Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | April 30th, 2024

How to Differentiate Your MBA Program

In a post-pandemic world, MBA program enrollment competition is fierce. To stand out among your competitors and meet your enrollment goals, you must have a bulletproof value proposition that is fully integrated into your content marketing strategies. Your institution’s value proposition, however, may not always fit the bill for adult learners who have busy schedules, prioritize flexibility, and value clear, tangible career outcomes. A combination of storytelling and data-driven strategy can help you differentiate your MBA program and institution, address the specific challenges of your prospective students, and exceed your enrollment goals.

Share your student success stories to differentiate your MBA program

Graduate success stories can help prospective students visualize themselves achieving the same or similar accomplishments by completing your program. This approach leaves prospects with a positive impression of the student experience, helps them justify the cost-to-benefit ratio, and can make your program stand out among your competitors’ generic marketing materials. You can help connect prospects with graduate outcomes through:

Website, direct mail, and social media testimonials that celebrate graduate success stories, new titles or roles, and other professional achievements.
Recruitment event Q&A sessions where prospects can ask graduates candid questions about their program experiences, their employability after graduation, and why they chose this specific program among a sea of competitors.

Graduates who have been asked to share their positive program experiences are also more likely to re-share their feature stories through their social media channels, are more willing to connect with prospects organically, and often feel honored to be asked to participate. It’s a win-win for everyone and can differentiate your MBA program!

Make sure your strategy is data informed

While student success stories foster emotional connections with your prospects, it’s equally as important that your strategy and brand story are also driven by data – especially in a hyper-competitive market with rising costs and waning budgets. It’s crucial to elevate your program’s specific skills, knowledge, and outcomes, of course, but applying sophisticated data analysis to your enrollment strategy can take your brand value a level above the competition. A data-informed marketing strategy can:

Highlight your program’s ROI through data points that directly address an adult learner’s unique needs, wants, and concerns.
Elevate your engagement and conversion rates while tailoring your efforts to prospects’ individual needs through personalization and timing.
Give you a competitive advantage over programs that aren’t as familiar with the specific needs of your prospective students.
Help your marketing efforts remain nimble throughout the cycle by providing real-time feedback about your current results compared to historical data.
Enable you to measure the effectiveness of your current marketing strategies and set realistic goals for the enrollment year and beyond.

Aligning your enrollment strategy with current market trends and data-informed goals drives engagement, produces results, keeps your budget in check, and helps your program’s unique value stand out.

Are you ready to differentiate your MBA program and optimize your enrollment strategy? Contact GPRS today and we can help you leverage our resources and experience.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | April 17th, 2024

Top Graduate School Myths in 2024

Higher education, including graduate schools, sometimes gets a bad rap. All too often, prospective students assume graduate school isn’t for them because of some persistent myths and skepticism about higher education. However, higher education institutions can dispel these graduate school myths by communicating their value to prospects clearly and effectively.

Here are three common myths that grad schools should address with their marketing content to put prospects’ minds at ease.

1. Grad schools aren’t worth the investment

One of the biggest misconceptions about grad schools (and higher education in general) nowadays is that it isn’t worth the investment.

On the contrary, obtaining a Master’s Degree translates into $3.2 million in lifetime earnings compared to $2.8 million in lifetime earnings for a Bachelor’s Degree holder. MBA graduates from the top 50 business schools in the United States, more specifically, will see a staggering $5.7 million in lifetime earnings.

Clearly, obtaining a graduate-level degree is worth the investment. To counter the myth that grad schools aren’t worth students’ time and money, higher education institutions should focus their marketing messaging and content around the value that an advanced degree brings to help prospects see that their hard work and financial investment in grad school is worth it.

2. Grad school is unaffordable

While it’s true that graduate school isn’t cheap, many financial aid resources exist to help students pay for the cost.

