By Lexi DeMinter and Santi Elbow
Edgewood College enrollment is 89% ahead on confirmed freshmen students as of March 15.
In March 2019, there were 132 confirmed first-year students as opposed to this March when there are 250 confirmed first-year students for the fall.
Confirmation process
This is in part because Amber Schultz, vice president for enrollment management, has worked to make the confirmation process easier for incoming students than it has been in previous years. She and Heather Harbach, vice president for student development, made the former one-step process into a two-step process.
“All we have asked students right now is to say, ‘Yes, I’m coming (to Edgewood College), and I would like to come to Eagle Enrollment Day on this day,’” said Shultz. The enrollment office then tracks when those students fill out advising, financial aid and housing forms to see if they are on track to enroll in and attend classes in Fall 2020.
There is no deposit required for students to confirm their enrollment. Schultz said that though payment is a kind of guarantee, she is also aware that the requirement is limiting to some students.
The enrollment deposit has “an accessibility issue that comes into play when we are wanting to attract students from a variety of different financial backgrounds and all ranges of socioeconomic diversity,” she said.
Edgewood College administrators said they plan to make the school more attractive to minority groups. “Here in the upper Midwest where our demographics are changing drastically, if we don’t figure out how to become an extremely attractive institution to students of color, English language learners and other non-traditional populations, we will probably cease to exist,” said Schultz.
Investments in marketing
Schultz said digital, television and radio ads have been bought to get Edgewood’s name out to people throughout Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, and Iowa.
“When I arrived here in August, I noticed Edgewood College had a zero overall brand awareness marketing budget,” said Schultz. The college launched its “Bring It” campaign in November, a marketing project done with Rippe Keane Marketing.
Other enrollment efforts include investing in customer relationship management (CRM) technology to stay in touch with potential students, the addition of new sports teams (men’s volleyball and both men’s and women’s lacrosse), a respiratory therapy academic program, an expansion to post-baccalaureate nursing, and an Alternate Entry Master of Science in Nursing (AE-MSN) program.
Enrollment at other Wisconsin colleges
The University of Madison System had a 2.6% enrollment drop in 2019, according to University of Wisconsin News.
Small liberal colleges such as Beloit College and Ripon College have had a large decline in enrollment numbers in the past several years. From 2000 to 2015 Beloit College had more than 300 students enroll each year. In 2018 they had 263 first-year students enroll. In “Then Enrollment Fell Off a Cliff: How Beloit College Is Trying to Regain Students,” published November 2019 in The Chronicle for Higher Education, Beloit’s president, Scott Bierman, said, “We have not done a sufficient job of explaining our value proposition. It’s as simple as that.”
Several unsuccessful attempts were made to reach out to Beloit College for comment.
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