Dr. Jill Landesberg-Boyle

When we speak of recruitment in higher education, we are prone to consider some of the more commonly considered strategies. These ideas and processes include mapping how prospective student inquiries are handled, rebranding our messaging, increasing the use of electronic messaging and investing in software that promises (although don’t necessarily guarantee) great returns. What we often overlook, though, is something that can increase enrollment (and even recruitment) without any investment of new resources, other than time and human power!  To what am I referring – the course schedule.

When I, Dr. Jill Landesberg-Boyle, assumed the position of president at Florida Keys Community College, I knew I was stepping into a very problematic situation.  For the past ten years, annual enrollment declines had averaged 50 FTE and the number of fee paying FTE was 627 – with the state anticipating another 50 FTE decline that first year.  I spent a great deal of time meeting with students and soon learned that they could not get the classes they needed in any kind of predictable, concise schedule that worked in concert with their busy lives juggling jobs, families, and other commitments. As one student told me, “Dr. Boyle, my boss told me I had to pick between school and work because he couldn’t depend on me to assume a regular work schedule.”

I asked for data on the situation – how many classes were offered in the morning hours? How many freshman classes were offered? What times were most busy? Was there any survey that had ever been done on times students wanted to have classes offered?  I received reams of data – all seeming to reinforce the refrain from faculty that there were enough classes in the right time blocks.  Finally, after considering the pages and pages of reports, and juxtaposing that against what I was hearing from students, a decision was made to gather as many faculty as possible (we were still on summer break at the time), put all the classes on the walls of the conference room, and ask the question, “I’m a first year student taking a general Associate of Arts program trying to fulfill my requirements – sign me up for a schedule. What we found astounded all of us – we actually could not identify twelve credits that fit the requirements for the program and did not conflict in timing with other required classes. In one case, the only freshman math class was offered one day a week – a Monday for three hours over a lunch break. Reportedly, that was the only time the instructor wanted to teach it so that he could keep his schedule to under five days a week.. It was eye-opening.  What was more surprising was that the classes that did fit a first-year AA student schedule required the student to come to campus for a class, leave campus for a few hours, and then come back to campus for an evening freshman seminar!

We acted swiftly in building schedules from ground zero; that is, we started with the requirements, and then filled in the time blocks. All the while, we made sure that the class schedule was pedagogically and pragmatically sound (a three hour math class just isn’t helpful in advancing precarious math passage rates).  Almost overnight, our enrollment jumped as student course loads moved from just over 8 credit hours per student, to over 11 credit hours per student.  To put this in perspective, this one change, accounted for 25% of our enrollment increase that semester.

Next time, when you are considering how to improve enrollment (and retention) remember to listen to your students as you inquire about their experience registering for the classes they need. This strategy may not be as flamboyant as developing new recruitment materials with beautiful pictures and interesting descriptions of student scholarship, but it is a valuable and all too often overlooked aspect of enrollment management that is critical to building a successful student experience.

This one change alone reversed our 10 year decline and instead generated a 10% increase in enrollment that very fall semester.

Please feel to contact me regarding more information on this and other successful recruitment initiatives, Dr. Jill Landesberg-Boyle.