The purpose of this study is to understand how strategy and strategic decision-making have contributed to financial strength at those small, private, non-profit, less-selective, tuition-dependent institutions with small endowments that have established financial stability. Interviews were conducted of participants at three institutions, including…

As populist forces stretch apart higher education and government, colleges lobby in measurable ways to secure scarce funding and respond to accountability regulations. The non-profit and corporate lobbying literature provides a basis of comparison to ask if colleges lobby like corporations, which have been successful lobbyists under challenging…

How has the cost of recruiting a student changed during the pandemic years? How many staff members do admission offices have per student? What are the budget priorities for colleges and universities? These are just a few of the 14 findings in the "2022 Cost of Recruiting an Undergraduate Student Report." This report--based on a survey of…

What does it cost to recruit an undergraduate student? How many front-line staff do campuses have for each new undergraduate? Where do campuses expect to focus their budget resources? "The 2020 Cost of Recruiting an Undergraduate Student Report" provides findings from a survey of campus enrollment managers and admissions directors. This…

Graduate student enrollment has become increasingly important for universities. At the same time, competition for graduate students has increased, and the way those students search for programs of study has changed dramatically in the digital era. How can your program adapt and reach its graduate enrollment goals? This benchmark survey report…

The cost for higher education increased nearly 55% from 2002 to 2012, while state appropriations decreased 12% over the same time period (Government Accountability Office, 2014). The cost burden has been shifted heavily on students and their families as institutions have raised the cost of attendance in order to make up for declines in state…

States and the federal government have long provided substantial financial support for higher education, but in recent years, their respective levels of contribution have shifted significantly. Given the essential role that government funding plays in higher education access and operations, policymakers across the nation frequently face difficult…

This report offers information on how much institutions are spending on marketing and recruitment compared to their peers, including key benchmarks for return-on-investment, budgeting, resource allocations, recruiting transfer and international students, and more. The report provides separate findings for private vs. public institutions and…

Most discussions of college prices and of students' and families' ability to pay those prices focus exclusively on tuition and fees. This focus sometimes leads to policy recommendations that aim to eliminate tuition and fees without providing additional resources for students from low-income households to buy books and supplies and cover their…

Discussions about college affordability often revolve around helping students pay their tuition and fees. But nontuition expenses, including food, housing, and other living expenses, make up a large portion of student budgets and contribute to increased student debt. These expenses can be a barrier to student enrollment and completion. Lack of…

At $14 billion, the investment in operating support for higher education institutions from the coronavirus relief bill, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, is the largest one-year federal infusion of funds going straight to colleges since the Great Recession. Yet it's nowhere close to enough. Many states have already…

Higher education is under siege by a barrage of policy initiatives that aim to fundamentally transform the academy. The most visible and most sustained assault has come in the form of funding cuts. Nationally, funding for public higher education was 18 percent lower in 2016 than in 2008, amounting to a $10 billion total disinvestment. In many…

As a result of decreasing state and federal aid to colleges and universities, higher education administrators are seeking alternative revenue streams to help support operational expenses. Though commercial influences are not new to the higher education sector, their size and scope within traditional liberal arts and private non-profit universities…

What is the competition doing? How is technology changing things? And where are the gaps in today's outreach? To explore these questions, undergraduate officials from a broad cross-section of colleges and universities participated in a spring 2018 poll to produce this report. Data in this report reflect responses from 115 nonprofit four-year…

The 2020 General Assembly adjourned its regular session by providing over $390 million in additional general fund support for Virginia higher education institutions in the 2020-22 biennium. However, in March, the nation experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to address the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on state revenues, Governor…