The glacial pace of higher education may be its undoing.  Two days ago I had a discussion with another higher education service provider who was pulling up stakes in the higher education market.  His reason: "I can't continue with the glacier pace of higher education decision-making."

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When we listen to the market today one thing seems abundantly clear - online learning is growing at, as some would say, a "meteoric" rate. 

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Adult higher education is changing and there are two market realities energizing this shift - the consumer and the provider.

The consumer, adults over the age of 25, still has one driving force in selecting a provider for its higher education needs - Convenience.  No other single factor has a greater impact in this selection, even that of price.  Adults are busier than ever with the demands of home family and especially today the economic needs of work and provision.  In the midst of that juggling act, adults keenly recognize the need for higher levels of education in order to remain current, seek or retain occupation goals and provide for their standard of living.  It is convenient access they seek, are willing to work for and pay for.  The research is clear, they are coming back to school in droves and per my last blog entry, are falling into two very distinct categories.   The first category will find technology to be a barrier to convenience, and thus choose accelerated classroom formats.  The second category is fully online.

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Let the market speak.  I remember being told when I was young that I had two ears and one mouth for a reason...to listen more than speak.  The same principle is true when assessing the market response messaging from adult students.  A listening ear will notify us quickly that a shift in priorities is occurring.  Blended online may be on its way out.

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Is your college or university recession proof?  Are you maintaining a balanced enrollment performance portfolio? The answer to that question is much like that of an investment manager's balanced portfolio question. 

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From an enrollment strategy perspective, would you rather be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big ocean?  Believe it or not, the two are not mutually exclusive.

If your answer is to be a big fish in a small pond, you have already capped your institution’s growth potential.  It won’t be too long in the future when your institution's dominance in that small pond will begin to starve with the lack of resources to draw upon.  If you have not planned appropriately, your big fish strategy will mean you have a large infrastructure to support and an ever dwindling pool of potential candidates for new enrollments.

Blending business acumen with educational leadership demands knowledge of the current environment. With this knowledge, based on fact not on desire, higher education strategy can be formed with a much greater degree of potential success.  So I ask "If your institution were a business (which it is) what product would you put the most resources into?"  It would be the product with the greatest opportunity to be consumed by the marketplace.  One of the research sites that I frequent is the National Center for Education Statistics.

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Its a new year.  And a new theme is already in the web atmosphere of discussions within higher education.  How do you cope with more students and less money?

It comes down very simply to business modeling, or what we call business acumen.  In the simplest terms, if you were producing widgets at a loss, gaining more sales would just put you deeper into the hole financially.  It actually would become a disincentive to grow.  The longer this situation persists without being addressed the greater the vulnerability to failure.  Often instead of addressing this with rethinking the business model, higher education responds with across the board budget cuts leading to morale problems especially in your high performing work units.

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The future growth of higher education is post web-browser learning.  The growth we are now seeing in online learning is a stepping stone to mobile elearning....and yes, that means your cell phone or pda.

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This past weekend ES attended and presented at the SACS COC Excellence in Education Exposition.  This offered us the opportunity to connect with many current and previous partners along with establishing new relationships for the future.

During our visit and my discussions with many college and university senior executives, several themes became very evident.  Below is a brief synopsis:

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