Enrollment Management & Managing Enrollment: Setting the Context for Dialogue.

MANAGEMENT HAS BECOME AN IMPORTANT LEADERSHIP FUNCTION ON MANY COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY CAMPUSES. IT IS ALSO ATTRACTING CRITICAL ATTENTION HERE AND ABROAD AMONG OBSERVERS OF OUR SYSTEM OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION. WITH THIS ESSAY, WE BEGIN A SERIES THAT WILL EXAMINE POLICIES AND PRACTICES THAT ARE CENTRAL TO CAMPUS-BASED EFFORTS TO MANAGE ENROLLMENTS AND ACHIEVE GOALS, THEREBY CLARIFYING AN ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE ON ISSUES RANGING FROM ADMISSIONS MARKETING, TO RANKINGS, FINANCIAL AID, AND STUDENT SUCCESS. THE GOAL OF THESE ESSAYS, WHICH WILL BE A REGULAR FEATURE OF FUTURE ISSUES OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY, IS TO EXTEND OUR UNDERSTANDING OF MANAGEMENT, EXAMINE THE UNDERPINNINGS OF THIS EMERGING PROFESSION, AND PROMOTE PROFESSIONAL DIALOGUE In the early 19 80s, The College Board and Loyola University of Chicago sponsored the first national conferences on management. These early conferences drew a sparse attendance but served nevertheless to engage a number of early adopters in defining this emerging concept. The term enrollment was still new; having been coined in the mid-1970s at Boston College, no one was quite sure what it entailed. Yet even at these earliest conferences, several core principles were crystallizing: management involves a marketing orientation toward student recruitment and admissions; student retention is as important a part of efforts as student recruitment; financial aid can be used in a systematic fashion to achieve goals. Early advocates of management incorporated the use of strategic planning models to achieve goals, using research and analysis to guide planning and strategy. Since it first arrived on the higher education scene, management has been seen as a process of bringing discipline, integration, and intentionality to the process of achieving an institution's goals. In addition to defining some core principles of management, early practitioners also had an interest in optimal organization structures. The structural question has always been twofold: (1) to be most effective, what functions or units should be organized together as part of an management effort, and (2) how should the management effort itself be structured within the broader college or university organizational context? The first question asks if offices such as registration and records, orientation, career planning, academic advising, and marketing should be included with admissions and financial aid as part of the management effort. The second asks whether these management units should be aligned with traditional structures such as student or academic affairs or whether they should constitute an entirely separate structure with its own senior campus leader (such as a vice president or associate provost for management). Since those early beginnings of management, much has happened to shape the administrative practices of our field, to refine its core principles, and to explore structural alternatives. The aac rao -sponsored Annual Meeting for Strategic Enrollment Management - which will mark its 18th year in 2008 - has become a major annual conference attracting more than 1,000 professionals from the United States, Canada, and several other countries. References to management now are common throughout both scholarly and professional publications in the field of higher education. Graduate courses and degrees in management are found in higher education curricula. College and university officers with management in their tide and responsibilities are commonplace, as are management consultants. Even if its core principles and optimal structures have evolved over the past 30 years and its scope and purposes still evade simple definition, there is no question that management is now and will continue to be a fixture in higher education administration. …