Operational Assessment

This is the "blocking and tackling" of enrollment management. Hardwick-Day helps uncover weak spots and identify underused assets to improve how cost-effectively colleges employ staff, monetary, technical, and communications resources.

Contact Carol Stack.

Financial aid and admissions operations assessments

Hardwick-Day provides a prototype operating plan and analyzes all areas of operations, including:

• Strategic planning, alignment, and goal setting;
• Management climate;
• Funding and resources;
• Recruitment tactics;
• Information technology;
• Staffing and management issues;
• Office space; and
• Future considerations.

Read a two-page sample excerpt from an enrollment division assessment report.

Competitive communications assessments

Hardwick-Day analyzes clients’ admissions publications and websites side-by-side with those of competitors—just as students do—looking at the ways content, tone, design, photography, and other elements portray each school’s position, persona and attitude. The firm also provides an in-depth evaluation of each website’s usability, entropy, and tangibility. Hardwick-Day principals have even given feedback on branded water bottles, Frisbees, and beach towels.

Case Studies

Show Us the Money

Working with a top-50 Midwestern liberal arts college, our examination of their use of SEOGs and Perkins loans uncovered an opportunity to increase the actual dollar impact of these federal funds. Addressing student comments that the financial aid office sometimes “gave them the runaround,” we recommended specific changes to office hours, physical layout, and staff interaction with the registrar and accounts receivable. These changes increased the aid operation’s actual and perceived responsiveness to student questions.

Thar’s Gold in Them Thar Hills…But Where?

Our admissions assessment for a small top-50 college on the West Coast quickly identified “soft inquiry syndrome” as a major opportunity. We proposed a series of long-term developmental tactics to gain control of the inquiry pool, increase the number of applicants, make the spring yield process easier, and reinforce key messages. These included specific recommendations for refining inquiry generation and segmentation by geography and self-identified interests, strengthening relationship-building tactics, shifting activities from reactive to proactive, and using the campus tour as a key message opportunity.