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Enrollment management (EM) has been a focus of higher education since the 1970s. There is a large base of empirical research on EM, a coordinated effort to support undergraduate students from admission to graduation that has been widely researched. However, there is limited academic research on graduate enrollment management (GEM). What is missing is grounding GEM in literature and viewing the graduate student lifecycle with a cohesive lens. This article provides an academic foundation for GEM while discussing future research areas and encouraging GEM professionals to adopt a scholar-practitioner lens. The authors lay the foundation for the GEM concept, synthesize related literature, and discuss future research directions.
A Fledgling Field
Although enrollment management (EM) has been a central concept in higher education for more than 40 years, its focus has been on undergraduate education. Hossler and Bean (1990) defined EM as "both an organizational concept as well as a systematic set of activities designed to enable educational institutions to exert more influence over their student enrollments" (5). The definition may be applicable across colleges and universities; however, EM is grounded in the undergraduate student experience. In recent years, graduate enrollment management (GEM) has been a rising field among higher education practitioners. Yet GEM is the much younger sibling of EM, without the academic literature base or formal examples in practice.
Out of EM came strategic enrollment management (SEM), as Dolence (1993) described, "a comprehensive process designed to achieve and maintain the optimum recruitment, retention, and attainment of students." As with EM, SEM was developed primarily in the traditional undergraduate college context. Significantly, Snowden (2012) wrote existing SEM models and understood concepts do not adequately translate to graduate students. Snowden also stated, "ubiquitous perceptions of SEM are largely influenced by the structures, processes, and professions that constitute SEM in a baccalaureate context," and existing SEM models are "insufficient in addressing post baccalaureate education enrollment matters" (2012, 182). It is imperative to study and formalize how SEM applies to GEM and the development and operationalizing of strategic GEM (SGEM).
GEM encompasses all aspects of the graduate student lifecycle. These aspects, depicted in Figure 1, are the key areas that make up GEM. The progression shows marketing and recruitment efforts that drive graduate students to enroll and...