You Can't Beat the Regional Publics

Risepoint's recent piece on AASCU institutions suggests that regional public universities are structurally built for online growth. They carry name recognition, decades of legislative and community trust, workforce-aligned program portfolios, and tuition price points that undercut private universities. 

I can’t agree more.

Mid-tier tuition-dependent private universities, on the other hand, don't have the same attributes or conditional luxuries. Their name recognition is often based on sports or a niche program, which have no relevance for the online learner market. Their tuition sits well above the online market's price sensitivity, and they don't have a governor's office reinforcing their legitimacy to adult learners. For mid-tier privates, online growth has to be built against regional publics that own the online price-and-product space, not against the university’s aspirational or actual peers.

And this is exactly why schools and colleges of professional & continuing education (PCE) matter at tuition-dependent privates. PCE units are where these universities have historically learned to operate outside the traditional undergraduate model with flexible scheduling, workforce partnerships, corporate tuition agreements, accelerated formats, non-traditional admissions, and pricing structures that don't map to the spiraling discount-rate. PCE units are the only part of these institutions having already solved for adult-learner logistics, already built employer relationships, and already developed the muscle memory for iterating on programs quickly.

This is, again, why it's alarming and disappointing to watch so many private universities deconstructing or deprioritizing their PCE units, folding them into hack back-office administrative offices led by doughy consultants and uninspired transactional staff. Without a PCE unit's operating model, pricing flexibility, and market instincts, online enterprises at mid-tier tuition dependent privates will fail (and in some case, are already failing) catastrophically and shamelessly without accountability or “leadership” consequence.