Loans, grants, scholarships, and academic fellowships are readily available to help students lower their tuition and overall grad school costs. In some cases, grad programs at certain institutions are fully funded, meaning that students graduate essentially debt-free. Plus, it’s important to remember that graduate degree recipients enjoy higher lifetime earnings compared to those without them, meaning that even though their initial upfront investment may be higher, the long-term financial payoff is worth it.

For graduate schools like yours, it’s important to communicate these financial resources in your marketing materials as a way to entice prospective students and convey that, even though the upfront costs may seem intimidating, financial help is available in many forms.

3. A full-time job makes it impossible to attend graduate school

Finally, another graduate school myth worth dispelling is that having a full-time job makes it virtually impossible to attend school at the same time.

This myth lies in the common misconception that graduate school is the same as college when it comes to time investment. However, the truth is that the vast majority of graduate schools tailor their programs with working professionals already in mind. That means that classes are more sporadic, often meeting just once or twice a week, and typically in the evening hours or on weekends to accommodate working professionals. In addition, many grad schools have increasingly adopted hybrid and remote options in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, offering even more flexibility for grad school students.

To boost enrollment, it’s important for grad schools to bust this myth in particular. Marketing content in the form of blog posts, landing pages, social media posts, email communications, infographics, videos, and more are all ways to convey the flexibility and student-friendly options that current grad school programs offer.

Convey value to prospects to debunk graduate school myths

While it’s no secret that higher education, including grad schools, has faced strong headwinds due to factors like rising costs and alternative career options for prospects, their future is still bright. By working to dispel these common graduate school myths, schools can position their marketing campaigns for success and stand a better chance of converting prospects into students.

Looking to boost your conversions and optimize your marketing efforts? Contact GPRS today to find out how we can help.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | March 26th, 2024

How to Grow Enrollment in Your Specialized MBA Program

Specialized MBA programs remain a popular option for graduate school students, but growing enrollment can be difficult. It’s no secret that competition for prospects is fierce and finding the right recruits can be tricky, so higher education institutions need to implement the right strategies and best practices to grow enrollment in your specialized MBA program.

Here, we’ll take a closer look at some of them to help you boost your enrollment. With these strategies, your institution can leverage tried-and-true ways to help attract and retain the right graduate school prospects for years to come.

Take a digital-first approach to marketing

When it comes to marketing, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve.

Many higher education institutions still don’t utilize digital marketing and advertising to their full potential. Make sure that your institution fully embraces digital marketing, including various social media channels to attract and engage with prospects, personalized email communications, a frequently-updated blog, and paid search and social ads targeted specifically to your audience.

Emphasize all of your flexible learning options that are available

These days, specialized MBA prospects value flexibility and choice. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic made online and hybrid learning the norm in many ways for students nowadays. Embrace this change by highlighting any flexible and remote learning options your program offers in your marketing content, as it can pay dividends over the long-term.

Create detailed personas

Data-driven, detailed personas can play a key role in your marketing efforts too.

As specialized MBA prospects differ from traditional graduate students in a number of ways, understanding their specific demographics, pain points, and goals is crucial. To that end, creating personas can help you craft the right marketing materials for your audience. This can be done by carefully analyzing your current student database and conducting surveys and focus groups to obtain the data you need before creating in-depth personas tailored to your specialized MBA audience for your marketing campaigns.

Stress the value of a specialized MBA

It’s also a good idea to emphasize the value of a specialized MBA from your institution.

Stress that a specialized MBA is worth a prospect’s time and money as an investment in their future. This can be done by leveraging data available on statistics like lifetime earnings, job prospects after graduation, career satisfaction, and the like in your marketing content.

Data-driven infographics and short-form videos work especially well in this regard since they convey large amounts of data in a visual and engaging way, though longer, more in-depth content like blog posts can also work. Whatever marketing channel you choose, be sure to demonstrate the value of your program to prospects clearly, concisely, and effectively for maximum impact.

