Company News
Maguire Associates Releases New Book,
“EM=C²: A New Formula for Enrollment Management”
Challenges college and university leaders to redefine how they manage
the ever-changing competitive, societal, and technological forces
affecting those making college-choice decisions as students
and throughout their lives.
CONCORD, MA - September 25, 2008 – “It doesn’t take an Einstein to know that Enrollment Management (EM) needs to be reformulated for the new world of higher education – a world in which virtual communities proliferate, global boundaries are erased, ‘stealth applicants’ abound, and U.S. News, MySpace and Facebook shape the expectations of those making college choice decisions”, write John (Jack) Maguire and Lawrence (Larry) Butler of Maguire Associates in their new 152-page book aimed at admissions executives and university leaders, EM=C²: A New Formula for Enrollment Management.
The book takes a provocative look at strategies for inspiring and engaging students, parents, alumni and a host of other stakeholders in mutually productive lifelong relationships. It offers fresh insights and special perspectives from Mr. Maguire, who coined the term and developed the discipline of “enrollment management,” and over the past 25 years has helped make it a virtually universal practice among the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities. He and co-author Larry Butler (with input from their Maguire Associates colleagues), take a thought-provoking look at how the practice of EM, “in far too many schools, has become more about gaining short-term competitive advantage at the point of enrollment and less about finding the best fit between school and student to the long-term benefit of each.”
Enrollment management seeks to quantify and optimize the relationship between an institution and a student from the time that student surfaces as a prospect, through the years he or she is enrolled, to graduation and well beyond – encompassing every relationship an individual has with a college or university. EM speaks to processes as diverse as: competitive positioning, optimizing incoming classes, strategic pricing and financial aid, strengthening student satisfaction, measuring students’ post-graduation achievements, engaging alumni, and stewarding donors.
“On one level, we tell a story about the evolution of Enrollment Management from its origins right up through today. On another level, though, it’s a story about higher education in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century and where – for good or ill – it seems to be heading. And in keeping with our look at twenty-first century practices, we are connecting the book with a dynamic website to quickly share our ideas throughout the world, seek input from our professional colleagues, and continuously update the EM community’s body of knowledge through ongoing forums,” the authors note.
According to Maguire, the Internet age and rise of third-party college rankers are among the forces turning the original paradigm on its head, and weighting the value of short-term marketing over other critical functions. Colleges and universities face unprecedented challenges that undermine their sense of institutional control:
• Stealth Applicants: When more and more candidates for admission are “stealth applicants” surfing the Net and are totally unknown to the institution, how does the institution control its student recruitment and messaging?
• What a Wicked Web: When any message posted by anyone can gain traction through an ever-expanding universe of online social networks, how does a school control its institutional reputation?
• Seduction Most Rank: When third-party entities like U.S. News & World Report have so much influence over public perception of relative institutional quality that they can seduce institutional leaders to “game the system,” how does an institution control its distinctive identity and promise?
• Global Poaching: When the value propositions of universities in other countries have so improved in relation to our own, and when awareness of this is a mere mouse-click away, how does a school control the geopolitical boundaries that had until this point defined its student markets?
What’s needed to turn these challenges to institutional control into opportunities to build stakeholder support, according to Mr. Maguire and Mr. Butler, is a reformulation of EM that understands, inspires, engages and leverages a “Community of Communities (C²)”– communities that include not only students but also faculty, parents, alumni, advocates, influencers, stewards, donors, etc. The authors believe that EM has only begun to fulfill its potential as a professional discipline. They note that the time is ripe to assert a far more effective, multi-dimensional, nonlinear approach with Community at its core that embraces the reality of a global, socially-networked marketplace, and does so in large part by harnessing the power of the information technologies that enable and track the behaviors of its members. This C² approach seeks to influence rather than control these communities – through data-driven insight, values-based inspiration, highly responsive assistance, and flexible facilitation.
“We believe adopting a C² approach can help EM practitioners regain the high ground and a new sense of institutional ownership of the terms shaping the current debate over the metrics, the messages and the methods used in marketing higher education to all of its many student and donor communities,” the authors note.
Maguire Associates is launching a dedicated community website – www.TheCommunitySquare.com – as a companion to the book and a forum for continuing discussion of the book’s ideas. They invite college and university leaders and enrollment management officers to visit the site, contribute to the discourse and become part of this new forward-thinking EM community. The website also provides excerpts from the book and details on how it can be purchased. EM=C² is published by Trafford Publishing, Victoria, BC, Canada.
About the Authors:
John Maguire
Jack Maguire is Founder and Chairman of Maguire Associates. As an academic trained in the scientific method, with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, he introduced market research to the field of admissions in the early 1970’s when he became Dean of Admissions at Boston College, and broadened that discipline into the first “enrollment management” model for the recruitment and retention of students. The model has since benefited hundreds of institutions.
Lawrence Butler
Larry Butler is a Senior Consultant at Maguire Associates where he heads the firm’s strategy practice. He began his 35-year consulting career with The Boston Consulting Group, where he was responsible for strategy assignments on behalf of a broad array of corporate and institutional clients. He has written extensively on strategic planning and “dashboards” for governing boards and senior management teams.
Maguire Associates
Maguire Associates is a research-based consulting firm that exclusively serves educational clients – close to 400 of them – from colleges and universities to independent and public schools, consortia and government organizations focused on education. For 25 years, the firm has applied innovations in market research, analysis, and predictive modeling to help clients understand the dynamics of past performance, apply insightful knowledge to sound decision-making, and attain desired outcomes. For more information, visit www.maguireassoc.com.
For review copies or interview requests, contact:
Erin Vadala, Warner Communications
978/468-3076