About being “baked in” and, “No college could prepare a budget without some idea of how its second biggest operating expense is being spent,” just saying: this is where Institutional Research depts come in. Many folks think the colleges just look for rich kids, but they know their consituency, who’s more likely to apply and, if admitted, matriculate, stick around for four years. And so, also the pools they need to target more actively and what it will take to get the right numbers of them. All inter-related parts of the whole.