As an enrollment leader, you may be wondering if a partnership with an enrollment management...
Updated 10/23/2023
You’re working hard to lift enrollment numbers. You’ve identified the problems in your admissions process, and you’re ready to work with a partner who can help you.
You’ve built excitement around a solution but are shot down when you seek purchase approval: “That’s too expensive! Can’t we do this in-house?”
Maybe you’ve heard this before from leadership.
How can you convince your leadership that change is necessary?
You can hope that you are able to do enough without investing in additional resources.
But, hope is not an enrollment strategy.
You know this, and your boss knows this, but that knowledge doesn’t always translate into taking the swift and decisive action necessary to stay on track.
Doing Nothing About Enrollment Problems Costs a Lot
Sure—on paper, this investment may look expensive. It’s easy to look at your budget and rule it out.
But have you considered how much money you’re actually losing by doing nothing and failing to grow new student enrollment?
The truth is that for every dollar invested in raising enrollment numbers, the returns are huge and can be downright staggering to your institution’s net revenue now and for the next few years.
This is exactly why all of Enrollment Builders’ clients average a return on investment between 1,000 percent and 18,000 percent! For a smaller institution, a modest $70,000, twelve-month investment in a partnership typically translates to a dramatic increase in net tuition revenue.
The High Cost of Inaction for Higher Ed Institutions
The Cost of Inaction (COI) calculates the lost tuition revenue associated with institutions not implementing the necessary solution(s) to improve enrollment numbers.
You may only see the price tag of the solution but fail to understand the hidden costs of maintaining the status quo. Inaction can cost you more than you would spend actually implementing a new enrollment system or process.
Sure, making money isn’t the sole focus for most institutions. But, growing or maintaining enrollment is, and it is the key ingredient to institutional success now and in the future. Enrollment directly impacts revenue. Senior-level administrators and enrollment management professionals understand the importance of net tuition revenue.
You know who else does, too? Your competition. I guarantee that if you are not willing to spend the money on a new service or solution to boost enrollment, your competitors are. And they have!
The complacency of maintaining the status quo causes greater harm than the disruption of change. Simply put, the pain (or cost) of staying the same is actually greater than the pain (or cost) of the change.
The Pain of the Status Quo > The Pain of Change
So, just how much is maintaining the status quo costing you?
We’ve created a simple interactive COI calculator for you to plug in the numbers for your institution to get an approximate idea of your cost of inaction.
While it can’t calculate all the intangible costs of inaction such as what share your competition might take if they act while you don’t, our COI Calculator does offer you valuable insight on how much money you’re losing if you continue your same enrollment strategies.
To complete the COI Calculator, you’ll need to know:
- Amount of current net tuition revenue
- Amount of desired net tuition revenue
- Average annual tuition increase (%)
Use this calculator to strengthen your position when making a case for new initiatives.
How could showing this to your boss provide additional context that gets your strategic proposals approved?
It has worked for many EB clients, and we’d love to hear how this works for you!
