Admissions-to-Enrolment Platform Recovery Leader — University Alliance

The mandate

Five universities moved admissions and student records onto a shared cloud platform shortly before their largest international intake. Reconciliation uncovered duplicate applicant identities, fulfilled conditions reverting to outstanding, tuition deposits detached from offers, superseded visa documents presented as current, scholarships missing from enrolment totals and accepted students occupying capacity in the wrong course instance. The programme sponsor was released after manual queues grew without a reliable population count.

Mobilisation is required no later than twelve calendar days after appointment, for a ten-month executive term spanning intake rescue, the following domestic cycle and permanent succession. Recruitment for the enduring platform leader begins when the first reconciled census is signed in month three, and four weeks at the end are protected for joint command. Council can permit one extension of at most eight weeks if the recruitment appointment—not recovery delivery—misses its approval date.

Handover will be accepted only when each active applicant resolves to one verified identity; offer conditions, acceptances, payments, scholarship decisions and document versions form an auditable chronology; programme capacity agrees between admissions and registry; and two enrolment censuses close without hidden spreadsheets. The new leader must run an unannounced exception sample, decide the disposition of remaining data debt and secure registrar acceptance without intervention from the interim.

The recovery leader has power to suspend platform changes, quarantine suspect records, redirect the authorised C$43 million programme, mobilise short-term data and testing specialists, set technical cutover criteria and require vendors to remedy contracted defects. The role cannot admit or reject an applicant, decide whether evidence satisfies an academic condition, provide immigration advice, change tuition or scholarship policy, modify curriculum, appoint permanent staff or authorise expenditure above the council’s delegated ceiling.

Faculty planning, teaching delivery, campus services, residence allocation and broad institutional restructuring remain separate. No ownership transfers over academic standards, visa interpretation, tuition-setting, course creation or individual student appeals. This assignment may expose unreliable capacity or workflow dependencies, but accountable university officers—not the technology recovery office—must make the underlying education and policy choices.

Why this seat is open

The implementation plan treated a successful technical migration as proof that applicants could progress safely from offer to enrolment. As discrepancies multiplied, each institution assembled local reconciliations that answered different population questions and weakened alliance-wide command. The councils need temporary authority over platform recovery while registrars retain every substantive admissions and academic judgement.

What you will own

• Establish a single applicant population by resolving identity collisions, linked applications, withdrawn choices and agency-originated duplicates without merging distinct people for convenience.
• Trace every conditional offer through submitted evidence, authorised assessment, acceptance, deposit, scholarship outcome, visa-document version, course place and enrolment status.
• Prioritise the C$43 million recovery portfolio against intake deadlines, applicant consequence and evidential risk, cancelling technical enhancements that cannot protect the next census.
• Create a controlled path for assisted handling that records who changed which state, under what delegated rule, using what evidence and with which applicant notification.
• Govern production change through volume rehearsal, conversion completeness, financial reconciliation, privacy and access testing, registrar readiness and a pre-agreed reversal point.
• Reconcile offer acceptance, paid deposits, scholarship commitments, visa-document readiness and available course seats into one daily intake view with declared uncertainty.
• Prepare the permanent owner through an exception cohort, live release and census close, transferring vendor remedies, institutional deviations, unclosed records and the next-cycle investment case.

Candidate qualifications

• Led a multi-entity digital or core-platform portfolio exceeding C$30 million, joining customer or applicant conversion, control obligations and distributed delivery in a single executive view.
• Recovered a cloud or data migration where identity, transaction state and downstream capacity disagreed, including direct responsibility for reconciliation and resumed change.
• Has material exposure to university admissions, student records, regulated credentialing or a comparable deadline-bound public-service journey; generic enterprise-software delivery alone will not qualify.
• Managed global programmes across at least three regions and resolved policy-to-technology differences without appropriating decisions reserved for local accountable professionals.
• Built executive reporting that distinguished genuine digital completion from cases repaired by staff, stranded between systems or excluded from the measured population.
• Directed a cross-functional programme above C$30 million across multiple countries through vendor challenge, regulatory scrutiny and permanent-leader transition while protecting service to individuals already in process.

Non-negotiables

• Available to mobilise within twelve calendar days and work from Toronto at least three days weekly during the ten-month recovery window.
• Can evidence hands-on leadership of an admissions, student, credential, licensing or similarly consequential eligibility platform with fixed annual decision cycles.
• Will not offer immigration, academic or legal opinions and will preserve the authority of registrars, admissions officers and faculty bodies when technology evidence is incomplete.
• Must disclose current engagements, investments or close relationships involving the cloud student-system vendor, admissions-platform provider, recruitment agents or recovery assurance firm.

1. 49 words maximum. State your earliest Toronto mobilisation date, notice obligations and any other role that could restrict full-time executive availability.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a migration where identity or transaction state diverged between platforms; how did you establish the population requiring remedy?
3. 49 words maximum. How would you prove an applicant is enrolment-ready without making the admissions, visa or academic judgement yourself?