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Five keys to building a competitive online program | 1www.pearsoned.com/opm

Five keys to building a competitive online program


How to differentiate yourself and strengthen your brand Online programs can extend your reach, strengthen your brand, deepen your impact, and help you sustain success far into the future. They can help you serve more students, improve your financial posture, and leverage growing economies of scale. They can strengthen your institution’s overall capabilities and reputation, so all your programs benefit—including on-ground programs. In an era where change is unavoidable and competition relentless, they can help you control your future, and achieve your mission far more effectively.

To achieve these benefits, however, you must first recognize that the online environment has changed. A decade ago, institutions often succeeded by simply offering their region’s first online MBA or nursing program. Today, there’s more competition: local, regional, and national. To attract more of the right students, you have to work much harder to differentiate yourself.

You can do it. Read on to learn how.

Fiercer competition: 3% of online program providers now serve 45% of all online students1

Growing markets: Online enrollments projected to grow from 3.2M (2013) to 5.0M (2020)2

Widening geographies: 58.2% of academic leaders are specifically targeting online students outside their normal service areas3

1 NCES,Eduventuresanalysis.Notallprovidersareincludedinthisfigure;headcountisestimated.2 NCES:https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014051.pdf(Feb2014)3 OnlineReportCard:TrackingOnlineEducationintheUnitedStates,BabsonSurvey

ResearchGroup,2016



The “Big Five”: Core determinants of online program success Every day, we help senior leaders grow a sustainable and competitive online presence at universities and colleges of every size and type. In our experience, five key considerations consistently determine online program success or failure in today’s marketplace.

We call these the “Big Five,” and they’re equally crucial whether you’re moving online for the first time or want to improve and invigorate existing offerings. They are:

When academic leaders consider online programs, they usually start with the endeavor of teaching and learning. So they should, as this will always be the heart of the enterprise. But the “Big Five” extend well beyond academics, and you must address all of them.

Defining and future-proofing programs

Properly setting tuition and fees

Planning your marketing and messaging

Carefully setting admission requirements

Integrating with the rest of the institution

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Before you start: Focused research to drive planning and execution Addressing the Big 5 requires you to go beyond what you already think you know: it requires careful, focused research. Today, it costs more to plan and market an online program. To mitigate risks and maximize the likelihood of success, you need the best possible information and analysis to clarify:

» Market demand. How many people will be interested in your programs? How might demand shift? Who else serves this market? Are you facing growing competition from more distant institutions? Can you extend your own geographical reach?

» Your own institution’s strengths and values. Online shouldn’t change who you are: it should help you bring your best to more of the world. What’s unique about you? What values drive you? What has helped you endure? What academic and cultural strengths attract people to you? Answer these questions and then embed the answers throughout your online programs.

» Labor demand. How many jobs will exist for graduates? How are their fields changing? Can you adapt your programs to anticipate these changes?

» Student characteristics. What are your prospects’ needs, worries, challenges, motivations? How do they see the world—and see you? Speak to actual prospects and enrollees. Prepare personas: descriptions of “composite” individuals who would be great prospects. (This exercise is even more valuable if you’ve traditionally focused on enrolling 18-year-olds. Online students are radically more diverse.)



1. Define and future- proof your programs

Ohio University grew a national audience for multiple online master’s programs by:

» Optimizing term structures to promote student success

» Strategically evaluating pricing

» Developing unique admissions scenarios by program and student background

» Researching new concentrations

» Leveraging marketing synergies across eight different programs

Five keys to building a competitive online program | 5

Armed with research, you can plan new programs as well as prioritize investments in current programs.

To build on existing strengths, perform a “suites and verticals” analysis. If you offer a strong bachelor’s degree major, perhaps you can move up to a related graduate program or to a certificate program that reaches students who can’t commit to a full master’s degree. This leverages your existing investments in academics and marketing, and it may even help you recruit students you’ve previously served.

Similarly, look for adjacencies. If you offer a strong MBA concentration in operations management, perhaps you can move horizontally to craft a strong specialization in entrepreneurial management.

Your research may guide you toward sunsetting programs that you expect to shrink in enrollment, perhaps due to external factors (e.g., declining labor markets). With detailed data, you can bring greater objectivity to these difficult decisions.

