EAB recently acquired Concourse Global and announced an expansion of the Greenlight Match program the two companies have been collaborating on for the past year. Greenlight Match flips the script on the traditional college application process by enabling underserved students to connect with and receive offers of admission and financial aid from participating local colleges—without completing a formal application. This process typically provides these students multiple offers early in the college application process, which boosts their confidence and helps them plan their finances. Concourse founder Joe Morrison joins EAB’s Jonathan April to discuss this new phase of their work.

In an interview that originally aired in April 2022, Inside Higher Ed Editor Scott Jaschik highlights the news stories he believes will have an outsized impact on higher education in the months and years to come. Jaschik is joined on the podcast by Carla Hickman, whose take on these issues is informed by her role as head of EAB’s Research division. The two explore issues ranging from the massive challenges facing community colleges to the game-changing legal fight over affirmative action in admissions.

EAB’s Tara Zirkel, Kayla Laughton, and Joshua Ddamulira share findings from their listening tour of more than 20 community college presidents to uncover the best ways to help Black and Latino men persist and succeed at community colleges. The three review statistics that underscore the challenge and isolate five top strategies to help you make significant improvement. They also discuss ways to overcome funding challenges by partnering with community-based organizations that can help create onramps to professional careers for these students.

EAB’s Madeleine Rhyneer and Michael Koppenheffer share findings from EAB’s newest survey of parents and guardians of prospective college applicants. The survey helps pinpoint parent preferences around the types and timing of communication they most appreciate from colleges, as well as the top concerns they have about the college search process. Michael and Madeleine share tips for institutions looking to make parent engagement a more central focus of their recruiting efforts. They also urge schools to lead with empathy and do everything in their power to educate parents about the challenges and opportunities that go along with sending one of their own off to college.

EAB’s Earl Sires and Mike Laracy examine the “digital sprawl” problem that plagues many college campuses and discuss tips and tools for cutting through all that complexity. Rather than relying on overworked programmers and statisticians, the two urge campus leaders to use an education data platform to tame the sprawl and facilitate direct access to the data by those tasked with making strategic decisions. They also demystify terms like predictive modeling and identify use cases that illustrate how critical advanced data analytics can be to establishing a more effective, data-informed culture at your school.

Joel Spiess explains how the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee uses retention grants to close equity gaps and offers tips on how other institutions can establish similar programs.

EAB’s Lilia Shea and Lauren Edmonds examine factors limiting the growth of undergraduate and graduate-level nursing programs despite strong demand. The two urge leaders to build partnerships with regional healthcare providers as a way to supplement faculty ranks and help secure clinical placements for students. They also discuss the value of recruiting future instructors from among the student body and suggest creative ways to recruit, reward, and retain preceptors.

Allison Akalonu joins Matt Sheldon to discuss ways to fix the broken transfer system. The two point to data showing the precipitous decline in transfer enrollments and explore ways to identify and fix institutional barriers that frustrate students and cause them to look elsewhere for a more receptive landing spot. They also offer guidance on better ways to engage students at every stage of the transfer funnel by using technology and human touch points more effectively.

Dr. Brian Reed and Zach Rossmiller from the University of Montana join EAB’s Pavani Reddy to discuss a new initiative their institution has launched to help Native American students succeed. The three discuss initial learnings from the project, dubbed “Data for Student Equity,” which is funded in part by a grant from the Gates Foundation. The project enables university leaders to access and analyze data creatively to identify institutional and financial obstacles preventing Native American students from earning their degrees. While there is still much work to be done, new approaches are being developed at the university that could be replicated by other institutions to positively impact enrollment, retention, and career success for all students.

EAB’s Brooke Thayer is joined by Dr. Janet Greenwood who leads an executive search firm that works primarily with higher education institutions. The two discuss the talent management “whiplash” that higher education leaders experienced as they moved from a cost-containment mindset at the outset of the pandemic to today’s full-on battle to retain and attract employees. Dr. Greenwood touches on everything from leadership transition planning to the unique benefits that higher education institutions can leverage as they compete for talent against private sector enterprises.