Decoding Graduate Enrollment Management with Joe Paris and Stan Kania

This episode reviews the new book, A Comprehensive Guide to Graduate Enrollment Management, edited by Joe Paris and Stan Kania.

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Who are Joe Paris and Stan Kania?

Joe Paris is the Dean of Graduate & Professional Studies at Delaware Valley University. Stan Kania is Assistant Dean of Admissions & Enrollment/Assistant Professor, Drexel University College of Medicine. Together, they recently edited a comprehensive guide for graduate enrollment managers that combines theory and practice to support student engagement and success.

In this Episode

Joe Paris and Stan Kania, the editors of the book A Comprehensive Guide to Graduate Enrollment Management, join FYI host Gil Rogers to talk about their book, which elucidates the intricacies and obscurities of graduate enrollment management, allowing scholars and professionals to advance research and practice in the field.

Joe and Stan talk about their backgrounds and paths through higher education, and the value that brings to their book, along with the data and research, they are able to use their analysis to contextualize that data for useful purposes.

They also mull over how to make the process more efficient and streamlined, in a way that has the student and their family at the top of mind, and really gears messaging and marketing for that purpose.

Listen to FYI on your favorite podcast platform!

Episode Transcript

Decoding Enrollment Management Research with Joe Paris and Stan Kania

Publishing Date: August 13, 2024

[00:00:00] Gil: Welcome back to FYI, the For Your Institution Podcast, presented by Mongoose. I’m your host, Gil Rogers. Today, I sit down and talk with Joe Paris and Stan Kania, who are editors of A Comprehensive Guide to Graduate Enrollment Management: Advancing Research and Practice. This new guide provides a framework for institutions to better support graduate students and support the enrollment of graduate programs for their institution with a great combination of theory, plus practice.

Let’s listen in.

[00:00:37] Joe: Hey, thanks for having us.

[00:00:39] Gil: Hey, thanks for being here. So, you both wrote a book, A Comprehensive Guide to Graduate Enrollment Management. I’ve got a copy for my YouTube viewers. I’ve got a copy right here in my background. Stan’s got a copy on his shelf. I’m excited to have you on. But you know, before we dive into the content and context of the book, I’d love for you both to share a little bit about your background, how you got to where you are, what your motivations are working in higher ed, specifically in graduate enrollment management. And then we can dive in from there.

So, Joe, I will kick it to you to start.

[00:01:09] Joe: Yeah, I’m not going to go all the way back, but I’ll just briefly share that I started my career in higher education as a tour guide, and it’s actually how I met my wife. We were tour guides together in the admissions office, and that’s when I really began to learn about the decision factors that families and prospective students grapple with when they make one of the most profound decisions of their lives, particularly at that juncture.

And I began professionally as an admissions counselor, traveling around the United States, meeting families and visiting high schools, and getting to, again, really know the process of admissions and how higher education institutions work. I then earned my graduate degrees. I went to Temple University for my doctorate where I also worked as assistant dean of the college of education and human development there, spent some time at Westchester University leading graduate enrollment management, and then most recently came to Delaware Valley University where I’m the dean of the school of graduate and professional studies, spent some time as a full-time faculty member in the higher education program at Temple, and much of my career as an administrator. So, I consider myself very much a scholar practitioner. And so, that’s my 30-second introduction, and I’d love to turn it over to Stan.

[00:02:23] Stan: Thanks, Joe. And thanks again for having us, Gil. So, I found higher education as an accidental profession that we sometimes hear about. I was graduating college from Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 2011. And as a young 21-year-old, didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, and fortunate enough, Marywood was looking to hire a part time graduate admissions counselor, and I said, “Well, this would be a good first little job, get some professional experience, go back to school, get a master’s degree, and find yourself from there.”

And only after being in that job for six months, I said, “Wow, I think I found where I’m meant to be.” And higher education was where I wanted to end up. And I just continued to grow my career from there. I worked at Marywood as a full-time graduate admissions counselor for seven years. I went from there to Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, served as their enrollment management coordinator, and then worked my way up to associate director of admissions, working with medical students, and then moved to Temple University, working for Joe for a brief period as the director of enrollment management, and then left Temple for a great opportunity here at Drexel University in their college of medicine as an assistant dean of admissions and enrollment, where I currently work. I also have a faculty appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Family, Community, and Preventative Medicine.

I knew from the onset that, working in higher education, I wanted to work with graduate students and adult learners. I think that, like every student, they’re very driven. I was someone who initially changed my career path going from undergrad to grad and I really wanted to work with those career changers. So, for me, graduate enrollment was the area that I wanted to land in. And I’m so glad that I’ve been able to advance my career up to this point.

