In his 2026 commencement speech at UNC-Chapel Hill, Eric Church used a guitar to make a simple point about life: when even one string drifts out of tune, the whole chord changes.
The speech is worth watching in full, not because enrollment leaders need one more metaphor, but because the idea lands far beyond graduation day: pressure is inevitable, drift is inevitable, and the real test is whether you are willing to stop long enough to hear what has changed. Watch the speech here.
That is a familiar tension for Vice Presidents of Enrollment Management.
Today’s enrollment environment does not sit still. Student behavior shifts. Regional demand changes. Aid strategy gets more complicated. Search markets soften. Competitors move. Institutional goals remain high, even when the external conditions become harder to read.
None of that is failure. It is not weakness. It is the reality of trying to achieve enrollment objectives in a market that’s constantly shifting.
The risk is not that a strategy drifts out of tune – it’s continuing to play louder when it does.
Every enrollment plan begins with a theory: where demand will come from, which students will respond, how aid will influence behavior, which markets justify investment, and which goals are realistic. But even well-built plans need moments of reflection. VPEMs need to know when performance is truly off track, when their own data is telling only part of the story, and when the right move is not to strum the usual chords harder but to pivot smarter.
That is what makes MARKETview so invaluable.
MARKETview gives enrollment leaders the comparative, real-time context to pause with purpose. It helps partners see not just what is happening inside their own funnel, but what is happening across the market around them. That difference matters. A decline in one segment tells one story if competitors are seeing the same pattern. It tells a very different story if the institution is falling behind while the market is moving elsewhere.
As Karissa Peckham, Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid at Quinnipiac University, put it:
“If I’m down and everyone else is, that tells me one story. If I’m down and nobody else is, that tells me a completely different story.”
That is the power of context. It changes the interpretation. And better interpretation leads to more effective action.
For Brian Troyer, Vice President for Enrollment Management at Marquette University, MARKETview created that same moment of recognition:
“When we started looking at MARKETview’s comparative data, it was like turning on the lights. We suddenly saw where we were falling behind and where we had opportunities.”
That is not just reporting. That is reflection made actionable.
The same is true when institutions need to adjust quickly. Jennifer Winge, Vice President for Enrollment Management at Allegheny College, described how MARKETview helps her team identify specific student segments by layering geography, consumer income, model score, and other categories:
“Whether we need to pivot quickly for a new campaign or a new message. It’s great to get laser-focused on those particular populations.”
In other words, the value is not simply knowing that something is out of tune. It is knowing which string moved, why it matters, and where to make the adjustment.
That is the work ahead for enrollment leaders. The coming years will test assumptions across American higher education. Some strategies will need to be defended. Others will need to be reworked. The institutions best positioned to succeed will not be the ones that never drift. They will be the ones that can hear it sooner, understand it faster, and respond with confidence.
Because in enrollment, as in music, the goal is not to avoid pressure.
The goal is to know when to pause, listen carefully, and tune the strategy before the whole song changes.
MARKETview enables this level of nuanced harmony by ensuring your enrollment strategies move in concert with the evolving marketplace … letting you know when your strategy is falling out of tune.