A per­fect storm of pres­sures includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, the pend­ing demo­graph­ic cliff, fre­quent news cov­er­age report­ing that enroll­ment lead­ers are feel­ing more deject­ed than ever, the after­math of COVID and the Great Res­ig­na­tion are point­ing to the fact that some­thing has got to give. Enroll­ment man­agers must take back con­trol of the things that they can and move on from out­dat­ed and out­mod­ed prac­tices that sim­ply add cost, reduce effi­cien­cy, and add stress to an already over­whelm­ing process.

Sam­ford Uni­ver­si­ty has tak­en huge steps to ​“insource” one of the most impor­tant aspects of their recruit­ment and reten­tion efforts; their finan­cial aid opti­miza­tion strat­e­gy. This pre­sen­ta­tion will out­line the steps they took to accom­plish this, lead­ing to a finan­cial aid award­ing strat­e­gy that is more straight­for­ward and over which they have more control.