For much of my career in higher education, retention has lived somewhere outside the enrollment management portfolio. Enrollment leaders recruited the class, admissions managed the funnel, financial aid helped shape the class, and everyone watched deposits and yield. Once those students arrived on campus, however, responsibility for keeping them often shifted to academic affairs, advising, student success, or the provost’s office.
That division of responsibility made sense for a long time. Given the financial realities facing colleges and universities today, I am no longer convinced it does.
According to the National Association of College and University Business Officers’ 2025 Tuition Discounting Study, the estimated average tuition discount rate for first-time, full-time undergraduates at participating private nonprofit institutions reached a record 57.1% for 2025-26. NACUBO also reported that inflation-adjusted net tuition and fee revenue declined between 2023-24 and 2024-25, falling 2.2% per first-time, full-time undergraduate and 1.9% among all undergraduates.
Think about what that means from an enrollment perspective. Institutions are working harder and investing more to recruit the next class while the net revenue generated by each student is under continued pressure. Yet at many institutions, far more attention is still given to replacing a student who leaves than to understanding why that student left in the first place.
Here is an example. An institution misses its overall enrollment goal, so the response is to increase the new-student target for the following year. More names are purchased. A new market is added. Additional travel is approved. Financial aid strategies are adjusted. The enrollment team is asked to find another 75 or 100 students.
All of those tactics may be appropriate, but another question should come first: How many continuing students did we lose, and why?
Over the years, I have seen institutions meet their admissions goal while overall enrollment still moved in the wrong direction. The recruitment team did exactly what was asked, but too many continuing students left. The institution was trying to solve through new-student recruitment what was, at least in part, a retention problem.
That is an expensive cycle, particularly when the cost of recruiting the next student continues to rise.
NACUBO’s research suggests institutions are recognizing the connection. In its 2025 Tuition Discounting Study, 57.1% of participating institutions reported new retention efforts for current students as a strategy for increasing net tuition revenue. It was the most frequently reported strategy among participating institutions.
The VPEM Mandate Has Changed
This is where the retention conversation becomes a leadership conversation.
When a president tells me the institution needs a new Vice President for Enrollment Management, one of the first things I want to understand is what that person is actually being hired to accomplish. Is the expectation primarily to grow the incoming class? Is it to improve net tuition revenue? Stabilize overall enrollment? Change the institution’s market position? Improve retention? Very often, the answer is some combination of all of them.
That matters because those are not simply different goals. They require a broader kind of enrollment leader.
Consider two candidates with similar records of increasing applications and improving yield. One has spent most of a career focused on new-student acquisition. The other can also explain how retention affects enrollment forecasting, has worked closely with academic affairs and student success, understands the relationship between persistence and net tuition revenue, and has experience bringing those conversations to a president, CFO, and board.
On paper, both may look like successful enrollment executives. For an institution facing enrollment and revenue pressure, however, they bring different experiences to the role.
That is why defining the mandate before beginning a VPEM search is so important. If the institution says it needs enrollment growth but the underlying problem is that it cannot retain enough of the students it already enrolls, searching primarily for a great recruiter may solve the wrong problem.
Before a search begins, presidents and boards should look carefully at the institution’s enrollment picture and ask what the next VPEM will actually need to influence. Where are students being lost? What is happening with first-to-second-year retention? How does attrition affect net tuition revenue? How well do enrollment management, academic affairs, student success, and finance currently work together? Most importantly, which of those conditions will the new enrollment leader be expected to change?
The answers should shape the position profile, the candidate pool, and the interview process.
What Should You Ask a VPEM Candidate?
A candidate can tell you that retention matters. Most experienced enrollment leaders will. The more revealing conversation is about what they have actually done when retention sat outside their direct authority.
For example, ask about a time when the incoming class met expectations, but total enrollment did not. What did the candidate examine first? Who was brought into the conversation? What data did they use? Did the response focus immediately on recruiting more students, or did the candidate look across the entire enrollment picture?
Another useful question is what the candidate would do if first-to-second-year retention dropped three percentage points during the first year in the role. Listen closely to where the answer goes. Does the candidate immediately talk about programs and tactics, or do they first want to understand which students are leaving, when they are leaving, why they are leaving, and what those losses mean financially?
The strongest answers will rarely place responsibility entirely within enrollment management. Retention is influenced by academic experience, advising, financial pressures, student life, institutional expectations, and many other factors. A VPEM does not need to control all of those areas, but they do need to know how to work across them.
That ability has become much more important in executive search. Presidents should be looking not only for someone who can build a class, but for someone who understands the economics of the entire enrollment portfolio and can influence colleagues whose work affects it.
Look Beyond the Incoming Class
The same principle applies at the board level. Most board enrollment reports include applications, admits, deposits, yield, discount rate, and the size of the incoming class. Those numbers matter, but they are only part of the enrollment picture.
Suppose a university enrolls 50 more first-year students while losing 75 more continuing students than anticipated. The larger incoming class may look like a success when viewed in isolation, while the institution’s overall enrollment and revenue position has actually deteriorated. A VPEM needs to be able to explain both sides of that equation and help institutional leadership understand what needs to happen next.
For presidents preparing to hire their next enrollment leader, this is worth considering before the position description is written. If retention is now part of the institution’s enrollment and revenue strategy, should it also be part of the VPEM’s mandate? If so, does the search process actually test for the experience required to lead that work?
As recruiting costs rise, presidents need more from their next enrollment leader than a strong incoming class. A VPEM must understand how recruitment, retention, financial aid, and net tuition revenue affect total enrollment, and know how to work across the institution when those numbers fall short.
That should change how VPEM candidates are evaluated. A record of increasing applications or improving yield is not enough. Has the candidate managed the full enrollment picture? Can they identify where enrollment is being lost and work with academic affairs, student success, and finance to address it?
If retention affects enrollment and revenue, it belongs in the VPEM search.