The Online Enrollment Playbook Isn't Working

I was speaking with a colleague about the current financial crises in higher education and he reminded me the credit rating agencies saw this coming, but few universities had the will to pull their heads out of the sand. When we go back to the data, we find that while traditional freshman enrollment dropped 5% in fall 2024, non-traditional adult undergraduate students grew by ~19% percent in the same period. Adult learners are now the single clearest growth opportunity in higher education, but most universities are bumbling through the opportunity in embarrassing fashion.

IMHO, the core problem is that universities have enrollment operations built on (perceived) brand prestige and campus-based experiences. When these universities suggest, but fail to embrace, that online undergraduate enrollment is a financial priority, they are re-glossing the existing playbook and applying it to a completely different kind of student. And when the online enrollment targets are missed, the dominant institutional response is to spend more on brand awareness campaigns and digital marketing. It's sort of like that restaurant with perpetually empty tables that just put up a bigger sign out front.

Many of us have lived through the OPM collapse. Remember how loudly and passionately our senior leadership complained about our OPM contracts being short on accountability? Yet now, as our online programs are being brought back in-house, that same leadership is sheepishly unwilling to build the internal accountability structures they had ranted about under our contracts. What they settle for and pass off as strategy is declared independence and internal online enrollment operations churning out the same vague metrics and wishful projections that made the OPM relationship so frustrating to begin with. Too many universities are making this mistake at a time when accountability, agility and creativity are needed most.

As I've suggested before, the fix isn't complicated. Be bold enough and willing to stop marketing the brand and start marketing the programs. Build realistic enrollment windows that fit how adult students actually make decisions. Hire advisors who proactively reach out rather than waiting for students to find them. Measure what matters and hold someone accountable for the missed numbers. Really, it's that easy.