Humanize your marketing with student testimonials and alumni success stories

Finally, humanizing your marketing with testimonials and success stories can help create better engagement and personalization with your prospects, boosting conversions.

This is a great way to tell a story and communicate the value of your specialized MBA programs in a unique way that helps connect prospects with their peers in your programs. Blog posts are a good marketing channel for these, but the most effective way is generally through video marketing. Videos can easily be distributed via social media, email newsletters, your website, and even paid ads, greatly amplifying their reach to your target audience.

Grow enrollment in your Specialized MBA today for success tomorrow

Specialized MBA programs face tough competition for students, but with these tested strategies, you can successfully grow enrollment. When implemented, they can help supercharge your marketing funnel and bring in a steady stream of prospects over the long run.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | March 19th, 2024

Customer Experience strategies for higher education institutions

Customer experience (CX) is a sometimes overlooked but crucial strategy for higher education institutions. In many ways, customer Experience strategies for higher education can mean the difference between success and failure when it comes to the recruitment and retention of graduate students.

To ensure the best customer experience possible for students, higher education institutions need to understand exactly who their audience is, embrace the latest technology, and focus on creating a personalized, seamless experience for its students (customers). Here’s a closer look at how to do just that.

Know your audience

First and foremost, it’s crucial to understand your core audience.

Look at the data for your prospects, new students, and the existing graduate student body very closely. What are their demographics? What are they currently studying or looking to study? Are they local or from across the country or even the world? By having a strong grasp of your audience, you can better hone your CX strategy specifically to them.

Create a seamless experience

Creating a seamless, intuitive, and simplified customer experience is also very important.

This is especially critical when it comes to technology. All too often, schools design their online services with themselves in mind, as opposed to their prospects and students. Instead, embrace digital transformation and a customer-centric approach by creating user-friendly, seamless customer portals where students can find all of the information they need in a single, unified location and conduct a website audit to ensure your site is intuitive, easy to navigate, and has all of the key information that students and prospects need clearly stated.

Leverage the latest technology

Technology can also go a long way towards improving your CX.

Embrace it as a way to boost your customer service and provide a more seamless, user-friendly experience for your students and prospects. This can be done by leveraging chatbots to resolve simple questions and issues quickly and successfully, customer relationship management (CRM) tools to track every conversation and keep important data in a single location, and various social media channels to convey critical information and boost engagement.

Focus on personalization

Personalization is also key.

Today’s graduate students are increasingly diverse. Rather than treating them as a whole, personalize your communications and interactions with them to better suit who they are, which can lead to improved metrics like conversions and retention. To accomplish this, use personalized emails, custom videos, and tailored social media communications.

Create a guided experience

Finally, focus on creating a tailored, curated experience for your students and prospects.

Navigating the graduate school process can be very stressful and intimidating for both prospects and students. However, by creating a guided, personalized experience, you can reduce this stress and improve your customer satisfaction. Embracing technology and tools like screen sharing, video chat, co-browsing, and tailored email communications can help create a guided experience that will improve your overall CX greatly.

Improve your customer experience strategies for higher education institutions

CX should be a top priority for any higher education institution looking to boost student recruitment and retention. By implementing these strategies and best practices, you can ensure you are delivering world-class customer service to your audience, increasing recruitment and boosting retention all at once.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | February 27th, 2024

What Do Grad Students Want in 2024?

As 2024 dawns, higher education institutions all across the country are hard at work preparing for the next wave of graduate school students with marketing and recruitment efforts. But what do grad students really want in 2024?

In order to recruit and retain the next class of students in 2024 and beyond, it’s important to have a strong grasp of their pain points, needs, concerns, values, and goals to successfully produce the marketing materials needed to connect with them. Here, we’ll take a more detailed look at what prospective graduate school students really want so you can better craft content and messaging that connects with them.