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Reflect students’ needs in program design

Align your degree pathways and related decisions with the needs you heard from students in your research.

For example, prospects may want to move quickly from an associate’s degree to a master’s. Regis College uncovered a compelling need for healthcare billing/coding and respiratory professionals to move rapidly into management. It crafted a program to help them access advanced professional opportunities by moving from their current A.S. degrees to a master’s in healthcare administration in as little as 20 months.

By offering multiple concentrations, you can help students tailor a program to their specific career goals. University of Arizona’s MPH program offers concentrations in Applied Epidemiology, Health Services Administration, and Health Promotion. Since the concentration represents 50% of students’ coursework, students graduate with exceptionally deep, specialized expertise.

Finally, for some programs and student populations, credit for work or life experience may be appropriate.

Seek opportunities to make program entry more accessible, and progress more convenient. For example, rather than offering only fall and spring admission, let students start every two months. This may have been impractical “on ground,” but there are best practices for making it work smoothly online.

Promote engagement from inquiry through graduation

As you define and build programs, make student engagement a priority. Methods for improving engagement range from synchronous web conferences to intensive advising to career and cultural events outside class (both online and on campus). Experiment and measure your results.

Institutions such as Maryville University have mastered the art of engagement. Their online students are excited to travel great distances for graduation and other milestone events. These students feel a connection to the campus, making them likelier to enroll in future programs and/or respond to fundraising campaigns.

Clearly differentiate every program

Every program you offer should be clearly differentiated in ways that matter to students. Perhaps your corporate partnerships and alumni communities outshine your competitors’. Maybe your faculty program director is recognized worldwide for her pioneering research. Possibly it’s your culture. Whatever sets you apart, get ready to describe it in plain, powerful language.


2. Properly set tuition and fees As with every other expensive product and service, your potential customers carefully evaluate cost and value. So you must, too.

Know exactly what your competitors are charging. This seems obvious, but it may be more complicated than you think:

Cost is one side of the coin: the other side is value. Drawing on your research, assess your program’s value against its competitors. How do you compare in terms of academic content, student opportunities, employment pathways, time efficiency, institutional reputation, perceived value of degree, etc.?

» Your competitors may not be exactly who you think they are. If you’re physically located in a high-cost city but you plan to compete across a wider region, you may have many lower-cost competitors.

» Students consider total costs, including fees and materials. Make sure you understand how these compare.

» Costs change. Consider where the market is headed, not just where it is now.

» Consider the interplay between on-ground and online tuition. For example, one university increased net enrollment and revenue by raising online tuition and reducing on-ground tuition by the same amount.

University of Arizona took its RN-MSN program from zero to 400 students in two years by:

» Carefully market-testing their curricula to quantify student and labor demand

» Providing multiple entry points throughout the year

» Accelerating completion by eliminating their clinical practicum requirement



3. Plan your marketing and messaging

In competitive online markets, effective marketing is indispensable. Don’t underestimate the budgetary and staff resources needed to plan and execute a successful marketing campaign, especially in markets such as Nursing or MBA.

The institutional brand marketing you’re already doing will be important for the success of your online programs, but it won’t be nearly sufficient. Since most prospects for online education investigate these opportunities online, digital marketing will be central and indispensable. That means you’ll need deep skills and expertise in web, social, and mobile marketing. Be sure to focus on search engine optimization (SEO), to improve your rankings with Google and others, so prospects find you when they’re looking for programs like yours.

SEO research can offer surprising and crucial insights. For example, subtle differences in program names can dramatically affect

how many prospects find you. You might expect “information security” and “cybersecurity” to perform differently, but you might not expect sizable differences between programs named “master’s in” vs. “master’s of.” And yet, they exist.

Many institutions separate their online program marketing from other marketing efforts. We recommend breaking down those marketing “siloes” and collaborating closely with your institution’s brand-level marketers, starting ASAP. When online and institutional marketing efforts support each other, spending delivers higher returns. Online programs can fully leverage existing brand strengths, and you avoid competing with yourself.

One final point about marketing: Often, your most powerful value proposition is either based on or illustrated by your people. Emphasize your relationships, partnerships, faculty, and alumni rather than buildings, departments, or technology.



