It's going up to 95 today here in Philadelphia...

... where a University of Pennsylvania student has been studying the issue we in higher ed call summer melt.

     The term is applied to those admitted students, who have deposited, but who fail to show up for orientation or move-in day.  What happens between the time when they commit to coming to our colleges and the start of the autumn semester?  We'd all like the answer.

     This student's research led her to conclude, "Institutional characteristics were really big determinants, at least anecdotally, when I spoke to admissions officers, of what sorts of solutions are going to be relevant or doable. For example large institutions — meaning land-grant publics — might have a much more difficult time with back-end solutions, mainly because their staff might not scale up to allow admissions officers to be able to personally call people who don’t register for classes. Pretty much all institutions are able to rely upon front-end solutions. They’re much more mass-outreach oriented, and also a lot of the work for the front-end solutions, like establishing a brand identity, is done before students even commit to the university. So I think everyone should pay attention to front-end solutions, but the back-end solutions are important as well, because the admissions officers I spoke to seemed to think it was the more effective way of mitigating summer melt. You’re literally stopping melt from occurring if you’re talking to students who might have just ended up not coming because no one reached out to them."

      Undoubtedly, if the resources can be mustered, this "back-end" effort can pay off.  The same is true with regard to retention.  When continuing students fail to register, having their faculty advisers reach out to them can make a real difference, too.  That call can ferret out issues such as a family financial crisis.  The student then might be referred to the financial services folks, for instance.

      Today, when every student counts, especially at smaller private schools such as my own, effective preventative measures against summer melt are a critical piece of the overall enrollment-management strategy.