Flexible courses

The COVID-19 pandemic made virtual and hybrid learning commonplace for students. Even though the pandemic has receded and virtual learning largely with it, today’s graduate school prospects still value flexibility. To that end, make sure that your programs offer online and hybrid class options and that this is effectively communicated via your marketing to show you know what grad students want in 2024.

A commitment to inclusion

Prospective students today value diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) more than ever. To attract them in 2024 and beyond, recommit to DEI initiatives at your institution, build diversity into your marketing efforts, and make sure that your prospects know about them through social media, email, blogging, and other marketing channels.

An eye on the future economy

Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders.

That means your institution needs to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to offering courses and classes relevant to the emerging economy. Make sure that you’re incorporating new trends like AI, robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, digital media, green energy, and the like into your curriculum, and communicate this to your prospects in your marketing materials.

Mental health support

Prospective students take mental health seriously. Don’t discount this – invest in mental health professionals at your institution and ensure that your students know that you value mental health as well.

Career readiness

Finally, emphasize career readiness at your institution too, not just gaining an advanced degree in and of itself.

All too often, graduate school students feel unprepared for the job market after graduating. However, your institution can make a difference for them through networking opportunities, job interview advice, internships, hands-on training, and other activities to maximize their employability after graduating.

Know what grad students want in 2024 to attract and retain students

The nature of prospective graduate school students is changing – will your institution change along with it?

By having a stronger grasp of how to connect with prospective students, you can tailor your content, marketing channels, and messaging to them more effectively. In turn, this can lead to improved recruitment and retention in 2024 and beyond despite a more challenging and complex educational landscape.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | February 15th, 2024

Strategies to Increase Enrollment Amid Rising Higher Education Skepticism

It’s no secret that higher education institutions face growing skepticism from the public for many reasons these days. High tuition costs, questions about return on investment, demographic shifts, and the rising popularity of trade schools, certificates, and other alternatives are just some of the reasons why higher education institutions are seeing shifts in enrollment. So, how do you increase enrollment amid rising higher education skepticism?

The good news is this enrollment trend isn’t necessarily set in stone. By prioritizing certain changes and honing your messaging and marketing the right way, your institution can boost enrollment. Here are some ideas on how to do just that.

Focus on value to address skepticism

When crafting your messaging and marketing materials, focus on the value your school brings to your students to address rising higher education skepticism and boost enrollment.

Yes, it may seem like a costly investment upfront, but the lifetime earnings and educational value of a degree are well worth it, making it well worth their time and money. By stressing this, you can help students overcome the “sticker shock” that tuition often brings and shift their thinking to their long-term success.

Change with the times to increase enrollment

Things are changing quickly in the world of higher education – and institutions need to adapt or be left behind.

While the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is the root cause for many of the changes today, some were in motion before that time and were accelerated by the pandemic. Nowadays, schools need to change with the times and embrace the new world of higher education. How so? That means investing more in online and hybrid learning, focusing on your unique selling points and mission, reaching out to new segments of the student population, and prioritizing digital marketing and advertising.

With these changes, you can better position your institution to increase enrollment amid rising higher education skepticism.

Prioritize digital transformation

Similarly, schools need to prioritize digital transformation to stay competitive and attract new students.

By investing in priorities like online classes, social media marketing, video marketing, and mobile-friendly websites optimized for search engines like Google, schools can stay ahead of the technology curve. This, in turn, can help them reach new enrollees more easily and expand their pool of potential students.

Personalize your marketing

Personalized marketing is crucial for reaching target audiences nowadays.

Long gone are the days when sending out mass emails and direct mail without any rhyme or reason worked. Instead, higher education institutions need to focus on taking a more personal and humanized approach to their marketing. This can be as simple as addressing emails and newsletters to individual prospects specifically, while it also means creating engaging content about student and alumni success stories that can be shared on social media, blogs, and the like. By focusing on personalization, students can better imagine themselves at your institution – boosting enrollment over the long term.

