College of Western Idaho Boosts Enrollment and Retention with Data-Driven Solutions
In late 2021, the College of Western Idaho (CWI) needed to address a consistent enrollment decline and improve student retention. With an ambitious vision to improve and optimize its technological infrastructure and student outreach, CWI sought to build a best-in-class system to enhance student engagement and elevate enrollment strategies. To ensure that data and technology were aligned with CWI’s growth objectives, the college partnered with Collegis Education to analyze their combined impact. Were its data and tech aligned for impact, or were gaps hindering progress and creating unnecessary burdens across the team?
Key Takeaways
- Six consecutive terms of YoY enrollment growth
- Experienced the highest YoY increase in persistence in history of the college from Fall 2022 to Fall 2023
- Consistent improvement in term-over-term retention
CHALLENGES:
- Declining enrollment
- No established retention strategy
- Lack of CRM
- Underutilized LMS
- Siloed technology and data systems
SOLUTIONS:
- Connected Core®
- Advanced analytics + business intelligence
- LMS support
- Website optimization
- Data-driven outreach and support for students identified as at-risk
Strategy
Collegis Education and CWI began collaborating on building a best-in-class student journey from the point of initial inquiry through graduation.
A comprehensive evaluation of existing CWI systems allowed Collegis to assess the college’s digital readiness, technology infrastructure, and enrollment ecosystem to understand how they aligned with its growth objectives. The partnership quickly proceeded from consultation to implementation.
Collegis prescribed a set of solutions to enhance student engagement from first contact and elevate the school’s enrollment strategies:
- Connected Core® to unite siloed systems, data sets, and other enrollment technologies, providing more accurate, actionable, unified institutional intelligence with clear visualizations to support data-enabled decision-making at all levels.
- Website optimization to improve conversion and deliver a student-centric digital experience that supports the objectives, goals, and mission.
- Prospective student nurturing campaigns with a messaging protocol designed to drive conversion and prospective student engagement with CWI.
Collaborating closely with CWI, Collegis developed a well-defined student retention strategy that established meaningful student-advisor relationships early on, ensuring students felt supported from their first interaction onward.
- Enrollment conversation training gave student-facing staff the tools to drive positive experiences for CWI learners while embracing a liaison approach to student engagement.
- Collegis student success coaches conducted proactive outreach to engage students while leveraging an at-risk alert system to drive intervention. This early alert system flags students needing support based on learning management system (LMS) data on attendance, current grades, and assignment completion.
Results: Average YoY growth each semester since our partnership began has averaged 5%
By working with Collegis, CWI could focus on its student journey and how it could better use data and technology to deliver superior student engagements and reach its growth targets. This has helped not only stop, but reverse historical enrollment declines. In 2024, CWI projected year-over-year growth for the sixth consecutive academic term. The school has achieved an average year-over-year term growth of 5%, with a trendline for fall 2024 of over 9% growth.
“Our partnership with Collegis has provided expertise, speed, and flexibility in areas where we, as an institution of higher education, have been unable to improve so nimbly. Where most consultants provide an analysis and leave, Collegis follows through with ‘and this is how we’ll make that happen for you’. Trusting their recommendations is easy because I know they are signing themselves up to do the work with me.”
Value-based conversations with prospective students have resulted in increased applications. Further, pre-start engagement from the advising and student success coaching teams has increased registrations from admitted students.
By fostering a culture of meaningful interaction and support for students, CWI paved the way for improved student retention. The LMS-based at-risk model has driven 19,000+ proactive student engagements and interventions in one academic year.
Within just one year of implementing these targeted strategies, CWI witnessed a remarkable in retention rates, all while alleviating the workload on faculty and staff. Similar retention strategies deployed by other Collegis partner institutions have yielded term-over-term retention rates exceeding 90%, underscoring the effectiveness of our approach.
“Whenever we want to try something new or have a challenge we need help with, my first thought now is let’s call Collegis and see if this is something they can help us with.”
With a proven retention strategy and access to a proactive model, CWI can now build out its internal retention capabilities and plans to take over the student success coaching function.
The Future
CWI’s commitment to embracing change and being agile is demonstrated by the school’s evolving partnership with Collegis to exceed industry best practices and realize sustained growth. Ongoing services and incremental work are targeting LMS initiatives to stabilize, standardize, optimize, and transform CWI’s instance of Blackboard Learn and redesign its new student orientation, among other things.
