Summary of Enrollment Ideas Submitted via the Strategic Planning Process — Fall 2011

Suggestions: Increase visibility by seeking out a more global and diverse applicant pool. Maintain an appropriate student-body size for Grinnell’s facilities and pedagogical practices. Renew student perception of well-being, a communal ethos that esteems scholarship, and the Grinnell identity. Find a solution to a resolvable issue (finances) by entrepreneurially re-engaging collegiate education at its most fundamental level. This data was gathered with nearly equal representation from faculty, staff, trustees, alumni and students.

Enrollment goals

  • Expand geographic, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity.
  • Increase student quality; seek out students with skills needed to succeed.
  • Reduce tuition; develop sustainable program that resonates with the economy.
  • Ensure that students with earnest need are provided for and able to succeed.
  • Place a cap on enrollment; maintain appropriate size for Grinnell (e.g., class size).
  • Enroll students who resonate with the culture of Grinnell (e.g., not for athletics).
  • Evaluate need-blind admissions, which is a positive for students and alumni, negative for the bottom line.
  • Consider emulating the successful practices of peer institutions (e.g., finances).

Ambitions for Grinnell’s visibility

  • Bring known outside lecturers/artists to campus.
  • Take smart risks as an institution; be on the cutting edge of (something).
  • Continue to engage in philanthropic endeavors on a global scale.
  • Develop graduate courses, programs.
  • Make location marketable; purchase farmland, grow food for College, etc.
  • Maintain elite status, but without expansion, conformity, bureaucracy.
  • Offer a career adviser for each student.
  • Develop strong student-alumni networks and relations; market the engagement.
  • Reconsider international student financial aid; target the global student pool.
  • Establish generous funding policies for undocumented applicants and students.
  • Hold summer college programs for high school students.
  • Increase awareness of the Liberal Arts in Prison program and the Grinnell Prize.
  • Entrepreneurially rethink and re-engage education at this level (affordable, etc.).

Campus climate

  • Better define and embody core values; resolve Grinnell’s “identity crisis.”
  • Do away with entitlement, classist hierarchies and antipublic-sector mentality.
  • Increase administrative transparency; foster greater dependency on expert judgment.
  • Develop and strengthen the support system for students throughout the campus.
  • Benchmark best-in-class organizations (not just peers; too often the bar is low).
  • Increase student revenue, redistribute funds, provide economically savvy education.
  • Increase awareness of and response to the economic disparity on campus.
  • Provide safe places for students to study and sleep (e.g., on the weekends).
  • Place greater emphasis on wellness; address depression, stress, social pressures.
  • Address unhealthy social environment; regain a valued scholarly/academic community.
  • Decrease student workload; increase time spent on few projects, extracurricular activities.
  • Do not allow the bottom line or image to act as markers of success or focus.