Colleges and universities are faced with the urgent need to compete for and retain academic talent. Setting and achieving enrollment and retention goals require understanding the existing student population, the current enrollment with regard to external and internal admissions requirements, and strategic institutional direction. Using SAS, enrollment managers and university executives can first understand the enrollment “big picture” by bringing data together from multiple sources and gaining an understanding of current status. SAS then provides advanced analytics necessary to identify students who are the best candidates for admission (or the greatest risk of attrition).

Successful recruitment
Today’s students have grown to expect 24-hour-a-day service from institutions, while institutions are striving to make a positive impression on prospects during recruitment. Prospective students and their families look for timely answers to questions; they don’t tolerate delays, inaccurate information or a runaround. How well institutions handle inquiries, integrate information and personalize their recruitment approaches has a significant impact on student applications.

To effectively manage relationships with admission candidates, institutions need a 360-degree view of students – their history and interactions with multiple university departments. For this view, information must be taken from multiple contact points and sources (events, offices, call centers, direct mail and the Internet) and placed into a central repository accessible by appropriate administration. A successful solution allows colleges and universities to share information across organizational boundaries and ensures consistent, reliable information about the student prospect, regardless of the touch point.

Basic examples of questions answered using the SAS Intelligence Platform include the following:

• Why do students drop out?
• What do dropouts cost us each year in recruitment costs, lost revenue and perception?
• Which factors are affecting year-to-year retention?
• How do financial aid and recruitment affect retention?
• How can we monitor student and institutional progress?
• How do we get leadership, faculty and staff working toward the same retention goals?

University and college staff will see a consistent record of student data and other information without the time-consuming need to retrieve separate files, and prospects will receive consistent information quickly that is tailored to their specific needs regardless of how, where or when they request it. Finally, SAS allows colleges and universities to execute targeted campaigns and tailored messages – saving money and time in recruitment efforts.

Improved retention
Using SAS, university administrators can leverage existing operational systems and information to research “at-risk” students and the factors affecting attrition. Appropriate intervention strategies for different at-risk profiles can be applied systemically, so these students can proceed with a successful university experience and graduate.

The results? University and college staff will see a timely, consistent record of student data and other information without retrieving separate files, so that at-risk students can be identified. Over time, this information can be used to discover which attributes or other factors affect student success and attrition so appropriate interventions can be designed.

While institutions invest significantly in recruitment, it is unclear how much is consistently invested in retention activities. In business, it is often said that replacing a customer who has left costs five to 10 times more than keeping an existing one. Institutions have similar total costs of recruitment and can avoid unnecessary expenditures by focusing on retention.

The solution – Bringing it all together with SAS
SAS provides an integrated, open and extensible intelligence platform that serves as the foundation for creating and delivering accurate, in-depth intelligence across the institution and to all levels of education. The SAS Intelligence Platform is a low-risk framework that can grow and be customized into new applications to meet your future needs. This framework allows you to make the most of your existing IT investment since it integrates with a wide variety of data sources, ensuring a smooth flow of information across campus, departments or organizations. The SAS Intelligence Platform provides an unmatched ability to turn administrative, teaching and research data first into information, then into insight, allowing effective decisions to be made with confidence.

The SAS Intelligence Platform includes the following flagship offerings:

• SAS Enterprise ETL Server offers a platform-independent extraction, transformation and loading solution that includes a range of access engines, a multithreaded transformation engine, integrated metadata management, data cleansing and a graphical interface.
• SAS Intelligence Storage provides a dedicated platform designed from the outset to efficiently disseminate information for business intelligence and analytic applications – whether from SAS or third parties.
• SAS Enterprise BI Server empowers users by giving them access to information in the format they need, when they need it. It provides appropriate interfaces for various user skill levels and needs, enabling users to generate their own answers while IT retains control over the quality and consistency of the data.
• SAS Analytic Technologies deliver the industry’s widest portfolio of analytics, algorithms, mathematical data manipulation and modeling capabilities. SAS takes the mystery out of these high-end statistical techniques by coupling them with a wide range of user interfaces and graphics.

By integrating analytic technologies, data warehousing and content delivery, the SAS Intelligence Platform helps an institution create intelligence. Financial intelligence, human capital management, student recruitment and retention, alumni and advancement, IT management, and procurement management are intelligent solution areas that can be integrated to provide institutional intelligence and performance management.

SAS Marketing Automation
SAS Marketing Automation helps you improve response rates and revenues from your recruitment efforts by giving you the ability to easily manage sophisticated, timely, personalized recruitment communication strategies. Built specifically to meet the needs of key members of the marketing process, only SAS Marketing Automation provides comprehensive data management, campaign management and advanced recruitment analytics in one integrated, easy-to-use solution.