There is a good chance that you are losing potential students right from your own backyard. In the post-COVID world, online education is growing and the competition for student demand is intense.
Years before the pandemic, online enrollment began its rise. Using the most recent data from IPEDS through 2018 for on-campus fall enrollment, we discover a downward curve of three percent, year-over-year, since 2013. In contrast, there is a three-percent growth in online enrollment.
Just as the novel coronavirus has disrupted our lives, it is changing the societal context for higher education. More specifically, the programs students want and whether they want to take them online or on-campus have undergone massive changes, as have job options for interns Close up of businesswomen holding graphs in hand and graduates.
In the face of financial shortfalls, many schools make a fundamental error: they focus on employment data to find new programs or current programs to grow. Unfortunately, there is a very limited relationship between employer needs and program margins.
Short, strong, with the sweet aftertaste of a data-informed insight: that is GrayData: Espresso,GrayData Espresso Blogour new blog. It will focus on brief, bi-weekly, data-informed posts on trends in student demand and employer needs.
We have a great deal to be optimistic about in higher education. For one, most state budgets didn’t fall much and the federal government just gave them billion dollar booster shots. The U.S. economy is poised for a boom, led by federal spending and pent-up consumer demand.
Journalism is the 40th largest program in the country, with over 11,000 students completing the program in 2019.
