Institutions are increasingly serving learners of varying ages and employment backgrounds. In fact, three fourths of today’s college students are nontraditional and 38% work full-time. Adult education has been on the rise in recent years, and institutions across America are turning to these undergraduate and graduate programs to enhance their revenue streams. Although revenue is an important driving factor, every institution must consider the following to ensure that an adult education program fits with your institution’s past, present, and future goals:(more…)

Take a look at the great photos below of Bethel University’s Welcome Center project. Read more about the project announcement and partnership with Performa Higher Education, as well as the Welcome Experience project overview. (Hit the play button to start manually).

Take a look below at some before and after pictures of our renovations on Bethel University‘s AC Lounge (click image below for full view):

We’ve been talking about a different way of looking at the challenge of retention on our campuses by focusing on why students stay rather than why they leave.  This alternative approach puts our attention on knowing our students, their needs, and enhancing the resources that really meet those needs.  In my last blog, I talked about one of the central truths in student success: students stay when they are academically integrated.(more…)

Students stay when they are academically integrated.

Here we are in the second installment of my summer series:  Let’s Talk About Why Students Stay!  As I mentioned in my first post, in our work here at Performa Higher Education (PHE), we see several campuses placing a great deal of energy on trying to figure out why their students leave.  While this information is important (and should be collected and analyzed as a part of a comprehensive enrollment research agenda), focusing solely on this deficit model may take our retention eyes off the strategies which we actually know have control of as an institution.  So, what does the research say about why traditional students stay?  We know that students are more likely to stay, be satisfied, and graduate when they are academically integrated. (more…)

Here at Performa Higher Education, our work related to student success is focused on why students stay rather than why they leave.  Why is that, you may ask?  The issues surrounding student success are complex – an interwoven mix of:

• an individual student’s identity
• a student’s fit with the institution
• the institution’s culture of student-centeredness
• the circumstances of life that might intervene at any time(more…)

The role of the chief enrollment officer has always been critical, but perhaps no more so than it is today.  In our work on college campuses we find a variety of organizational charts and reporting lines, and a constant need to clarify the role of the chief enrollment officer.  We often organize the role of the chief enrollment officer into four distinct categories of duties; leader, relationship broker, analyst, and strategist.

(more…)

Now that we are into June, well past the national Candidate’s Reply Date of May 1, what are private colleges reporting and what can still be done to impact the fall new student class?(more…)

Last year, Performa Higher Education, (PHE) partnered with nine institutions that use our Admitted Student Research (ASR) service to gain a sense of why some students chose one institution over another; a student’s decision-making process; how students gather information; and what students look at to determine which school is a good fit for them.

Our experience with ASR tells us that the results, when combined with an institution’s analysis of their data, help create a clear picture of the reasons behind applicants’ enrollment choices.(more…)