[00:04:08] Gil: Awesome. Well, thank you both again for taking the time today. I would love to understand because, you know, higher ed, and you both alluded to it, for a lot of people, it’s not a career they start off planning on doing. It’s a career that finds you and you find it. Jill, we’ll start with you. I would love to understand your why, as far as not just writing a book about graduate enrollment management, but working in and staying in the field of graduate enrollment management, knowing that we’re in a time right now where, you know, we keep talking about things like staff shortages and great resignation and the just work-life balance. And there’s a lot that goes into this type of a career. What keeps you motivated?

[00:04:46] Joe: Yeah, for me, very much, it is having an impact. I mean, I know it’s a common response to a question about what motivates us, what keeps us driven, but it is having an impact on students’ lives and their professional trajectories. Stan also mentioned career changers. And for graduate students, often, it is helping them find their professional pathway.

And to me, that is very important, as we’re seeing a dynamic economy and workforce needing individuals with advanced degrees, with specialized career training to really thrive in a complex economy and workforce today. So, to me, it’s about helping folks find their path at any juncture during their lives, not necessarily coming right out of high school into baccalaureate programs.

But in many cases, folks who are coming back to higher education after many years out of a formal educational environment and helping them reacclimate to what it’s like to be a student. And to me, that is the most rewarding piece of it. It is the human centered nature of higher education that also keeps me driven. It’s complex because it is human-centered, right? Humans are inherently complex beings. And so, to me, it is very much about the ability to have an impact and help individuals find ways to better their lives.

[00:06:04] Stan: Yeah, very similarly to Joe. I think that, number one, the reason why I choose to stay in higher education and why I decided to fall into this field is, exactly as Joe poignantly stated in the first part of his answer, is really the impact of the trajectory of students’ lives. I mean, there’s nothing more rewarding than attending commencement every single year and watching our students walk across stage to receive their degrees with smiles on their face from ear to ear, knowing that, you, as a faculty member, as an administrator, as a staff member, in some way, shape, or form, had not only an impact on the trajectory of their life as a student and a professional, but also on the trajectory of their family’s life.

For some instances, and for some students, they may be first generation of college. They may be the first person to obtain a graduate degree, whether it’s master’s, doctorate, what have you. So, these are huge milestones in the academic life of these individuals. And knowing that you had some role in this journey of theirs is very, very rewarding.

But then, also, to go on top of what Joe said, I really enjoy the cyclical nature that is higher education, the complexity of it, also being a scholar practitioner and wanting to take my research background and allow myself to do research to answer some of those complex problems and use that to help shape strategy on policy, on enhancements, on improvements, on collaboration across multiple disciplines, across multiple programs to achieve ultimate success at both the macro levels — so the whole institution — but also micro levels, the individual units as well.

So, that’s really why I enjoy higher education. It really keeps me on my toes. It allows me to stay current on trends in higher education, policy development, but also research trends as well.

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[00:08:36] Gil: Awesome. I’d love to hear your motivations and understand, kind of, your why, because I think it leads us well into the conversation about your book. For our listeners and our YouTube viewers, the book is A Comprehensive Guide to Graduate Enrollment Management. And I feel like there’s a need to center the conversation specifically around this lens, right?

Joe, you mentioned there are specific needs that graduate students have that traditional undergraduates don’t. And I think a lot of the conversation in higher ed is usually centered, at least in the mainstream media of higher ed and whatever that is, around, you know, first time, full time, traditional high school or college undergraduate enrollment.

And there’s so much more to it than that, especially when, in this economy, in this time where we have people who are looking to complete a credential or looking to move up in their career. And for a lot of folks, that means investing in a graduate education or that next degree or that next program. And so, I’d love to hear from both of you around, like, the genesis of how you got started on this process of writing this book and the why behind this, specifically.

[00:09:44] Joe: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely spot-on about the attention paid to undergraduate student populations, particularly first time, first year students, and also the idea that the economy is increasingly demanding higher levels of education, the idea of credential inflation, jobs that once required an associate’s degree or no education require a bachelor’s degree, professions that may require a bachelor’s degree now require higher levels of education.

And so, in order for those professions to be able to identify highly qualified individuals, we need more individuals with advanced levels of education. And so, graduate education and graduate enrollment management becomes increasingly important.

But we’ve also heard so much now about the demographic cliff, right, where all of the enrollment cliff, right, where demographics are such that in many parts of the United States, the traditional undergraduate population is in decline. And so, as institutions are thinking about how to diversify their tuition revenue base, they are often turning to adult learners and graduate students.

