Enrollment doesn’t decline quietly. It erodes budgets, programs, and people. The uncomfortable truth is that even strong institutions lose students without realizing why.
Speak Your Mind! 🎯 “Enrollment Loss Is a Management Issue” by Dejan Trpkovic
23–DEC–2025 | Across the world, many schools and colleges are seeing enrollment numbers decline. Fewer new students, weaker retention, and empty seats in programs that once filled easily. This trend took hold after the COVID-19 pandemic, when prolonged closures, remote learning, demographic shifts, and the rapid growth of alternative education options changed how families make decisions about schooling. For many institutions, these shifts have not fully reversed.
When student numbers fall, the impact is never abstract. It shows up quickly in budgets, programs, and people.
Some institutions respond by doing very little marketing, assuming that strong teaching and good outcomes will speak for themselves. Others react by trying to “do more marketing” fast, often without clarity or direction. Both responses miss the same issue.
Not every enrollment decline is a marketing problem. Sometimes the offer itself needs work. Programs may no longer be relevant, outcomes may be unclear, or student support may fall short. In those cases, marketing cannot compensate.
But very often, quality exists and is simply not understood from the outside.
This is where two patterns appear again and again.
First, marketing is handled internally in an effort to save money, even though it requires a different kind of expertise. Expecting educators or administrators to replace marketing professionals is no different than asking teachers to run finance systems. Good intentions take the place of specialization, and the message suffers as a result.
Second, marketing lacks persistence. Schools are highly risk-averse and often expect quick results without committing to a systematic, long-term approach. Communication starts and stops. Messages change. Budgets are cut just as trust begins to form.
The result is not clarity, but noise.
So what should institutions do differently?
Not market more, but market more deliberately. That means being clear about who the institution is for and who it is not, understanding which decision factors actually matter to students and families, and translating educational quality into language that makes sense outside academic circles. These are strategic decisions, not tactical ones.
Marketing can’t fix weak strategy. But when quality exists, it plays a critical role. Its real job isn’t promotion. It’s translation. Turning real value into understanding, consistently, over time.
Student numbers protect staff. Clarity protects student numbers. If enrollment is declining, the first question isn’t how to promote more. It’s whether the institution is being understood at all.
Dejan Trpkovic
Managing Director, PRODIREKT
Founder of Verbalists Education & Language Network
Speak Your Mind!
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