Melting in the Enrollment Climate

For many of us, the summer heat was scorching. For many colleges, summer melt and management was a searing annual reality once again. According to the Strategic Data Project at Harvard University, 10 to 40% of “college intending” students in the spring never appear at their campuses in the fall.

Influencing Success or Failure in Summer Melt

Two forces are influencing our success or failure in college enrollment. One is the decreasing population of available students who will pursue higher education, and the other is the uncertainty of both students and families about their commitment to traditional educational goals and the associated costs. These influences require enrollment staff to do more to ensure sufficient incoming classes and maintain institutional health.

Are all colleges and universities seeing a decline in applicants due to summer melt? No, but many are. Admission staff court students for at least 18 months before high school graduation hoping to garner enough commitments for a solid infusion of new students each year. As the birthrate declines and the population of eligible high school graduates has decreased, the landscape has become more competitive, and administrators have become more creative in seeking new student populations and different content delivery styles. Think about the rise of international recruiting, the pursuit of adult learners, the increase in online and hybrid courses, three-year undergraduate degree programs, alternate financing options, the steady stream of new majors, and restructured transfer rubrics.

Now Viable – Work or College – A current metric in Summer Melt

Added to the population shift is the new world of work. While we’ve known for many years that jobs in the digital age are constantly morphing, we now see clearly that success does not necessarily rest on a college degree, and parents are increasingly asking why they should pay for education that might not be useful. Of course, the intrinsic value of education is a very personal calculation, but the extrinsic value is being debated by many. Right now, there are numerous jobs available, and employers are relaxing their educational requirements. There is also a rise in entrepreneurship, which requires creativity and guts more than a formal higher education. Add to that the success of online influencers, remote creative workers, remote salespeople, and whatever new digital-age career paths arise in the near future. Intellectual pursuit is suspect in some communities, and parents of first-generation students are caught in this debate.

Students and parents are thinking about these societal changes at the same time that they are considering the traditional paths to higher education. They are weighing the time, the cost, and the potential outcomes. Those of us who work in higher education passionately embrace the intrinsic value of learning and engaging in critical thinking. Our job is to convince families of the long-term worth of these pursuits. So, we spend a lot of time recruiting students to “our side.” We visit with them, market to them, appeal to them with non-academic experiences and try to bring their parents along for the ride. It’s a daunting 18 months of wooing, but there is a sense of victory when students sign up and deposit in the spring or early summer. We’ve done it.

It turns out that we haven’t achieved success yet. That real measure is the student tally we take in the fall.

Summer Melt – Are there solutions?

Knowing that summer melt will happen is the first step to preventing it. No-show data provides us with answers about the numbers, the reasons, and the remedies. The euphoria of college acceptance wears off quickly when the bills arrive, and sometimes the bills arrive before anything else. Somehow the families did not realize how much this would cost, and the threshold for “too much” is different for every family. While admission staff are encouraged and trained to talk about financial aid, they are also encouraged to suggest that the college or university will help families navigate this difficult path. Does that happen? Are there enough counselors available to discuss a family’s specific concerns? How do we help them meet deadlines, understand the kinds of aid available, and avoid onerous debt? During the summer all this financial reality sinks in, and, for parents who are questioning the value of education, this may be the last straw. Giving up seems like the best solution for them.

While financial woes are easy to understand, other reasons for summer melt are less tangible. In addition to financial applications and deadlines, most colleges have an excessive complexity of summer tasks – forms to fill out, orientations to schedule, medical clearances, etc. Many students have jobs with little or no time off. Some students don’t have access to computers after high school. Some just don’t know that they will have to pay attention to these myriad tasks that are sent to them via email. “At-risk” and first-generation students are still at risk during the summer. High school is done for the year, and college counselors are not there to provide support. For some students, this big step in their lives is overwhelming. Even their high school friend groups have disbanded, leaving a peer support vacuum. Then they miss orientation programs and slide even farther down the rabbit hole. Finally, there is fear – fear of failing, fear of not finding new friends, fear of adulthood.

More than 95% of students have smartphones – including those who have no other internet access. All web pages must be formatted for phones and allow students to perform tasks on the phone screen. This does require some thought and planning to simplify the summer intake forms and to create interaction between college personnel and students. Students and parents need communication about campus resources, orientation, and events during the school year. Parents need to know who to call if they are concerned about their students. Outreach from advisors and peer mentors helps make students feel connected. While this happens to some degree at orientation programs, we must maintain direct communication throughout the summer.

While traditional first-year students are perceived as vulnerable, others are, too. Transfer and adult students need attention and communication as much as younger students. They have the same questions, doubts, and fears. International students, too, have incredibly complex tasks just to be able to come to the US, and they need a great deal of flexibility and support from dedicated college personnel.

Send a Tee Shirt – Really? The Management of Summer Melt

Sending some tee shirts and other swag adds fun to the summer anticipation, but the key to keeping students headed to campus is making them feel a deeper relationship with the institution that they have chosen. Connection with real people is what they seek.  Summer melt can be managed and mitigated.

• It doesn’t matter if outreach comes from the financial aid counselors, the admission staff, the faculty, or the student affairs staff. Organizing outreach from current students is valuable as well.
• Urging the housing staff to assign roommates as early as possible creates a bond among incoming students.
• Orientation specifically for parents draws them into the community and helps them understand what they are paying for.

None of this happens haphazardly. Sometimes there is no clear deadline for the admission staff to hand off first-year student communication to the student affairs staff, but it is important to have a plan outlining who does what during the summer months. Admission offices generally have a well-developed CRM and can push out email and text more easily than other offices. This project should be a partnership among the offices involved. Summer is no longer a “downtime” when college staff can relax and ignore the looming summer melt.

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Communication is most important for both students and parents/guardians to reverse summer melt trends..

• Make it easy for incoming students to get what they need even if they don’t know what they need.
• Explain what various educational jargon terms mean. Not all students know what credit hours are, what satisfactory progress is, or that a deposit holds one’s place in the class.
• The reality is that marketing to rising first-year students does not end in June.
• The college website must speak to them with welcoming and easy-to-navigate pages that provide useful information for those who have deposited.
• Explain why various forms are required. Email and text reminders with links to the web are important.
• If students don’t respond to reminders, then phone calls are essential. Many college personnel only call students when they do not arrive on opening day. We have already lost them at that point.
• Coaches are noted for their attention to incoming athletes, and we might do well to adopt some of their methods for students who are not on teams. We can create teams for them.

What are you doing NOW about next summer’s “melt”?

Now is the time to plan for next summer and to ask those who interact most often with current first-year students what they think might change summer melt. It is not the time for blame but rather for collaboration. The course of action will be specific to the institution, based on the characteristics of its student body and the extent to which it can financially support the changes needed.  In the end, it is within the power of campus groups working together to create a welcoming community that serves students best and at the same time offsets summer melt.