Take another look at underserved student populations

Finally, don’t forget to tap into some of the overlooked and underserved student populations.

Focusing your marketing and outreach efforts on these populations can pay dividends. A few segments to keep in mind include students from rural areas, non-native English speakers, and people who graduated from college years back but are looking for a career change or upskilling. By focusing on populations like these, you can expand your pool of prospective students and potentially boost enrollment.

Implement an enrollment turnaround today

Times are tough for higher education institutions, but embracing change and adapting to new challenges can ease or even reverse the ongoing “enrollment cliff” that many schools will ultimately feel the pinch of. With some changes to your thinking, you can better position your institution for long-term success – even in these challenging times.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | January 30th, 2024

Paid Search Best Practices and Strategies for Grad Schools

Paid search ads (also known as pay-per-click, or PPC ads) can be a powerful marketing tool for graduate schools for many reasons. How so? Paid search best practices and strategies for grad schools allow for specific demographic targeting based on specific criteria, can be turned on to generate leads almost instantly, and offer a lot of flexibility when it comes to crafting your messaging and marketing goals, such as boosting brand awareness, generating demand, or bringing in more qualified leads.

All of that being said, it’s important to have a strong grasp of how paid search marketing works in order to use it the most effectively. Below, we’ll examine a few strategies and best practices in detail so you know how to effectively leverage it. Let’s take a look.

Research and understand your audience very carefully

Before actually launching any paid search campaigns, always conduct thorough research of your target audience and understand their goals, demographics, and pain points.

This may seem obvious, but all too often paid search campaigns are launched by schools, businesses, and organizations without a clear understanding of who exactly they’re targeting. As a result, many of them waste their time and money on ineffective campaigns. To avoid this, have a strong grasp of who you want to target and for what reasons before budgeting for any paid search campaigns.

Conduct thorough keyword research

Conducting extensive keyword research is also crucial.

Focus on high-volume, relevant keywords with user intent in mind. For example, focusing on a general keyword like “MBA” is too vague and will likely result in squandering your budget, but targeting keywords like “best schools for an EMBA” are much more likely to connect you to the right target audience that’s seeking the programs you’re offering.

By targeting these longtail keywords based on user intent, your campaign will more effectively target the right audience and more effectively funnel leads directly into your specific programs.

A/B test consistently and for many variables

A/B testing is a great way to determine what’s working most effectively in your campaigns and help you optimize them by leveraging this information.

When A/B testing, focus on variables like ad copy, keywords, landing pages, calls-to-action (CTAs), and visuals in both the ad if applicable and landing page. The more information you can glean from A/B testing, the better optimized your campaigns will be, leading to higher conversions without wasting precious dollars.

Determine your goals and KPIs

Setting up specific goals and KPIs early on is critical too.

Without a clear goal and KPIs to track in mind, your campaign will be aimless and end up wasting a lot of time and money. Instead, map out what your specific goals are and the metrics needed to track them before launching a campaign. For example, you may want to set a goal of increasing leads 25% before the start of the next semester. Whatever your goals and KPIs are, be sure that everyone on your team is aware of them and is working towards them with the correct metrics and timelines in mind.

Avoid contact forms that are too long and complex

Finally, avoid contact forms that are too long and complex for your ad landing pages.

While paid ads are great for generating leads and increasing conversions, your efforts may go to waste if your landing page contact forms are too long, overly complex, and invasive in terms of privacy. Instead, keep your contact forms simple, concise, and avoid asking for too much personal information, as many people may be reluctant to give that out early on.

Leverage paid search best practices and strategies for success

By keeping these paid search best practices and strategies for grad schools in mind, you can better optimize your paid search campaigns for your grad school programs. Whatever your goals are, paid search can be a powerful tool when it comes to accomplishing them – if you do it well!

