Unifying Admissions Across Faculties: How Multi-Campus Institutions Consolidate Operations

Multi-campus universities and institutions with multiple faculties face a fundamental tension: maintaining localized admissions expertise while achieving operational efficiency through centralized systems. This challenge becomes more complex as institutions scale globally, adding international campuses and expanding program offerings.

The Challenge

A large university system in the United Kingdom operates across 12 campuses, each with distinct admissions requirements, program structures, and faculty preferences. Prior to consolidation, each campus maintained separate admissions systems, leading to:

• Inconsistent applicant experiences across campuses
• Duplicated effort in document verification and processing
• Limited visibility into system-wide enrollment trends
• Inability to share best practices or coordinate cross-campus initiatives
• Higher operational costs due to redundant systems and processes

The central admissions office struggled to generate accurate enrollment forecasts because data resided in 12 different systems. Faculty-specific requirements meant that applicants interested in multiple programs had to navigate separate application processes.

The Approach

Leading multi-campus institutions are implementing unified admissions platforms that provide:

• Centralized application processing with campus-specific workflow routing
• Shared document verification and storage
• Cross-campus applicant visibility (enabling applicants to apply to multiple programs)
• Roll-up reporting for executive dashboards while preserving campus-level detail
• Configurable workflows that respect faculty-specific requirements

The key is balancing centralization with flexibility. Successful implementations allow campuses to maintain localized processes (interview requirements, decision criteria, communication templates) while benefiting from shared infrastructure (document management, payment processing, applicant tracking).

The Results

Institutions that successfully consolidated multi-campus operations report:

• 45% reduction in operational costs through system consolidation
• 30% improvement in cross-campus applicant conversion rates
• 2.5x faster time-to-insight for enrollment forecasting
• 85% reduction in duplicate data entry across campuses
• 22% increase in applicant satisfaction scores

One university system processing 45,000 applications annually across 8 campuses reduced their admissions technology stack from 8 separate systems to one unified platform, saving approximately £340,000 annually in licensing and maintenance costs while improving data quality and reporting capabilities.

Industry Implications

Multi-campus consolidation represents a significant opportunity for operational efficiency in higher education. As institutions expand globally and add new programs, the complexity of managing distributed admissions operations grows exponentially.

Universities that successfully unify operations while preserving localized expertise gain competitive advantages: faster decision-making, better applicant experiences, and more accurate enrollment planning. The technology enables institutions to scale program offerings without proportionally increasing administrative overhead.

The trend toward unified platforms reflects a broader shift in higher education administration: from siloed operations to integrated systems that support both centralized strategy and localized execution. This approach enables institutions to compete more effectively in global student markets while maintaining the flexibility to serve diverse program needs.