New Research Highlights Strategies to Reverse Enrollment Melt Trends

The Latest Report from Eduventures Research Reveals Critical Need for Colleges and Universities to Adapt to Full-Funnel Yield Strategies to Grow Enrollment.

BOSTON, Aug. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Encoura^®, an industry-leading educational technology and research organization, announced today the recent publication of the Eduventures Balancing Yield & Melt in 2025 report. The report – a first of its kind for Eduventures Research – provides a unique view into how students are making their enrollment choices and how enrollment teams can find focused ways to make informed decisions regarding recruitment, enrollment, and support services that will enhance their yield and reduce melt.

Recent yield and melt seasons have been strongly affected by heightened scrutiny and skepticism around higher education's value, students facing more college options with increasing numbers of acceptances, and college recruitment continuing past the traditionally respected deadline of May 1. With these stark changes, how should colleges and universities be adapting their recruitment approaches and student connections? When and how should institutions be engaging today's students?

This report details specific student enrollment trends, influencers, and drivers to empower institutions to focus their efforts to enroll their classes. Additionally, the research outlines seven actionable insights for institutions to "freeze" enrollment (decrease melt).

These strategic insights include:

1. Students are not making their college decisions alone. Lean on the people students are looking to when making college decisions and help those individuals understand your brand and opportunities.
2. Foster community. Students look to their peers as college influencers—create and/or ensure there are accessible spaces for admitted students to find community before the first day of school.
3. Extend your yield network. Students will branch out beyond admissions teams as they move through enrollment. Ensure the broader campus community is prepared to support incoming students by educating your campus on both broad and granular yield trends, along with how to support and triage incoming students' needs.
4. Create clarity on cost. Understand the low-income audience most affected by affordability, make the conversation highly personal, and create spaces where students can better understand cost and affordability.
5. Data informed & technology equipped. Leverage technology to help inform an understanding of current yield and melt needs, while also providing a catalyst for personalized engagement tailored to students based on funnel status and time of year.
6. Don't fall into the transactional trap. Scaffold information appropriately and don't lose the fun factor. Students are experiencing heightened emotions, so helping them navigate the next steps without information overload is important.
7. Engage in "ori-yield-entation." Securing enrollment means bringing orientation into the yield conversation sooner than ever to support the transition to college at the point of admission. Yield and melt trends encourage ori-yield-entation, where enrollment partners collaborate closely, rather than working sequentially, to transition students to college.

"Today's recruitment, yield, and melt approaches have melded into one comprehensive strategy throughout the funnel," said Emily Ross, Eduventures Senior Analyst and author of this study. "With declining yield rates and increased melt across higher education, institutions must empower the individuals closest to students with relevant information to support them, while also creating easy-to-understand, customized resources for students throughout the recruitment cycle. The 'set it and forget it' campaign strategies of the past will no longer suffice as colleges embrace AI tools to enhance personalization and engage students in real-time."

Institutions wishing to grow enrollment in the current climate of increasing melt have to accept the new reality that their yield is affected by a year or more of recruitment efforts, from the top of the funnel through move-in day. This latest yield research from Eduventures helps colleges identify the right messages, relationships, and strategies to support today's students and mitigate melt to achieve their undergraduate enrollment goals.

About Encoura
Encoura is an educational data science and research organization serving over 2,000 member institutions comprising public and private colleges and universities across the nation. Since 1972, Encoura has been a leading provider of data science, technology, and programs serving students, high school educators, colleges, and universities with offices in Austin, TX and Boston, MA. These solutions represent the link between students making important life decisions and those providing the resources and information students need to succeed in their postsecondary educations and careers. For more information, visit https://encoura.org.

Members of the media who would like to speak to the author of this report or obtain a copy of the report can contact Todd Boullion at [email protected].

Media Contact:
Todd Boullion
Chief Marketing Officer
Encoura
(800) 862-7759
[email protected]

SOURCE Encoura