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | January 17th, 2024

Effective Grad School Email Marketing

Although social media has been all the rage over the past few years when it comes to marketing to prospective graduate school students, email remains a very cost-effective and reliable method for communicating with prospects. As with all forms of marketing, email marketing has changed a lot over the years, meaning that higher education institutions need to know the current best practices and strategies to ensure that they’re using it effectively for grad school email marketing.

So, let’s examine some email marketing tips for higher education institutions to help supercharge your marketing campaigns!

Segmentation and automation are key

When email marketing to prospects, be sure to segment your campaigns based on factors like funnel stage, anticipated start date, and persona match. This way, you can better tailor your messaging and content to the right audience simply and effectively. Using automation tools like HubSpot or Constant Contact is something else to keep in mind, allowing you to fully automate your campaigns so you can focus on strategy, creating content, and other more productive tasks as opposed to time-consuming manual work.

Personalization is a must in grad school email marketing

Likewise, personalization is key nowadays too.

A mass email addressed to prospects is unlikely to get their attention, but including the specific names of individual recipients in the subject line and body is a simple yet effective way to increase open rates and conversions. Similarly, including the signature of an actual staff member, such as the Dean or Director of Recruitment, can add an additional personalized touch to each email, creating a human connection with prospects.

Optimize for all devices

When email marketing first started in the 1990s, marketers only had to worry about how their emails looked on desktops. Today, the media landscape is much more diverse, with recipients regularly checking emails on their smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other devices.

To that end, make sure that your emails are fully optimized for all devices, especially mobile. This can be done with thorough testing to ensure that your content reaches its recipients visually represented like you wanted it to.

Ensure brand consistency in email marketing

Consistent branding and imagery is important when designing your emails so that the recipient can identify your institution quickly and easily. Including your logo, branding colors, and a consistent voice can build trust and a stronger connection with your prospects more effectively.

Convey engaging stories to your prospects

Finally, use email marketing as a storytelling medium to boost engagement with your prospects.

Email can be used to convey student and alumni success stories, testimonials, interviews, and other forms of content that focus on personal stories. Doing so is a great way to add a personalized, human touch to your program, boosting engagement and conversion rates in the process.

Use grad school email marketing to reach and engage prospects

Indeed, email marketing may not be new or flashy, but it’s a tried-and-true marketing channel that continues to pay off today – and for years to come. By using these grad school email marketing strategies and best practices, you’ll be able to better reach and engage prospects with valuable and useful content, boosting your recruitment efforts over the long term.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | December 28th, 2023

Improve your university’s brand awareness

The way higher education institutions market themselves to prospects has changed dramatically in a short amount of time. The rise of social media and the growing importance of content marketing, especially video marketing, has forced colleges to grapple with new ways to improve their university’s brand awareness and reach prospects effectively.

So, how should schools go about building brand awareness in a more complex and multifaceted digital world? The key is actually to embrace it. By using effective digital marketing strategies, you’ll be able to increase your brand awareness quickly and cost-effectively.

Let’s take a quick look at a few ways to do just that:

Create a detailed brand awareness strategy

First and foremost, don’t fly blind with your brand awareness strategy. Instead, draw up a detailed roadmap that includes timelines, metrics, types of content, and next steps to stay accountable and execute your strategy thoughtfully.

Be sure to conduct thorough research and develop detailed personas when crafting your brand awareness strategy too. It’s also a good idea to set measurable goals for content production, such as publishing two blog posts per week, and for metrics, such as increasing conversions by 50 percent within a year.

Create and share engaging and compelling content

Once you’ve done your research, created personas, and mapped out a detailed strategy, it’s time to start creating and sharing compelling content. This is at the crux of any successful brand awareness strategy.

Focus on creating engaging and useful content tailored to your target audience in the form of blog posts, eBooks, social media posts, email newsletters, videos, infographics, podcasts, and more. With a healthy mix of content published on a steady cadence, your institution can boost its inbound marketing and grow its brand awareness very effectively.

Focus on SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for building brand awareness over the long term.

