Why Colleges Get Retention Wrong: A Radical Rethink with Katie Condon, VP of Enrollment at Eastern Michigan

If your institution treats student recruitment separately from retention, you’re missing a critical connection.

On this episode of The Vinedown, Emily Smith speaks with Katie Condon, Vice President of Enrollment Management at Eastern Michigan University. Katie draws from her own experiences as a first-generation college student to explain why student retention begins from the very first interaction with recruitment, and why that matters deeply to the health of any institution.

Katie shares powerful personal insights and data-driven approaches for colleges aiming to improve student success, address internal campus silos, and better prepare students for life after college. She also provides a candid exploration of the “Glass Cliff” phenomenon and how it uniquely impacts women in enrollment leadership.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why Katie believes recruitment equals retention, illustrated through her personal story of experiencing rejection and alienation as a first-generation student.
• How every interaction matters: from faculty comments to dorm conditions, seemingly small experiences have major impacts on student retention.
• Effective strategies for breaking down silos across departments to improve student outcomes—starting with a clear, unified vision for student experiences.
• The hidden challenges of the “Glass Cliff”—how women in leadership roles are often asked to achieve more with fewer resources and higher stakes, setting them up for disproportionate failure risks.
• Preparing students for the real world: why higher education often fails to prepare students adequately for non-academic careers, and what colleges should do instead (including meaningful career prep and skill-building like AI literacy).
• Practical ways enrollment managers can better understand students, including student-focused data collection and proactive campus engagement.

Katie’s thoughtful discussion emphasizes practical actions colleges can take right now to boost both recruitment and retention, while genuinely serving students’ best interests.

Listen now for an honest, actionable conversation on enrollment management’s most pressing issues.

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