Increased demand for online learning is forcing institutions to rethink their approach to programming.
You likely read that line in a news article a decade ago. But it is news once again.
Consider this: 69% of chief online learning officers (COLOs) surveyed this year reported prioritizing online versions of on-campus courses, and 65% said they are prioritizing online equivalents of degree programs.
These significant stats unveiled in the Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE) report, CHLOE 9: Strategy Shift: Institutions Respond to Sustained Online Demand, produced by Quality Matters, Eduventures, and Educause, reveal just how far our industry has come.
For the past decade, a common hesitation among campus leaders resisting change was the legit and long-held idea that online courses of on-campus offerings risk cannibalizing campus student enrollments. That concern has given way to the notion that these virtual programs may instead attract new audiences. Have we achieved win, win?
And what of the potential for Online Program Managers (OPMs) in all of this?
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It’s obvious that the pandemic dramatically accelerated online edu investment. Now, a few semesters past its throes, demand for online learning remains high, particularly from students – though more faculty appreciate it, too. And obviously, institution leaders are paying attention. Thankfully the mood is also shifting from emergency response to long-term sustainability, hastening more meaningful cross-campus discussions on implementation, support, and strategy.
The CHLOE 9 report adds depth to the conversations we’re all having about online education: investment priorities, pricing approaches, points of friction, third-party services (oh, those OPMS!), and a handful of other key topics worth consideration. Not least among them: Are the participants (faculty and students) simply phoning it in? In other words, does the convenience of remote learning still achieve the desired learning outcomes?
And for you, what impact does this report have on your recruitment strategy? Read on…
The survey, conducted in early 2024, aggregates the perspective of 324 COLOs (again, that’s Chief Online Learning Officer) from US colleges and universities, including fully online institutions to mature mixed-mode schools and smaller, emerging online operations from public and private 2- and 4-year institutions. Access the complete report as produced by Quality Matters, Eduventures, and Educause here.
Below, we offer our 5 key takeaways on what CHLOE 9 stats could mean for student recruitment.
#1 Students want online options.
Seventy-seven percent of participating COLOS said campus-based students want online options. A reasonable finding considering 60% reported online course sections tend to fill up first and 46% indicated that online program enrollment is growing faster than on-campus. Appears even on-campus students appreciate the notion of flexibility; in fact, have come to expect it – 77% of campus-based students are asking for online options. Eating Cheetos under your bed covers while taking a class has a certain appeal to some. 
#2 Online programs help get students in the door.
Increasing enrollment tends to be preferable to cutting costs, and online programs can help. Per the report, 92% of COLOs either agreed or strongly agreed that online offerings enhance their ability to pursue students within their region, 87% said the same for outside their region. The reasons for this are myriad, but almost always come down to opportunity. Be it affordability, flexibility, or even language barriers, online programs help many students take that first step to post-secondary education. It’s only to your benefit to help them. See below for the international student perspective.
#3 Public 2-year institutions are further along.
Public 2-year institutions were most likely (48%) to report full strategic integration of online learning, surpassing public 4-year institutions (31%) and private 4-year institutions (20%). Considering student population, the surge in online enrollment among community colleges reflects the need for flexible learning options among various student populations. The authors point to underserved groups like regional rural students. We see it among nontraditional learners as well as international 4-year degree hopefuls.
Of mild concern is the relatively small percentage of institutions saying that online learning goals are under discussion. It should be a much larger percentage! (See the bottom row in the image below). Our view: it is far too easy for both professors and students to phone it in, sacrificing academic success outcomes. Time will tell whether the world will end up with a generation of graduates with subpar knowledge and skills due to lax academic standards and measurement. 
#4 Online edu is starting to pay off for institutions.
The majority (52%) of institutions now see online programs as net revenue generators and 15% see them as net cost, compared to 47% and 26% respectively 5 years ago. Both numbers moving in the right direction for online edu proponents, though work remains to be done.
#5 Online edu for international students is more complicated, but not impossible.
Not from the Eduventures report, but from our community’s experience, international students are an entirely different segment when it comes to online learning. There is student demand for it. However, government regulations (in the US and other countries, e.g. China perhaps most significant) make this area much more challenging. Those barriers on top of the strong student desire for academic tourism (the travel/cultural factor) make the promotion of online options a bit more complicated than your domestic recruitment and delivery approach. There are opportunities here and they deserve a full blog post of their own. If you are curious about this topic, drop us a note and we can chat. Lots of considerations here.
What this means for you (and our note on OPMs).
Prospective students want online options. We think they expect them.
Getting the message out about your online programs matters and can be all the difference for some students. One notable online edu avenue, which the CHLOE 9 report also gets into, is OPMs (online program managers). As a promotion avenue and otherwise, these third-party providers have been fraught with questions of legality, integrity, and effectiveness from the moment they entered the scene in earnest around 2011. We have wanted to write about the best practice uses of higher ed OPMs for quite some time, but the scene has been a hot mess for so long, we felt that whatever we wrote would be out of date a month later. Truly, we started writing the post numerous times over the years and kept scrapping it as new information came out each week as we drafted the thing.
Suffice to say, the concept of outsourcing student recruitment, or some portion of it, has long-standing proof of concept. However, ethical use of leads produced by third-party vendors and who is in charge of delivering the academic services, among other factors have put OPMs into a category of less reliable to downright wrong. Buyer beware on this front.
Your due diligence is always to focus on serving your students (see our Student First post), which includes understanding what prospective students most want to know about online programs and which students it truly works for.
Ask:
- Who are the students who want flexible learning options?
- Who among them would most benefit?
- What programs do they want?
- Why do they want them?
- How do you reach these prospective students?
- Where do they live?
- What are their motivations?
- What will influence them to take action?
These are the questions we help academic institutions answer every day. Let’s talk.
