Candidate360: Solutions for optimizing higher education enrollment
The post-COVID environment has made an already difficult enrollment task more challenging, making it even more important for institutions to plan strategically and carefully manage its admissions pipeline. Candidate360 is a predictive analytics solution that combines integrated client and Deloitte proprietary lifestyle data, AI and machine learning predictive models, interactive dashboards, and advice from Deloitte's Higher Education specialists to help institutions achieve recruiting and enrollment.
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How can Candidate360 revolutionize your enrollment lifecycle?

Meet enrollment and class composition goals
Examine academics, student experiences, and more to shape and form class composition, as well as meet or exceed enrollment targets, with the composition that aligns to your institution’s goals.

Identify nontraditional candidates
Enhance recruiting among nontraditional candidates by optimizing your lead generation and outreach across geographies and at the individual level.

Increase net tuition revenue
Increase net tuition revenue by optimizing financial aid awards, shifting class composition, or increasing overall class size.

Improve ability to proactively plan for institutional needs
Improve your ability to proactively plan for next term during the current academic year with better insights into enrollment and class composition (for example: facilities, academic offerings, and bridge programs).
Candidate360 is an AI and analytics solution that provides predictive insights to inform decision-making across the full student enrollment lifecycle. Candidate360 combines your data with Deloitte’s lifestyle data to conduct analysis with our AI/ML predictive analytical models. This analysis can be visualized in our pre-built Candidate360 application to support your strategic and tactical planning and prioritization.

Since 2010, total college enrollment has decreased by 8%, even before the COVID-19 pandemic began affecting colleges and universities.1 According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated first-year enrollment declines at four-year institutions2—only a few years before birth rate declines may weaken current enrollment numbers. Colleges and universities must think strategically about how they manage their admissions pipeline and confront the already challenging enrollment environment.
Changes to the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) guidelines increase competition among existing institutions among this decreasing pool of candidates. New, competitive for-profit institutions and disruptors threaten existing schools and increase competition for non-traditional adult learners. On the flip side, employers are increasingly removing degree requirements for prospective workers, leaving some to question the need for a formal degree program.
Specifically, at the graduate school level, the landscape has never looked more complex and is constantly evolving. The COVID-19 pandemic and a changing economy has caused graduate school leaders to be worried about maintaining their institutions’ financial viability and relevance. With significantly more competition, such as online certification programs and low-priced subscription options, graduate institutions’ overall mission and bottom-line are facing more challenges. Institutions need to change the way they think about enrollment management. To help overcome many of the hurdles, graduate school leaders can—among other things—begin to concentrate enrollment more on the non-traditional student, with the hope of reskilling and upskilling.
Combined, the challenges could result in:
● Reduced enrollment
● Reduced net tuition revenue
● Increased competition for highly qualified and diverse candidates
● Increased need to prioritize among a limited set of available time and monetary resources
● Increased need for long-term planning
A data-driven analytical platform, combined with Deloitte’s insight advisers, can help higher education leaders understand their enrollment challenges and proactively identify and prioritize solutions that support both short- and long-term mission goals.
1 National Center for Education Statistics, “Undergraduate Enrollment,” May 2020, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp.
2 National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, “Fall 2020: Current Term Enrollment Estimates,” December 17, 2020, https://nscresearchcenter.org/current-term-enrollment-estimates.
Large, public institution: Managing recruiting end to end
During a multi-year engagement, Deloitte collaborated with the university to:
● Develop financial aid strategy to better yield accepted applicants
● Customize outreach and communications on prospects based on preferences and interests
● Support deployment of recruiters and marketing resources based on geographic clusters of high-fit prospects
Results: In the first year of using Candidate360 analytical models, the client benefited from more than a 20% increase in out-of-state student enrollment and a $5M increase in net tuition revenue.
Midsize public research university: Identifying retention risks
During an 8-week engagement, Deloitte collaborated with the university to:
● Assess COVID-19– and unemployment-related risks to student attrition
● Provide data and insights of COVID-19–related risk factors to inform various outreach and retention strategies
Results: Deloitte provided the client insights to be data-informed about COVID-19–related risks among the student body and proactively take steps to maintain normalcy across its planned enrollment as seen through its target class composition and recruiting metrics.
Midsize public research university: Accelerating Veteran Recruiting
During a 4-week engagement, Deloitte collaborated with the university to:
● Train and tailor a New Prospector Identifier model that identified potential applicants across households with prior military experience
● Develop an advanced understanding of institution’s ‘fit’ profile, including income and debt level, age range, education level, and over a dozen additional lifestyle attributes
Results: The institution received 10,000 veteran leads within the target commuting distance or with a potential interest in online learning, accelerating targeted recruiting efforts during a record-breaking recruiting cycle.
The Candidate360 predictive models support institutions looking for long-term student success among traditional and non-traditional learners during the recruiting and enrollment processes

Who is Candidate360 designed for?
Contact us to learn more or schedule a demonstration of the platform
If you are interested in learning more about Candidate360 and how it can help your institution reach its enrollment goals, please fill out the form below and one of our team members will be in touch soon.
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In addition to 10 data models that can support the end-to-end recruitment and enrollment cycle, Candidate360 has:
Over 7 years of lifestyle data points across 230 million records, with over 1,500 data points available for candidate insights
Demonstrated reliability with over 150+ models across education, health, and other industries
Pre-built and customizable UI/UX to manage institutional pipeline from start-to-finish, serving as a one-stop-shop for tracking top-line goals and executing individual outreach plans
Access to an insight advisor to help derive insights, customize analyses, and make strategic decisions. Advisors are former educational executives with deep enrollment and analytics experience with support from data scientists and engineers
Compliant with FERPA, data sharing laws (e.g., California Consumer Privacy Act), leading practices for safeguarding data and ethical AI modeling