Enrollment forecasting is essential for informing college planning and budgeting decisions. A basic tenet of strategic planning is to be able to anticipate, predict, and control future outcomes. Accurate forecasts allow us to see the future clearer and effectively plan in areas such as enrollment management, facilities planning and budgeting decisions.
Environmental scanning is the acquisition and use of information about events, trends, and relationships in an organizations external and internal environment, the knowledge of which would assist management in planning the organization's future course of action. (Aguilar, 1967, Choo and Auster, 1993)