Category: Students and Enrollment Management

In this episode of Changing Higher Ed, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Mike McGetrick, Vice President at Jenzabar, where he heads up Spark451, the enrollment marketing firm he co-founded. Part two of their two-part conversation moves from branding into enrollment marketing, examining why institutions load their budgets at the top of the funnel while families deliberate after the acceptance letter arrives.

What you’ll gain from listening to this podcast:

✓ The Brochure Nobody Opened: What parents told Spark451 focus groups about when their student started reading.

✓ Melt Reclassified: The mechanism now driving summer melt, and who you are actually competing against in June.

✓ The Deposit Window: What holds a committed student against a better offer from a more desired school.

✓ The Stealth Applicant: Who is really receiving

Enrollment pressure in higher education is structural, not cyclical. Demographic contraction, shifting student expectations, workforce alignment demands, and persistent fiscal stress have exposed a leadership gap many institutions have avoided naming. Enrollment is routinely treated as a shared responsibility spread across admissions, marketing, student services, and academics, yet rarely is a single executive accountable for whether the system works. The case for a Chief Enrollment Management Officer draws on the perspective of Dr. Dan Predoehl, assistant dean of Extended Learning and director of the Emeritus Institute at Saddleback College. Dr. Predoehl brings more than 20 years of experience across enrollment management, academic administration, and student services in both two-year and four-year institutions. His work focuses on holistic enrollment management and the Chief Enrollment Management Officer role as a cabinet-level function

In this episode of Changing Higher Ed®, Dr. Drumm McNaughton talks with Bill Conley and Bob Massa, Co-Founders of Enrollment Intelligence Now, about how enrollment management has become higher education’s strategic fulcrum in the enrollment cliff era.

What you’ll gain from listening to this podcast:

✓ Why enrollment management is no longer just admissions and aid but the accountability system that links promises to student success and institutional viability.

✓ How shrinking pipelines, declining college-going rates, and discounting pressures are eroding financial stability.

✓ The growing influence of alternative credentials, nontraditional providers, and political mandates on enrollment strategy.

✓ Lessons from the origins of enrollment management in the 1970s and how its role has expanded across the institution.

✓ Insights from decades of leadership experience on balancing mission, market realities,