The Parish Pulse is our monthly roundup of higher education trends, enrollment insights, and the industry conversations we’re watching.
Higher education continues to evolve, but the most important shifts often reveal deeper questions about how institutions connect with their audiences.
Lately, we’ve found ourselves less interested in what’s changing and more interested in what those changes reveal.
- Student expectations are reshaping how colleges think about recruitment, from the application process to the campus experience.
- Institutional stories and data are becoming increasingly important tools for understanding identity, opportunity, and impact.
- Even new technologies and strategies only create value when they help institutions build stronger relationships and make more informed decisions.
We’re noticing colleges and universities rethink what connection looks like, not just in how they communicate with students, but in how they design experiences, tell their stories, and make decisions.
Here are a few resources and observations that explore those ideas in practice.
Recruitment Is a Campus-Wide Responsibility
When institutions think about recruitment, it’s easy to focus on the traditional pieces of the enrollment process: admissions communications, campus visits, and marketing campaigns.
But prospective students don’t experience a college or university in departments. They experience it as one campus.
As more families explore institutions independently, every interaction becomes part of the recruitment experience. A helpful employee, clear campus navigation, or a welcoming first impression can reinforce a student’s sense of belonging. Confusing processes or disconnected experiences can create uncertainty at a critical moment.
Recruitment is no longer just the responsibility of admissions teams. Every employee, every campus space, and every touchpoint contributes to how prospective students understand an institution.
In Your Whole Campus Should Be a Recruitment Opportunity, The Parish Group’s Dr. Leah Beth Hubbard explores why institutions need to think beyond traditional enrollment marketing and view the entire campus experience as part of the recruitment strategy.
The Best Technology Strategies Start With Better Questions
Slate Summit always brings new features, ideas, and conversations, but the real value comes from what institutions do with those insights afterward.
The most successful technology implementations are rarely about simply adding new tools or recreating existing processes in a new system. They are opportunities to step back, ask better questions, and rethink how work gets done.
Our Slate Summit 2026 recap goes beyond announcements to share our team’s biggest takeaways, favorite new functionality, and reflections from the sessions we attended and presented. We’ve also included additional resources, including our Slate Preferred Presentations and Slate 101 videos, to help institutions continue exploring how Slate can support stronger processes and better experiences.
Whether you joined us in Nashville or followed along from afar, the biggest takeaway remains the same: technology works best when it supports thoughtful strategy.
The Stories Institutions Tell Shape How They’re Understood
Institutional identity is built through more than rankings, programs, and statistics. The stories colleges preserve and share help communities understand who they are, what they value, and why their work matters.
A recent Guardian feature highlighting efforts to preserve historic photographs from Historically Black Colleges and Universities serves as a reminder of the importance of protecting institutional stories. These images capture the people, communities, and moments that define campus history.
At Parish, we’ve had the privilege of working with HBCUs for many years, and we know firsthand how powerful storytelling can be in helping institutions communicate their identity and impact, not just to prospective students, but to the broader communities they serve.
Admissions and Enrollment Strategies Require Context
Several recent conversations in higher education point toward a similar conclusion: there is no universal approach to enrollment.
As some colleges reconsider supplemental essay requirements, institutions are asking important questions about how they evaluate students, reduce unnecessary barriers, and create meaningful opportunities for connection during the admissions process.
At the same time, the latest Enrollment Insights from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reinforces something we continue to see in our work with colleges and universities: enrollment trends are nuanced. What works for one institution, student population, or market may not translate directly to another.
Strong enrollment strategies start with understanding the data and the people behind it.
One More Read
A recent conversation in the EducationBusiness subreddit asked a simple question: how do institutions reach students who scroll past most of what they see?
While the specific statistic discussed may be anecdotal, the broader conversation reflects a challenge many enrollment marketers recognize: attention is harder to earn than ever. Standing out requires more than simply increasing the volume of communication. It requires relevance, authenticity, and content that provides real value.
Understanding where audiences spend their time—and how they decide what deserves their attention—is becoming an increasingly important part of effective enrollment strategy.
Final Thoughts
While the topics above may seem disconnected, they all point toward a common reality: connection is becoming one of the most important strategic priorities for higher education.
Students are looking for more authentic experiences. Institutions are reconsidering long-standing processes. Data is revealing more complexity beneath broad enrollment trends.
The institutions that succeed will be those willing to look beyond individual tactics and think about the complete experience they create, from the first interaction with a prospective student to the stories they preserve for future generations.
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