You can boost your site’s SEO by blogging and creating quality content more frequently, targeting valuable keywords and topics with your content, optimizing your meta tags, building outbound links, and ensuring your site is fast, mobile-friendly, and free of any major technical errors. By consistently doing SEO, your institution’s website will climb higher in the search results, ultimately boosting your brand awareness.

Leverage social media channels

Social media marketing is critical for building brand awareness.

Strive to post on channels like X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok regularly and use relevant hashtags where appropriate. Content that works well on social media includes everything from blog posts to video testimonials to longform guides. Finally, don’t forget to actively engage with social media users rather than just post content. Answer questions, post polls, and in general try to engage with your target audience to humanize your school’s brand.

Use paid advertising effectively

Paid ads are another great way to build brand awareness, working alongside SEO to boost your content’s visibility.

Paid advertising on both search engines like Google and social media channels, particularly LinkedIn, can help you reach your audience very quickly and effectively and should be a key part of your brand awareness strategy. Another good idea is boosting content such as blog posts, videos, and longform guides on LinkedIn, which can greatly expand their reach to your target audience.

Improve your university’s brand awareness today

With a detailed strategy and engaging content, you can improve your university’s brand awareness today quickly and cost-effectively. Need a hand doing it? GPRS has the expertise and resources to increase your institution’s brand awareness so you can ultimately boost enrollments and revenue. Contact us today to find out more.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | December 14th, 2023

Higher Education Trends to Watch in 2024

Higher education is constantly changing, with each year ushering in new challenges – but also new opportunities. The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath both sparked, as well as accelerated many notable trends. Following are higher education trends to watch in 2024 that are likely to impact undergraduate and graduate programs.

Institutions need to stay ahead of the curve and keep tabs on these fast-changing developments to ensure that their marketing and recruitment efforts remain effective. Here, we take a closer look at some of the higher education trends to watch in 2024 so that you can plan, and adapt, for success.

Online and hybrid classes

The COVID-19 pandemic saw the explosive growth of online and later hybrid learning virtually overnight. In the wake of the pandemic, these options remain popular among prospective students thanks to their flexibility.

When marketing your programs to prospects, be sure to highlight your modalities and the benefits. Doing so can position your institution as a place where students have the flexibility and freedom to learn on their own terms.

Rising costs present a challenge

It’s no secret that rising costs have put a damper on the public’s enthusiasm for higher education in recent years.

The solution? Stress the value that your programs offer to students over the long term. By shifting to this messaging in your marketing campaigns, you can help prospects understand that their continued education is an investment that can reap rewards for many years to come.

Upskilling and reskilling remain important

The Great Resignation in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic saw millions of Americans rethink their careers and everyday lives to follow their passions and achieve better work-life balance and more meaningful, engaging careers.

Although the Great Resignation has largely ended in recent months, its impact on the mindset of both students and professionals remains. Not surprisingly, upskilling and reskilling has become very important and will likely remain so in 2024 and beyond. Higher education institutions should embrace this trend and highlight how undergraduate and graduate degree or certificate programs are an effective way to shift careers/industries, gain new marketable skills, and ultimately create a more fulfilling life.

The rise of AI

Talk about AI has been everywhere in 2023 and certainly will be in 2024 as well.

There’s no doubt that this powerful technology movement has instilled a lot of trepidation in people, including in higher education. However, it can also be harnessed and used to boost marketing, recruitment, and administrative efforts in many ways. For example, chatbots can give fast, personalized answers to prospects online while advanced analytics can help narrow down applications quickly, letting staff focus on more productive tasks.

Although AI technology is still in its infancy, its potential should be embraced by schools as a way to make life easier and simpler overall due to its many useful applications.

Stay ahead of the higher education trends to watch in 2024

These are just some of the key higher education trends to watch in 2024. However, by having a better understanding of what to expect, you can position your marketing and recruitment efforts for success well into the new year.