Janice O’Farrell has been at Carleton for over 21 years working in Enrolment Management, Admissions Services and Awards. For the past 7 years, she has served as the Associate Vice-President (Enrolment Management).
Suzanne Blanchard is the Vice-President (Students and Enrolment) at Carleton University, where she leads a transformative portfolio dedicated to enhancing the student experience and refining enrolment strategies. With a distinguished career in higher education administration, Suzanne is dedicated to elevating student services, championing diversity and inclusion, and pioneering innovative programs that empower students to reach their academic, personal and professional potential.
You’ve been in the field for a while now. How do you see the future of student recruitment and enrollment changing over the next five years? What trends are you seeing develop right now?
Janice:
Sure, I’ll focus on the international side. The landscape is quite volatile right now, with increasing competition in the international market.
Suzanne introduced and developed our international recruitment program back in 2000, when she was Director of Admissions. One key component of that was diversification – avoiding reliance on any single country. At the time, many universities were heavily invested in one country, but Carleton chose a diversified approach to weather political unrest and other international issues.
In recent years, we've seen many post-secondary institutions, particularly in Ontario, enter the international market due to financial pressures. For us, the approach is still the same: develop a yearly enrolment plan and focus on diversifying into the markets that make the most sense for us.
So many institutions across the country have jumped into the international market, often targeting countries with high demand for Canadian education. This has made recruitment much more competitive. Those of us who have been in the market for a long time continue building relationships with schools and guidance counselors abroad, rather than just hiring agents. We do use agents, but we are very selective.
The heavy reliance on agents by other institutions became quite the point of contention, and is responsible for a lot of the government pushback we're seeing right now. It will be interesting to see whether institutions can adjust to the decreasing revenue from that international population they built up, as well as how this will all affect Canada's international reputation.
So again, there’s that value of diversification. If we rely too heavily on one country and a political issue arises, like a disagreement with China, it could dramatically affect student numbers. We've seen this before with China and Saudi Arabia, where political arguments led to restricted student mobility. Thanks to Suzanne, Carleton has always been careful to ensure a broad spectrum of recruitment countries to mitigate this risk.
Very interesting. Suzanne, do you want to speak on any domestic recruitment trends you've seen?
Suzanne:
Sure. Regarding international trends, I'm hopeful that after the current government intervention, which is set to run for two years, things will eventually settle down. If that oversight continues beyond the two years, it could have a significant impact on Canada's future recruitment landscape, which is a bit concerning.
On the domestic front, I've been involved in recruitment since 2000, focusing on both international and domestic recruitment across Ontario and Canada. When I started, I could predict our September enrolment numbers by January, right after the application deadline for Ontario high school students.
Over the years, with increasing competition, this prediction shifted to closer to confirmation time in May or June. Since COVID and recent changes with international visas and caps, the landscape has changed even more. Sometimes, we don't know our final numbers until the end of September or even a month into the term, especially with international students.
At Carleton, we never take anything for granted. Every student is important, but the changing landscape has made it challenging to plan accurately. The impact of international recruitment on our domestic efforts has been significant, making for very interesting times. This has forced us to continuously innovate our recruitment strategies.
We engage in very high-touch recruitment and regularly assess our strategies to ensure they remain relevant. Every four or five years, we see a change in the needs of students. Their preferences in how they want to interact with us is ever evolving. Now, we need to be on top of social media, be updating our websites, and still be providing printed materials, though in smaller quantities.
It’s all changed exponentially in the last few years, and we owe it to our students to keep up.
So Carleton's known for having this high-touch recruitment, and especially as face to face touchpoints become fewer and fewer. Tell us more about how you ensure that positive, engaging experience for prospective students.
Suzanne:
It all comes down to innovation, particularly in how we engage with parents and prospective students. During COVID, we had to adapt quickly, learning to connect through electronic means like Zoom and other virtual interactions. We've retained those methods to ensure we're getting information out effectively as well as returning to face to face interactions.
We aim to bring prospective students to campus for more than just information sessions. While I won't go into all the details, our team has been very successful in this regard. In some cases, we've attracted more people to campus than we did before COVID.
So it's possible, but you have to be very innovative in finding the means to do it.
Janice:
I will also add that something Carleton spends a lot of time on understanding – and something all institutions should value – is that students are different. Within a given cohort that's coming into your institution, there’s a span of different student needs.
What we've seen since COVID is that those needs are different every year. As Suzanne said, for a good 10 - 15 years, you could predict what your enrolment was going to be at the end of the cycle. We also knew generally what to expect with regards to prospective student behavior. It was consistent because the typical high school student was consistent in what they wanted from you and what they needed. But that doesn't exist anymore, and I think that speaks a lot to when Suzanne talks about our drive to innovate. It's keeping up with those changes and meeting students where they are.
Tell me a bit about how the role of data has changed since you started in your careers.
Suzanne:
Carleton has been all about data for years now. We’ve always wanted to know where our students are coming from. About a decade ago, we started really diving into demographics for recruitment, both here and internationally. We looked at where we should focus our efforts and measured the results each year to tweak our strategies.
We use data every year to see which recruitment strategies are working and how we can improve them. Lately, we've also been using data to predict our housing needs. We delved deeper this year to predict the exact number of guaranteed beds required and how many could be released for other students. This was crucial for managing our resources effectively.
Janice:
We started looking at data related to our retention and graduation rates. And in doing so, we realized that when you focus solely on student experience and success initiatives, you get tunnel vision. The data made us look at our rules and regulations to see if there were barriers to student success there. There were, so we made some tweaks, which ended up hugely impacting our retention metrics.
It’s been really rewarding to see the benefits. When I joined Carleton in 2003 and got heavily involved in admissions from 2004 onwards, I noticed we had access to data that other institutions didn’t.
This data let us play around, experiment, and spot patterns or surprising trends. We've had regular monthly meetings to discuss enrolment data with our institutional research team. We’d take that time to dig into different elements and compare trends.
Suzanne:
Understanding recruitment data has always been a top priority for Carleton. We’re never lost when it comes to our data, thanks to our strong relationship with institutional research. This partnership helps us focus our recruitment strategies both domestically and internationally, and improve retention and graduation rates.
By analyzing data with institutional research, we figured out how to tweak progression and grading rules to not just retain students but also make sure they graduate. Our focus shifted from just retention to graduation, all thanks to these insights.
Finally, reflecting on your careers, what are the most meaningful lessons you've learned about student recruitment, enrollment, or retention?
Janice:
I touched on this earlier, but for a long time, student cohorts were very consistent and predictable. But then, we started seeing shifts – not just between cohorts, but sometimes even within the same cycle.
Every year, there’s always something unexpected that the incoming cohort decides is their thing, and we have to be ready for it. For example, this year we’re seeing a massive influx of students changing programs after the deadline. Between accepting their offer and starting registration, there’s a huge flux of program changes. We’ve never seen this before, and we’re trying to figure out why this is happening and how to adapt quickly. Every year, there’s always something unexpected that the incoming cohort decides is their thing, and we have to be ready for it.
Suzanne:
On my end, what’s been interesting is how my role, which covers not just recruitment but the whole student experience – registrar aspects, student supports, etc. – has kept me updated on all the trends. It’s like when your kids are young, you know all the latest books and music, but as they grow older, you lose touch. This role has kept me connected to what’s happening with the younger generation, from EDI to social media trends and their shifting priorities.
Understanding these trends has been enriching. It helps me see how the younger generation will shape the future of education. So, while we focus on recruitment shifts, I also understand the broader changes affecting students. This holistic approach has been very enlightening and rewarding.