Kansas State University

From Provost Mendez: Next-Gen K-State strategic enrollment planning initiative launched

Submitted by Jesse Perez Mendez

Dear colleagues, 

As K-State continues to implement key elements of the Next-Gen K-State strategic plan, the university is acutely focused on the work needed to support the achievement of two strategic imperatives: Growing our total student enrollment to 30,000 learners by 2030 and making meaningful improvements in our graduation and retention rates across all student populations. Coupled with this growth in headcount will be an increased focus on opportunities to grow net tuition revenue — a key revenue source for the university. 

As part of this important work, the Office of the Provost is partnering with a dedicated team of enrollment experts at Huron Consulting Group to support the development a new comprehensive five-year strategic enrollment plan. Our goal is to have the new plan in place in October 2024, with work taking place over the summer and into the fall. 

The strategic enrollment plan will be directly informed by the imperatives in the Next-Gen K-State strategic plan and will focus on further refining priorities and year-over-year enrollment goals for all student and learner populations. The plan will outline specific strategies and tactics that support our ability to achieve 2025 and 2030 enrollment, retention and graduation rate success metrics and to realize additional tuition revenue.

While the university's most recent strategic enrollment plan, implemented beginning in 2018, was primarily focused on undergraduate students, this planning initiative will take a more comprehensive, integrated approach, in line with the operational excellence framework and provost's office organizational redesign. The objectives of this planning process include:

• To facilitate a data-informed assessment and conversations on the current state of Kansas State University's enrollment and retention, focused on identifying areas of opportunity across undergraduate, graduate and alternative credential-seeking learners, inclusive of online students and all other populations.

• To develop a comprehensive, five-year strategic enrollment plan to define and drive institutional priorities for student/learner enrollment. 

• To establish a planning and implementation structure and associated working groups to develop the strategic enrollment plan and subsequently drive its execution.

Initial work is already underway, including data collection that will inform the current state diagnostic work and interviews with university leaders and their teams engaged in enrollment work. A strategic enrollment planning structure has been put into place, including an executive planning committee, four advisory planning groups and a data and information collection team. The Huron team will work in close consultation with all these groups as well as the Deans Council. 

The executive planning committee will provide guidance throughout the planning process and help set forth the strategic priorities and critical enablers that will help drive enrollment growth, tuition revenue generation and student success at K-State. 

The four advisory groups include university leaders from both central and academic units who have deep contextual knowledge and functional responsibility for K-State's current enrollment, retention and student success environment. These groups will help the Huron team build out initiatives and action items, bringing their expertise and knowledge of the effort necessary to implement any recommended initiatives related to enrollment and net tuition revenue growth. The advisory planning groups are:

• Undergraduate, inclusive of transfer and international
• Graduate, inclusive of international
• K-State Online, primarily fully online students across our campuses, inclusive of undergraduate and graduate
• Retention and Student Success, inclusive of undergraduate and graduate

The data and information collection team provides data, information and documentation to support diagnostic assessment of our current strategic enrollment environment and the development of the comprehensive strategic enrollment plan.

I thank the more than 40 K-Staters who have already begun the work of supporting the planning process. To be successful, we will also need to hear from many of you across our university community to ensure all voices and perspectives are represented. This may take the form of focus groups, open forums and surveys, including a review process seeking K-State community feedback on the draft plan as we begin the fall semester.

I invite you to visit the strategic enrollment planning website to learn more about the planning process, where we are and what's next. Please send in questions or suggestions to sem@k-state.edu.

Our enrollment planning effort is a proactive response to an increasingly complex and competitive market for prospective students and learners at the undergraduate, graduate and alternative credential levels. Additionally, it responds to our need to improve our operational infrastructure to support larger student and learner populations and success outcomes related to retention, the student/learner experience, academic success and graduation rates.

Growing enrollment is a top priority for the university, and it's foundational to achieving our vision of becoming the next-generation land-grant university by 2030. It will require a fierce focus across the university. I am confident that together, we will create a plan to guide our actions and set a course for the coming years that will strengthen our enrollment and ensure we continue to serve the students of Kansas State University, both now and in the future. 

Go 'Cats,

Jesse Perez Mendez
Provost and executive vice president