Reflections from CERPP – Thinking About the Future of College Admission

Last month, I had the opportunity to attend the Conference on Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice (CERPP) in Los Angeles, where, amongst other topics, we discussed the future of college admission. First, my shout out thanks to Julie Posselt, Emily Chung, and their team for hosting a great thought-provoking event.  Given the Supreme Court decision on race conscious admission coupled with the current administration activities, diving into the future of college admission was an important topic to explore.

Amongst the forward-looking topics within college admission involved how we work to provide greater transparency while promoting a message that higher education is attainable.  From my perspective, and based on some of the conversations, there was rich discussion about focusing on the institutional mission relative to the admission process.  While I wholeheartedly agree with this principle, the challenge in this space involves one of market position.  For middle- to lower-tier market institutions or those struggling to enroll their targeted number of new students, or for those with increasing financial aid spending rates that are tuition revenue dependent with low student demand, enrolling any student who helps achieve their respective bottom line financially serves to help the institution sustain, sadly, regardless of the institutional mission.  Having experience in this space, I witnessed institutions who admitted academically less prepared students who could afford the cost of attendance purely for financial reasons.  In some cases, these institutions did not provide infrastructure support to help these students transition, hence they persisted at lower rates, resulting in an enrollment revolving door. 

As an alternative, I recommend the following approaches.  First, institutions in these positions could begin engaging in broader strategic conversations about revenue and/or enrollment diversification beyond working to enroll students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, regardless of academic preparation.  This could involve transfer enrollment, where many public institutions thrive, graduate or online programs as well as curricular enhancement, to foster student demand, where infrastructure exists to teach a broader array of courses, thus reducing new program costs, just to give a few examples.  Note that this involves some political will on a part of the institution to take a different approach versus just leaning on the enrollment manager to “find more full- or near full-pay students”.

Another approach involves engaging in broader recruitment and admission tactics.  From a recruitment perspective, assuming the institution has capacity to grow, this involves working to enroll students from a broader socioeconomic spectrum.  The overall revenue per student may be less but overall enrollment increases, helping the bottom line.  Another approach is to engage in market development analysis to mine opportunities where prospective student enrollment growth opportunities exist. 

From a more operational perspective, taking a different approach to admission, that is more prescriptive or definitive, may identify students who the institution believes can be successful outside of traditional high school GPA or standardized test score measures.  For instance, assessing high school curricular rigor may identify students who have challenged themselves in the classroom but may not have shown as successful a GPA – but are grinder-type students.  Similarly, working to assess a student’s grit, resilience, or ability to overcome adversity via student essays, activities, or life experiences may help institutions identify students who can be successful outside of historically tracked admission metrics.  Angela Duckworth’s work on grit and resilience can serve as a rubric for measuring these characteristics.  Biasedly, I will continue to maintain that test-optional admission practices serve as an opportunity as four-years of high school work, from my perspective, is a stronger indicator of college success versus one test on one day of your life.

Ultimately, forward looking admission practices, I believe, will likely involve more meritorious language given the level of federal dialogue on the topic, but will continue to evolve as we look for new and different measures, that will likely involve AI, in identifying and assessing student potential.