4. Carefully set admission requirements

University of Cincinnati drove average annual enrollment increases of 45% in two online health programs by:

» Adjusting credit requirements from 60 to 50

» Partnering with local businesses and community colleges to generate streams of high-quality enrollments

» Partnering with testing administrator to credential graduates

» Adjusting admission requirements to welcome career-changers

» Shortening their program while maintaining strict academic quality

» Reducing tuition

As we’ve already mentioned, online programs often attract entirely different types of students from those you’re accustomed to, and you should take this into account in your admissions requirements.

For example, even highly qualified returning students may find a GRE or GMAT requirement to be a major barrier to application. Think about it: before they can even apply, they must spend months preparing for a standardized test that may seem completely irrelevant to their academic goals.

Writing in Nature about the overuse of GREs as a gatekeeper to STEM programs, physics professors Casey Miller and Keivan Stassun call the practice “poor at selecting the

most capable students… severely restrict[ing] the flow of women and minorities into the sciences.”1 Even most exam publishers agree that standardized tests should be only part of the evaluation process and may present special concerns when used to evaluate non-traditional students.

If you decide that exams are necessary, consider complementing them with other measures of qualification to broaden your prospects without compromising rigor.

1 Casey Miller and Keivan Stassun, A Test ThatFails,Nature510,303-304(2014) doi:10.1038/nj7504-303a



5. Integrate with the rest of your institution

Some colleges and universities isolate their online programs from the rest of the institution. Instead, we recommend looking for ways to integrate online with the rest of the institution.

First and foremost: align everyone’s incentives for success. For online programs to grow and thrive, they must inevitably call upon other institutional functions for support. That incurs costs—to dean’s and provost’s offices, faculty, instructional designers, course developers, admissions and advising offices, and others. Build in incentives to help cover these costs, and don’t eliminate them when budgets tighten. Otherwise, more online students will equal greater resistance from colleagues whose support you’ll need to grow successfully.

Even if your program will involve new adjunct faculty, recognize that your current on-campus faculty are crucial to your success. They have indispensable expertise and knowledge. They built the programs that established your institution’s reputation. Look for opportunities to leverage that knowledge, and provide resources and support so they win, too.

For example, Maryville University developed hybrid programs that give on-campus students the flexibility to take many classes either on-ground or online. This gave faculty more flexibility in departments that might otherwise have struggled to offer all essential courses in-person each semester. The same university made its online instructional design group available to on-ground faculty. Now, faculty can benefit from the same types of cutting-edge visuals built for online programs, and they can bring outstanding production values to their flipped classrooms.

Finally, carefully consider the best ways to provide student support as you grow your online programs. Make sure you’re appropriately staffed to respond quickly and accurately to inquiries and to efficiently manage all recruitment, enrollment, and advising processes. If your existing admissions and advising organizations will handle these tasks, support them with additional resources, such as third-party staff members who are extensively trained to represent the institution as if they were on its payroll.


Sense, respond, and keep evolving It’s not enough to respond to the “Big Five” once. You need to continually respond to them.

This means closely tracking performance and opportunities: enrollment, retention, completion, outcomes, satisfaction, new competition, new sources of leads, potential corporate and community partnerships, emerging marketplace trends, and more.

Establish structured ways to act on what you learn. For example, create a strategic steering committee that will review your progress every semester. What is the status of each online program? Should you adjust curricula or admission criteria? Are students looking for new forms of credentialing, such as badges? Are new competitors moving in? Is a growing or weakening economy driving enrollment changes? What trends are on the horizon, and do they need focused attention yet?

Consider a partnership with Pearson For more than 20 years, Pearson has built strategic partnerships with colleges and universities to help them succeed online. We bring unmatched resources, skills, experience, and financial investments. Together, we build innovative, differentiated programs that help entire institutions thrive.

Each of our partnerships is unique, reflecting our partner’s unique strengths, goals, and culture. But they all have one thing in common: we only succeed when our partners do.

Let’s talk. About your goals, what’s working, and what might work better. About finding more opportunities, transforming opportunities into enrollments, and creating superior outcomes for everyone.

To find out more, speak with us, or request a free consultation, please visit www.pearsoned.com/opm.

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