And so, we thought it was important timing to be able to introduce new literature into the field, both applied literature and some empirical research, about graduate enrollment management and how it’s practiced, why it’s important, but also the entire graduate student journey, not just the admissions process, but actually, what happens once a graduate student is enrolled at our institutions? How do we ensure they’re successful and they’re able to complete their degree?

Just like undergraduate, in fact, it’s worse for a student to enroll in a program and not complete their degree and incur debt and time out of the workforce. That’s, of course, true of graduate students as well. So, we really wanted to, not only focus on strategies for increasing graduate enrollment or meeting graduate enrollment goals, but also ensuring success of graduate students once they’re enrolled in promoting their degree completion.

And I’ll turn it to Stan to talk about the genesis of the project. And it was also just acknowledgment to NAGAP, which is the Association for Graduate Enrollment Management, which is really the convener of this project.

[00:11:52] Stan: And Joe really provided a great foundation there, as to, really, the premise behind the book. But how it all got started was, a few years ago, prior to COVID, they took on this initiative to create this comprehensive guide for graduate enrollment management, this comprehensive book.

As Joe said, there’s been a lot of research out there on undergraduate admissions, but not so much has been out there on graduate admissions, in graduate enrollment management. Yeah, we have some great pieces of literature that have been out there that have been published by people like Julie Posselt, who pointedly wrote the foreword for our book, a great scholar in her own right as well, but there hasn’t been a whole lot out there on the comprehensive nature of graduate enrollment management as a field and as an area of scholarship. So, NAGAP decided, “Yeah, you know what? We need to really add some substantive literature to this existing gap.”

So, they started this project. And after it got off the ground running, Joe and I were, at a later date, contacted by the individual who was spearheading the project and said, “Listen, we’re looking for two individuals to come in and, kind of, take the reins of this and take it over. And both of you are researchers and scholars. You have a number of years of professional experience in this field. You can really add value as co-editors on this project.”

So, when they approached Joe and I separately, I think we both had a very similar answer, which was, “I’m in if the other guy is in,” because we certainly don’t want to do it alone.

[00:13:24] Gil: That’s awesome.

[00:13:26] Stan: And I’ll be honest with you, that’s exactly what I said when I had the conversation. I said, “Listen, if Joe Paris is in, I’m in.” And I think that the same went for Joe as well, because we both met each other through networking through NAGAP. And we both became familiar with each other’s work and whatnot.

And I said, “If he’s going to be in on the project, I’ll be in on it as well.” And we both connected and said, “Yep, let’s take on the reins and push it forward.” So, we took over as co-editors and then we actually did a new call for proposals. At that point, it was about a year and a half gap. So, we wanted to make sure that we still had substantive content.

And I would say that one thing that I was very happy about, and I’m sure Joe would agree with this, is, we got a number of great submissions, actually more submissions than we actually had room for in the book. I wish we had room to include everything, but unfortunately, we had to pick and choose what we really wanted to have in the book.

So, then what we did was we included those submissions, we worked closely with contributing authors, on developing their chapters or their case studies for the book, and after an entire year and a half long editing process, what you have behind you there over your right shoulder is the product that we came up with, the Comprehensive Guide to Graduate Enrollment Management.

And I think that’s one thing, too, that Joe touched upon that really makes this book valuable is, not only does it have original empirical research, but we also have those case studies that allow practitioners to sit back and say, “Okay, how are these complex problems really viewed? And how are they tackled and implemented at different institutions?”

So, it’s a great takeaway to be able to see how certain practices are put into play and how certain challenges can be similar at your respective institution and how we can give you ideas on how to tackle these complex problems. So, it’s pretty much almost having access to this repository of great ideas that you could almost use as a cookie cutter model and say, “How can I take out that institution, how can put ours in, put in our parameters and what our challenges are,” and come up with a solution. So, I think that those case studies really add a lot of substance and value to the book.

[00:15:43] Gil: So, as you mentioned, Stan, one of the key items in the book is really that theory plus practice, right, and how there’s lots of great ideas that people put out and they’ll say, “We need to be serving students better. We need to fix our processes.” But then they never really outline the how, right?

And I think that, especially in higher ed, especially enrollment management, there’s a community of people that want to share their best practice, because we’re all in this together, right? We want to, at the end of the day, support student outcomes. And we do that by sharing our best practices with one another, right? And so, Joe, I’ll start with you. If there are some, kind of, common challenges that you’ve seen and people are experiencing in the graduate enrollment management space, what are some of those? And how are some of those challenges addressed in the book?

[00:16:30] Joe: Yeah, I’ll highlight two of them. The first is really underscored in a chapter titled First Gen Again. And the idea is that, just because a graduate student holds a bachelor’s degree doesn’t mean that they necessarily have all of the knowledge, resources, and even experience to navigate graduate education successfully.

