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Based on work and research conducted by our Student Experience Team (led by Kaelee Steffens and Becca Lovell), we have implemented a new enrollment preservation initiative aimed at students who are new to GRCC and had a balance due on the first tuition due date. The Student Experience team's research was complimented by analysis of the enrollment cancellation process (i.e., dropping students for non-payment) conducted by Institutional Research (IR).
IR found several variables that had showed a relationship with higher levels of students being dropped for non-payment. The two primary factors were age (those 18-24 years old) and those who were attending GRCC for the first time. We piloted a program to hold them, confirm their intent to attend GRCC this fall, and support them to resolve their balance due.
We have held an additional 438 students on August 2 who were new to GRCC and had a balance. A 5 member team reached out to these students through an email and text campaign to,
- Confirm if these students still plan to attend at GRCC this fall. If not, we confirmed their information and removed their classes.
- If they plan to attend, we are working with them to finalize their payment (e.g., finalize their financial aid, scholarships, and/or helping them sign up for the payment plan, etc.).
Of the 438 new students who were held, as of Monday, August 7 we had reached 316 students. The vast majority of these students planned to attend this fall and we were able to help them enroll in the payment plan or manage other payment processes related to various aid sources. We are now in contact with the 122 students with another email, text, and robocall campaign to determine their status and support successful payment.
Once we reach the fall semester count date we will evaluate the effectiveness of this effort and determine if this will be an ongoing practice. Initial data suggests this improved our new student enrollment from -2.2% on July 31 to +2.9% on August 7.