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Institutional aid expenditures and discount rates have become one of the most contentious elements of enrollment management strategies for four-year colleges and universities. However, enrollment managers and other senior campus policy makers often fail to step back and carefully examine the relationship betwen policies/practices and issues of equity, student debt, and institutional mission. Typically, campus policy makers also lack benchmarking data from peer institutions.

“Institutional aid is a critical component of enrollment management strategies,” said , ��ɫֱ�� Executive Director. “However, institutions often have little understanding of how their policies fit in the larger picture and how their aid allocation compares with other institutions.”

More robust data at your fingertips

“Being able to have access to what peer institutions are doing will likely help enrollment managers and CFOs have more productive, meaningful conversations with presidents and provosts,” said , Director of the Center for Postsecondary Research & Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Indiana University Bloomington.

Fortunately, schools can now access that kind of information, thanks to the to the “” developed by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) with funding from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation.

Designed to allow higher education chief business officers, chief executive officers, board of trustee members, and other senior leaders to have an in-depth internal discussion on their institutional aid allocations, the tool displays over 30 aid metrics, such as:

• Total institutional grant aid per full-time equivalent student.
• Percentage of institutional grant dollars awarded based on students' demonstrated financial need.
• Total institutional grant expenditures as a share of total institutional operating expenses.

Learn more

In their session “Looking Under the Hood: A New Tool to Track Institutional Aid” at this year’s , Reilly, Hossler, and Derek Price, principal with ,  will introduce enrollment managers to the ins and outs of the benchmarking tool.

“Using this tool will help move conversations about aid into the broader public policy context,” Reilly said. “I think the information gleaned will provide significant data and information to see how institutions are doing relative to competing interests under the access and opportunity agenda.”

“The information [from the benchmarking tool] will probably result in some creative tension elated to merit, need, and total aid expenditures on campuses,” Hossler said. “I don’t know where that tension will go, but it will be fodder for discussion. I cannot imagine an institution not wanting to utilize this tool.”

Campuses will no doubt be looking for the best ways to capitalize on the information made available through the tool. “NACUBO and AGB will soon have conversations about identifying facilitators, consultants that can go onto campuses and help the president’s cabinet or board make sense of what this all might mean and where to go with that information,” Hossler said.

“And ��ɫֱ�� consultants would certainly use this on campuses looking to create a tuition discounting or leveraging policy,” Reilly added. “They can suggest ideas for good practices for using the tool."

According to NACUBO, tool data are currently available for 1,400 public and private non-profit two- and four-year colleges and universities in the United States.  

Access to the tool is limited to campus presidents and system chief executives, chief business/finance officers, selected institutional board of trustee members, and senior staff/administrators responsible for overseeing admissions, enrollment, and financial aid.  The tool, however, is already available for use and enrollment managers can encourage their presidents to request access through AGB or NACUBO.

To review the 24th Annual ��ɫֱ�� SEM Conference program or to register for the conference--October 26-29 at the J.W. Marriott Los Angeles L.A. Live--visit the .