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Webinar Discussion Highlights Using Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) to Enhance Institutional Financial Planning
More than 300 institutions logged in to the AACRAO Consulting Services (ACS) Webinar on “Using SEM to Enhance Institutional Financial Planning,” held this past Thursday at 2 p.m.
Gil Brown, Director of Budget & Financial Planning at George Mason University , set the tone for the webinar with a discussion on how financial tools can be used to support institutional mission. He noted that most planning tends to operate in a “silo” environment. However, integrating the processes for budgeting, enrollment management, and academic programs yields a number of benefits (For more on this topic, see the ACS whitepaper available at www.aacrao.org/consulting/integrating.cfm).
Brown offered several tools demonstrating how integrated planning can help institutions, including models of the enrollment funnel, a spreadsheet linking SEM and budgeting, and a model using 125 different variables to show the return-on-investment (ROI) on SEM. Brown noted that these tools empower users by demonstrating alternative scenarios that will aid in the planning process.
Bob Smith, President of Slippery Rock University, continued the discussion by acknowledging that SEM has helped institutions become increasingly more sophisticated. However, he noted that the changing reality of financing higher education will require the next step up to be considered. As Smith states, “when we first implemented SEM, we followed the mantra ‘enrollment by design, not by chance.' Now we have moved to the next level of ‘revenue by design.'” The keys to future vitality are to forecast, to know your revenue sources, and to make everyone a partner in the forecasting process. Slippery Rock has implemented performance incentives so that all departments are directly affected by outcomes. Smith concluded by stating that the key to SEM is to get everyone on campus involved. Institutions that make SEM a campus-wide effort will be the most successful in aligning their goals for the future.
After the initial presentation, Smith and Brown fielded questions from the audience. Questions focused on how these models could be tailored to meet different institutional needs, including those of private institutions, unionized environments, small schools, and community colleges. The audience also expressed interest in how evening and weekend courses affect outcomes, how to deal with the loss of majors in certain departments, as well as pricing for more expensive majors.
Attendees expressed their appreciation for the topic and the easy-to-use format. Participant feedback included such comments as:
“All went exceptionally well. Very easy to use. I thought this was an excellent topic. I enjoyed learning from these gentlemen. I urge you to expand the material a bit and offer this again!”
“The webinar was extremely well managed -- the reminders the day before and hour before were terrific. The instructions were clear and concise.”
“'It went well and generated much discussion among those of us who attended.”
To read a related whitepaper on this subject, visit www.aacrao.org/consulting/integrating.cfm .
Missed the webinar? Go to webinar.aacrao.org/sem/ to sign up for the archived event.
To suggest future webinar topics, please e-mail webinar@aacrao.org