When an Enrollment Problem Isn’t Really an Enrollment Problem
When enrollment numbers aren’t where a school wants them to be, the natural response is often to look toward the admission office. Do we need…more inquiries? …more applications? …better follow-up? …another open house? …a new digital campaign?
Sometimes the answer is yes. But sometimes what looks like an enrollment problem isn’t really an enrollment problem at all. It is a:
positioning problem.
pricing problem.
program problem.
retention problem.
leadership problem.
family experience problem.
And no amount of additional marketing can fully solve it.
I was reminded of this recently while listening to an episode of the Upgrade School Marketing podcast featuring enrollment strategist Dana Nelson-Isaacs: “Does Your School Have a Market or a Marketing Problem?” (wait, before I go on, if you aren’t listening to this podcast already, go subscribe. I’ll be here when you get back.)
Dana makes an important distinction between a market problem and a marketing problem. If the number of families in your market is shrinking, the competitive landscape has changed, or what families want no longer aligns with what you're offering, that's fundamentally different from having plenty of potential families who simply don't know about your school or aren't responding to your message.
That distinction matters because different problems require different solutions.
And I'll take the idea one step further: sometimes the problem isn't strictly market or marketing. Sometimes enrollment is simply where a much larger institutional problem becomes visible.
Enrollment is an outcome, not a department.
I’ll repeat that for the folks in the back. Enrollment is an outcome, not a department.
One of the biggest shifts schools can make is to stop thinking about enrollment as something the admission office does. Enrollment is the result of dozens of experiences and decisions happening across the institution.
What programs does your school offer? How clearly can families understand what makes the experience unique? Does tuition feel aligned with perceived value? What happens when a prospective family walks onto campus? Are current families happy enough to recommend the school? Do faculty understand the role they play in retention? Are leadership decisions making your school easier or harder for families to choose?
All of those things eventually show up in the enrollment numbers.
Which means that when those numbers aren't where you want them to be, the funnel is often where we see the problem, but not necessarily where the problem started.
Start with the place where families are saying no.
Good data can tell you much more than how many students applied. It can help you understand where the school's story begins to break down.
If inquiries are low, you may have an awareness problem. Or you may have a market problem.
If families inquire but don't visit, your messaging may not be creating enough interest to take the next step.
If they visit but don't apply, something about the experience, program, value prop, or fit may not be connecting the way you intended..
If they apply and are admitted but don't enroll, you have to get a handle on what (and where) families are choosing instead and why.
If you're successfully enrolling students but losing too many current ones, recruitment alone will never solve the larger enrollment challenge. It’s hard to fill a leaky bucket.
Regardless, each of those scenarios produces the same frustrating result: empty seats. And each one requires very different solutions.
Marketing can't fix everything.
Let me say that again too. MARKETING CAN’T FIX EVERYTHING. When enrollment declines, 9 of 10 times I see schools put pressure on increased marketing. Advertise more. Post more. Generate more leads. All of which often require more money.
Don’t get me wrong, marketing absolutely matters. But marketing's job is to create awareness and interest. Marketing isn’t closing the deal. It cannot permanently compensate for a weak value proposition. Great marketers can put a good shine on most anything, but they can’t make it a diamond. If you’re not actually delivering on what a family thought they were buying, you’re not stopping the churn.
Marketing cannot fix a program families no longer see value in. It can’t overcome an enrollment experience that is impersonal or full of friction points. And it certainly can't solve retention problems happening after students arrive.
In fact, increasing marketing before understanding the underlying problem can simply send more families into a funnel that isn't converting. That's an expensive way to discover something isn't working- and it’s not helping your reputation on the street.
Sometimes the numbers are asking a bigger question.
This is where enrollment management becomes much more than admissions.
Instead of just asking: How do we get more students?
Leadership teams need to be willing to ask: Why aren't more families choosing us?
Those questions sound similar. They aren't. The first will usually produce tactics. The second creates the kind of real conversations you need to have. It forces schools to look beyond the admission office and examine the entire experience through the eyes of families.
What are they comparing? (features or benefits)
What do they value? (hint: this is rarely the first thing they tell you)
Where are they hesitating? (look back to your data!!)
What assumptions are we making about why families choose us?
Has our market changed faster (or slower) than our school has?
And perhaps most importantly: Are we solving the pain points families actually have, or the ones we think they have?
Those conversations can be uncomfortable, but they're also where a meaningful enrollment strategy begins.
Enrollment belongs at the leadership table.
The Director of Admission may own the enrollment process. But they cannot own every factor that influences enrollment. Enrollment issues are leadership issues. Program, finance, marketing and communications, student and family experience, and retention are conversations that must be happening in your leadership team meetings. The strongest enrollment cultures are the ones where enrollment isn't something leadership asks about periodically. It's a lens through which all institutional decisions are made.
When considering a new program, they ask how it strengthens the school's value prop. Discussing tuition? They consider affordability, positioning, and perceived value alongside the budget. Talking about retention? They don't just count departures, they look for patterns.
If enrollment falls short, they know fixing it isn’t as simple as asking the admission team to get more students. They ask why first.
Before you can solve an enrollment problem, make sure you've identified why you have it.
More inquiries may be exactly what your school needs. Or it might not. The challenge for school leaders is resisting the urge to jump immediately from a disappointing number to solutioning. First, follow the problem backward.
Look at the data. Listen to families. Examine where students are entering and falling out of the funnel. Look at your market and your competitors. Question your assumptions. Bring the right people into the conversation. Sometimes the most important enrollment decision a school makes has very little to do with admissions.
The numbers are telling you something. The real work is figuring out what.
