The Signal Solution book cover

Essential Reading

The Signal Solution

The book that will change your understanding of what the next wave of enrollment management requires.

By Geoff Baird & Teege Mettille

★★★★★ Read what readers are saying →

Higher ed enrollment is in a Category 5 collision—and the old playbook won’t save you.

Five forces are converging at once: shrinking demographics, an application surge that distorts intent, credible non-degree alternatives, persistent ROI skepticism, and a personalization mandate that most institutions aren’t equipped to meet. The rules of student recruitment are being rewritten.

Grounded in consumer decision science and four years of applied AI in admissions, The Signal Solution shifts the focus from chasing volume to reading and responding to real behavioral signals—equipping institutions to identify the movable middle and align the entire campus around behavior-driven decisions.

For presidents, provosts, CFOs, and enrollment leaders ready to build an operation that is more precise, more efficient, and more human.

“Every admissions and enrollment management professional needs to read The Signal Solution. Not eventually. Now.”

Christopher W. Tremblay, Ed.D.
Executive Director of Enrollment Management, University of Michigan’s Taubman College
Reviews & Coverage
AACRAO
Review of The Signal Solution
“This was the articulation of everything that had been churning, unspoken, in my mind since the pandemic upended our work.”
Christopher W. Tremblay, Ed.D.
Editor-in-Chief, College and University
Wally Boston
Examining the Five Forces Changing the College Admissions Process
“A work of piercing insight.”
Wally Boston, Ed.D.
President Emeritus, American Public University System
Pedagogical Reckoning · Medium
Ashamed To Die Until You Have Saved Antioch Again
“Without signals to differentiate which students are truly interested, counselors have fewer ways to decide which prospects to focus on most.”
Jonathon Podolsky
September 2026

What enrollment management requires next.

If you want to talk about what signal-based enrollment looks like at your institution, we’d welcome that conversation.

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