There are different standards, academic rigor that differentiate undergraduate from graduate study. And so, the First Gen Again chapter really underscores the idea that, a first-generation college student who may in fact hold a bachelor’s degree doesn’t necessarily come into graduate education equipped with all that they need to be successful, and that the institution needs to meet them where they are in order to ensure their success.

So, how do you do that? One of the chapters also underscores website information, right? Oftentimes, a website is the most important resource for a student. That’s where they go. They go to Google, they search. And institutions are not always thinking about their website as a tool to help students navigate a process. Often, it’s a place for internal information to get stored. And that can be really difficult for students to access the information that they need.

We have a great chapter on the idea of a one stop model, one location where students can physically go or access digitally to be able to have all of their specific questions or needs addressed without having to be shuffled from one department to another throughout a university.

And so, that idea of the one-stop shop dedicated in student success, regardless of what they may need, is another example of how the book really addresses those very specific things that institutions can do to ensure that graduate students are successful. And not just saying graduate students need to be successful, we need to know that, we need to understand their needs, but we go really into that level of detail to be able to say, “This is what institutions can do. Here are some specific challenges that they can make.”

The other is just the assumption that undergraduate students and graduate students share common needs. They do, to some extent, which is they need to navigate curriculum and they need to be able to progress academically from the beginning of a program to the end in order to earn their degree, but traditional undergraduate students and graduate students are often very different places in their lives, and they bring different challenges to their educational experience.

Graduate students may have work-life balancing that they need to do, family, many different financial constraints and challenges and needs, et cetera, right? And there are many other differences between these populations. And so, models that may be implemented to support the success of undergraduate students may not be as effective in supporting graduate students, and so institutions should not necessarily be approaching student success with a one size fits all.

The other, and this is going back to the point of just the emphasis on undergraduate student populations, is that, at many institutions, there are more undergraduate students than graduate students. And so, unfortunately, what happens is the resources are diverted to undergraduate populations and graduate student success, graduate admissions offices tend to have fewer resources to be able to support their work, for understandable proportional reasons. But that doesn’t suggest that there are needs on campuses to invest resources to support graduate enrollment success, graduate student success. And our book really helps empower those on their campuses to advocate for what they need and to use evidence to be able to support those discussions on campuses.

[00:20:15] Stan: I feel like Joe’s been reading my mind the entire interview, so far, because everything he said, I was going to say as well, especially about the one stop shop. But if you look at other things that are really important for graduate students and challenges, there’s a great chapter about tuition discounting and pricing.

And that’s one thing that we find, sometimes, in higher education, that sticker shock that students have. And wow, it’s going to cost this much to go to a certain school. So, what do schools do in terms of tuition discounting and scholarships and whatnot to make it more affordable for students to pursue a graduate education?

And Dr. Paris wrote that chapter. But it talks about how to develop a model of tuition discounting and, really, what are the different sources of discounting, and how does that occur, and how does it really work in the scheme of higher education and net tuition revenue and whatnot? So, I think that’s another thing that is really important to prospect of students from that lens, is affordability of graduate education, understanding that we’ve seen, historically, a rise in the cost of higher education exponentially over the past 15 years. So, how can schools make their program look affordable?

And then, also, the marketing aspect of it. How do schools market themselves as affordable? How do they market themselves for the products and services that they offer? So, there’s also a chapter on marketing. How do you market your programs effectively? How do you market your institution effectively? The five Ps of marketing for graduate enrollment management, that’s another chapter in there as well.

So, there’s a lot of things that, I think, are challenges that we see in higher education, especially, given the nature that our industry is very cyclical. We have these constant changes. And how institutions can keep up with these changes is what allows them to maintain that competitive advantage.

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[00:23:00] Gil: So, I want to go in a little bit deeper and I think about and talk about the, kind of, key takeaways that you would encourage people to really think about. What are the cliff notes when it comes to, if there are three things that I need to take away as a reader that will add value to my day-to-day and, most importantly, help me support and drive better student outcomes at my institution, what are those three takeaways going to be? And we’re going to go to Stan first so that he can steal your answers, Joe. We’re going to go in reverse order this time.

[00:23:37] Stan: So, I would say my three takeaways would be this. Number one, while there are some similarities between undergrad and graduate enrollment management, there are striking differences between that. And the complexity therein of graduate enrollment management is also unique in and of itself, because you have the graduate population, adult learners, career changers, career enhancers, it’s a lot different than traditional undergrad education. So, not everything that you do in undergraduate enrollment management can be used in a cookie cutter model for graduate enrollment management and graduate student recruitment. So, GERM, as a field, is its own complex beast, so to speak. I would say that’s number one.

Number two, another key takeaway I would say is, as you read these chapters in these case studies, I think readers could see that they’re not the only institution that is experiencing a certain problem. There are similar challenges across the board. And how institutions address them are going to be different, based off of their strategic priorities, their goals. But as I mentioned earlier, the joy in this book is that the readers are able to look at the empirical research, the case studies, and see how institutions are addressing these challenges that best suits their institution. And it can give the reader ideas how they can go back to their institution in the confines of their own job and try to come up with solutions to problems that they may be very experiencing that are similar in nature.

And the third key takeaway I would say is that research in higher education is always changing. Like, any piece of literature, yes, there are going to be some gaps in areas that maybe haven’t been as covered as others, but what it does is it lends itself to more research and it just allows us to continue asking those great questions that’ll hopefully lead to more research and allow this field to continue growing and growing its existing body of literature. So, it’s going to add so much value to both scholars and practitioners as well.

So, I would say that those are, in my opinion, some key takeaways of the book.

[00:25:57] Joe: And I’m glad to share three additional. And none of them overlap with what Stan just shared.

[00:26:03] Gil: Hooray!

[00:26:05] Joe: And so, the first is, really, that graduate enrollment management success requires a campus and institution-wide responsibility and culture, that it’s not just the responsibility of those who have the word “graduate” in their title, right? It really takes the entire institution to be able to achieve success.

And what do I mean by that? Well, faculty members, just as an example, play such an important role in graduate enrollment management, yet a faculty member may not immediately identify their role as part of their job or part of their responsibilities, especially at the graduate level where students want to know, who will I be studying with, who will I be learning from, who’s there to help also guide my next stages of my, maybe in some cases, academic career, my professional career? And so often, it’s the faculty.

The second, really, is personalization. Prospective students today come, again, with a unique set of needs, interests, and requirements in terms of what they hope to get out of their graduate education. And so, institutions need to meet those students where they are in terms of a personalized journey. And that personalization is very difficult to do at scale. And one of the things that you see that is unique about graduate enrollment management is that decentralized nature. What I mean by that is graduate enrollment management, often, is practiced at an academic program level, and in some cases at an academic department level, and occasionally at a school or college level, but rarely at a university-wide level, especially at your larger institutions.

And so, the idea of personalization is that, actually, to do it at scale is quite challenging because what you’re really seeing is that those at the very local level, usually within an academic program, are the ones who are going to need to be able to provide that personalized journey, and they may lack the resources, the knowledge, the know-how of how to go about doing that. And so, it’s our hope with the book that they are equipped with some additional information about how they may play a role in providing a more personalized experience and journey for prospective graduate students and current graduate students.

And the last is to surround equity. A lot of our focus in higher education tends to be on equitable access to baccalaureate programs, to undergraduate education, but that extends to graduate studies as well. And so, what you’ll see as an undercurrent throughout the book is the idea that, in order to arrive at a more equitable system of graduate education, and by extension, higher education, there are many changes that need to be made. And that conversation really begins with Julie Posselt’s foreword, recognizing that there are systematic changes that need to happen in higher education, both at the macro and micro levels, in order to provide more equitable access to graduate education. And again, thereby, providing access to a wage premium from graduate level degrees, better jobs, and all the benefits associated with higher levels of education. And so, we share many different ideas about how to arrive at a more equitable system of graduate enrollment management and, by extension, higher education, more broadly.

[00:29:19] Gil: Awesome. I appreciate you both taking the time to hop on and share some of your thoughts and share some of the highlights. For our listeners, we’ll put all the links to get at your copy of A Comprehensive Guide to Enrollment Management in the episode notes. But for our listeners, if they want to keep the conversation going with you all, what’s the best way to get in touch? And what’s the best way to get a copy of the book?

[00:29:41] Joe: The best way to get a copy of the book will be on Routledge’s website. Routledge is the publisher of the book. And we can share a link the episode notes.

And then, also, you’re welcome to find me on LinkedIn. Again, Joseph Paris from Delaware Valley University. And LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me and how to get in touch.

[00:29:59] Stan: Yep, same thing with me, the best way to get in touch with me would definitely be through LinkedIn. Stanley Kania, you can search that around on LinkedIn, Drexel University College of Medicine. That’s the best way to get in touch with me.

[00:30:09] Gil: Awesome! Well, thank you, both, so much for the time. And thank you to our listeners. Once again, the book is A Comprehensive Guide to Graduate Enrollment Management. And we will see you all next time on FYI. Bye!

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