Joseph Howard is vice chairman for enrollment at Widener College, a non-public nonprofit in Pennsylvania.
In fall 2024, undergraduate enrollment amongst first-year college students dropped by 5% in comparison with the 12 months earlier than, based on new preliminary knowledge from the Nationwide Scholar Clearinghouse Analysis Middle. Most of that lower was because of fewer current highschool graduates heading straight to school than in earlier years, the clearinghouse discovered.
A number of dynamics are probably at play, together with the ban on race-conscious admissions and a few universities’ abandonment of test-optional practices. However one outstanding wrongdoer is simple: the fiasco surrounding the brand new Free Software for Federal Scholar Assist.
As of Oct. 18, the botched 2023-24 rollout contributed to an 8.8% decline in purposes from the highschool class of 2024, equal to roughly 210,000 college students. It’s cheap to imagine a fair proportion of these college students merely didn’t matriculate and had been probably left behind by a damaged system.
Joseph Howard
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Anticipating these challenges, Widener College adopted a proactive method to monetary assist. And we succeeded.
The FAFSA submitting fee amongst Widener’s home admitted pupil pool remained properly above 70%, rising the variety of purposes acquired by 5% over the prior 12 months. We delivered greater than 2,500 financial-aid presents inside per week of the Training Division’s inexperienced mild and enrolled Widener’s largest undergraduate class in its historical past.
Our expertise reveals that establishments can actively promote school entry regardless of the disruptions brought on by FAFSA adjustments. With the U.S. Division of Training indicating the 2024-25 FAFSA will not be totally obtainable till Dec. 1, we encourage different establishments to think about a few of the methods we deployed.
Interact your campus neighborhood
It takes a whole campus to recruit a cohort of scholars. In your neighborhood to be efficient companions in that course of, transparency and common communication are key. Our campus started getting ready for a delayed timeline in September 2023. For our college and employees, we framed this disruption as one of the consequential adjustments in increased schooling in many years.
Amid this sense of urgency, robust partnerships and inventive considering shortly emerged. As an illustration, our college and tutorial leaders labored to reassess the timing of our marquee occasions for admitted college students. These occasions present an important alternative for college students and households to fulfill with monetary assist professionals and assessment their monetary assist presents — however this requires assist packages to be obtainable. Understanding that monetary assist knowledge could be launched far later than ordinary, we elected to postpone these occasions.
We then discovered that the Training Division wouldn’t meet its purpose of a Jan. 31 knowledge launch to schools — with only a day’s discover. We once more took motion, making the choice to abandon Widener’s Could 1 determination deadline. This affected every little thing from orientation timing and new pupil advising to the registration course of and course part. If not for the spirit of partnership we nurtured, neighborhood help for such a major determination might need been stymied.
Talk, talk, talk
In our FAFSA solicitation efforts, we pivoted from a transactional outreach method to 1 primarily based on partnership. We acknowledged college students’ and households’ confusion and frustration upfront and sought to guarantee them that we had been within the course of collectively.
We dedicated to retaining college students knowledgeable amid abrupt adjustments, software program bugs and delays. Along with a public-facing college webpage, we supplemented outreach with TikTok movies that includes our financial-aid workforce, ongoing digital occasions for FAFSA help (for all college students, not simply our candidates) and messaging to highschool counselors.
We additionally communicated with tenacity and selection. Postcards, textual content messages, e-mail and one-off outreach by admissions counselors had been staples in our toolkit. Our advertising and marketing workforce tailor-made its digital outreach technique and delivered our messaging on to college students and oldsters by their social media streams. And we communicated at scale — the median admitted pupil acquired 28 discrete factors of engagement from Widener particular to FAFSA submitting.
Empower admissions as monetary assist companions
Too usually, monetary assist processes are thought-about separate from the broader admissions and recruitment journey. We generally heard admissions counselors categorical uncertainty about monetary assist machinations, making feedback to the impact of, “We ship them to monetary assist however don’t know what occurs after that.” The inverse was additionally true — colleagues in monetary assist had been unclear about what college students had been listening to from their admissions counselors and seeing of their admissions portals. Bridging these divides with shared experiences, terminology and sources was key to making sure Widener spoke with a standard voice.
We additionally pivoted to handle the urgency and forethought that might be required of our monetary assist workforce after they lastly acquired FAFSA knowledge and will end packaging assist. Admissions partnered with our advertising and marketing workforce and took accountability for our FAFSA-outreach efforts. We added FAFSA-filing indicators in our admissions system, giving admissions counselors entry to that info. We additionally added it to our college’s admitted-student rosters and gave every admissions counselor a filing-rate purpose for his or her pupil inhabitants. The FAFSA course of turned a necessary level in conversations with college students and highschool counselors.
Shifting these duties ensured that our financial-aid colleagues — with help from our IT workforce — may prioritize preparation for financial-aid packaging and conduct essential testing of packaging formulation. We wished to be ready to roll out assist as shortly as potential.
Working collectively to realize our missions
Now we have the privilege of working in an business that adjustments younger folks’s lives. With that comes a accountability to make sure that each pupil has the financial-aid help they should entry a university schooling. Working collectively to assist college students find out about school affordability is essential to that mission — for all of us.
