Earlier this year, a bunch of us on Team RHB were having a lively conversation in our multi-time zone Zoombox about RHB’s growing student success practice, when our president, Sam Waterson, paused the conversation and asked the question posed in the title of this article. “It reminds me of ‘peacekeeping missiles’,” said the eponymous founder…Read more
Author: Ken Anselment
A Proposal for Coherent Student-Centric Financial Aid Offers
Before the holiday break, I read with great interest—and little surprise—articles that appeared in the Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed around the lack of clarity (and, in some cases, honesty) in financial aid offers. The title of Eric Hoover’s December 5 Chronicle article summarizes the issue well: “Most Colleges Omit or Understate Net Costs in…Read more
Free Your Search … And the Rest Will Follow
This is the last in a series of three articles about bringing your search efforts in-house. In Are You Ready to Bring Your Search In House?, Alex Williams, RHB’s Senior Vice President for Relationship Development, explains how to discover the truth about your institution, and then share that truth with prospective students in beautiful and…Read more
Reckoning With the Great Resignation
This article previously appeared in Inside Higher Ed and it is posted here with permission of the author. While I was in Houston for the 2022 National Association for College Admission Counseling conference, I saw in person what we have been reading about and—for many on college campuses—living with for the past 12 to 15…Read more
How a Horseshoe Can Remind Leaders About Our Institutional Why
Lately, as I continue hearing and reading stories about the Great Resignation, I find myself thinking a lot about a seven-foot-tall blue horse. Let me back up. Earlier this year, after boarding my homebound flight from Indianapolis and walking to my assigned seat, I found myself squeezing past a regulation NFL helmet, adorned with the…Read more
The Power of a Group Ride
I love road biking. (I also love metaphors.) If I have an hour or two of “Ken-time” and the winds are favorable (more on that in a bit), I love to gear up, hop in the saddle, and head out onto the long open roads for a leg-stretching ride around my home in Appleton, Wisconsin.…Read more
Sheep, Lions, and Your Institution’s Self
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of driving on I-80 through Iowa, as I did when I took my daughter back for her second year of college, you know that the long, rolling road is abundant not only with views of corn and soybeans, but opportunities for the mind to wander. Mine wandered right to…Read more
Ship Metaphors and Storytelling With Your Board
Ready for your board meeting? Part 2 of 3 I’ve been having this recurring dream. I’ve just clicked the red “Leave Meeting” button, which teleports me from a call with our predictive modeling consultant (whose predictions in a dataset without precedent have all the solidity of a cumulus cloud), and drops me into the Excel…Read more
Normal
“When we get back to Normal…” I recently saw someone flail their hands in front of their mouths after saying those words, as if trying to grasp the utterance out of the air before it could land in our midst, flaunting its elusiveness. That little moment illustrated for me the larger reality of This Moment.…Read more
Wishes
“A time machine.” “A crystal ball.” “A vaccine…now.” If you were to gather a group of chief enrollment officers from around the country and grant them each one wish they can make on behalf of their institutions…well, let’s just say those wishes reflect this strange moment in which we all find ourselves. Earlier this month,…Read more