovered:

    • College enrolments are continuing to grow, mostly due to continued international student enrolment growth. Some declines were reported in the Maritimes. Also, there is a reduction in demand for trades programming due to low unemployment.
    • University enrolment is mostly stable or recording slight increases/decreases. Some of this is due to part-time student enrolment increases.
    • Students may be shifting away from big urban research universities.
    • A slight increase in inter-provincial mobility was experienced in the Maritimes.
    • Admission conversion rates are becoming less predictable.
    • Completion rates have been impacted in some areas.
    • There is a growing interest in a gap year for direct-entry high school students.

    And here are the student-type enrolment trends we found:

    • Indigenous enrolment and completion rates are lower than rates for non-Indigenous persons. But the Indigenous birthrate is still the fastest among the groups monitored.
    • International student enrolments continue to lead enrolment growth.
    • Attrition rates are still impacted by the pandemic and high school students who did not seem to be prepared for post-secondary studies.
    • The enrolment mix continues to change. Visible minorities, learners with disabilities, and learners with mental health issues are increasing.
    • Students want to be primarily on campus, with some hybrid instruction.
    • Trust building with communities continues to impact some enrolment.

    Here is the Video from the webinar.

    We will be doing a follow-up webinar to explore the enrolment strategies that institutions are using to address these challenges. Feel free to share any strategies your institution is using or hoping to implement in the next year, and we will include them when we present on this topic for our follow-up webinar on Tuesday, March 21st. Here is a link to sign-up if you want to listen in or (hopefully!) participate in our discussion.

    The times are certainly uncertain and changing.

    -Clayton Smith