Strategic Enrollment Management [SEM] is a crucial element of planning for new growth at a university or college as it concerns both academic program growth and facilities needs. Emerging as a response to fluctuations in student markets and increasing pressure on recruitment strategies in higher education, SEM focuses on achieving student success throughout their entire life cycle with an institution while increasing enrollment numbers and stabilizing institutional revenues. SEM strategies accomplish the fulfillment of an institution's mission and student experience goals by strategically planning enrollments through recruiting, retaining and graduating specific cohorts of students followed by targeted practices to build a lifelong affinity with the institution among alums. In addition to a focus on student achievement, SEM also fundamentally understands the student as holding the role of a learner in addition to a customer and citizen of the global community.

Originating at Boston College in the 1970’s as a reaction to fluctuating student enrollment markets and increased pressure on recruitment strategies, SEM was created and developed into a critical pillar in the institutional planning process. Although originating as an American concept and practice, the same requirement for response to demographic shifts and increasing competitiveness among institutions can be seen in other nations with substantial footholds in higher education such as Canada. Despite originating as an American experience, the critical issues Canadian post-secondary institutions face are similar enough in nature to those at American institutions that applications can be borrowed across the border.

The functional aspects of what a SEM operation considers and works to advance and optimize can include: