Enrollment Management: Are There Ideas We Haven't Tried Yet?

摘要

As teachers, we hear a lot of negatives about enrollment. Negatives like fewer students are interested in engineering and engineering management, or the population of traditional students is shrinking, or people won't choose engineering or engineering management because the number of manufacturing companies in the U.S. is decreasing. Negative statistics, negative statements, negative views of the future. But what about the positives? Are there any? And if there aren't very many positives, what are we going to do about reducing the power of the negatives? Should we reevaluate traditional approaches to enrollment management from a business management point of view? Should we consider changing the way we recruit and retain students? Are there lessons that can be learned from business that should be applied with zeal in order to improve enrollment? This paper summarizes a broad spectrum of practical business sales advice from business books across decades in order to present several ideas that you may want to consider in order to enhance your organization's enrollment management methods. This paper doesn't research or make any comparisons with what is currently being done in any engineering or engineering management program. It presents advice from the outside of engineering in the form of a summary of business sales advice from business people. It seeks to help you answer the question: How are you going to combat the doom-sayers?