Higher education has been changing rapidly over the past two decades because of the Internet. This article explains what your college institution needs to do in order to survive – and thrive –in the age of the Internet.
I have been learning so much about the future by traveling around the country and meeting with University and College Presidents. Since the beginning of online education two decades ago, the landscape of higher education has changed more than any other education industry. It’s moving so rapidly that few people actually realize what is truly going on. Our minds evolved to think in a linear fashion, but now that we have exponential technologies, the world no longer changes in a linear way.
Enrollments in traditional college education are beginning to decline for the first time in history, report higher education consultants and many are asking “why?” Billions of dollars have been spent on higher education marketing firms to advertise the benefits of online education, and this has created an entirely new marketing environment. Digital college education is on the rise. Students are now going to college on their mobile devices in lieu of spending 4+ years of their life living in a dorm room setting while incurring massive student loan debt. Education is getting cheaper and it’s going mobile.
Brick-and-mortar educational settings, as well as online educational institutions, are getting increasingly competitive. Those who fail to evolve and innovate rapidly will inevitably go out of business, warn higher education consultants. While in the past, this change happened slowly in education, today’s changes are occurring rapidly.
It’s more important now than ever to carve out a niche of your own in order to attract exactly the right type of student for your programs. Instead of attracting a handful of students for 200+ different majors and minors, you may only want to attract students who want to, for example, become graphic designers.
“If you don’t choose a niche and you try to be everything to everybody, your institution will be nothing to no one,” say higher education marketing firms.
Did you know that by 2020, the number of Internet users will be double what it is today? In addition, nearly every individual in the world will have access to a smartphone. A new social media site crops up nearly every day, and each year a handful of those become the next big thing in social media. It’s the new reality that we are all facing.
How does this affect higher education? Well, students who were born between 1982 and 2002 are what many call “digital natives.” Those students have been using a computer their entire lives. Therefore, they expect a college education to take place in a digital environment. After all, this is also how they interact with their friends and family. The old ways employed by higher education marketing firms (newspapers, television, billboards) are not reaching these digital natives. Most of them have never subscribed to a local newspaper and few would even pay twenty-five cents to get one. Why? Their twitter feed already tells them everything that is happening in the world that they would ever want to know.
While the Millennials have always been comfortable with digital technologies, in today’s world most Baby Boomers are also comfortable with using Facebook, Pinterest, and Google. They, too, are interested in online educational settings that focus on their individual interests. Those reaching retirement age may be interested in taking an online college class in photography, creative writing, or painting in order to have a part-time form of income during retirement, say higher education consultants.
The message from higher education marketing firms is loud and clear to college and university Presidents and Dean: if you want to keep up enrollment and remain contemporary, you’ve got to expand your services to the vast online consumer base.
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