As we step into the mid-way point in 2024, the higher education industry is bracing for a wave of transformative changes. Below, several experts from higher education tech company Modern Campus collectively paint a future where traditional educational models are rapidly evolving. The burgeoning adoption of microcredentials promises a more flexible and competency-based learning landscape, tailored to meet the ever-changing needs of the workforce. Higher education institutions are expected to pivot significantly, focusing more on aligning their offerings with industry requirements and enhancing the overall student experience.
Peter DeVries, CEO
AI will continue to be a hot topic with a disconnect between the institution’s hesitancy and intent to drive efficiency versus student’s usage whenever an opportunity exists.
Microcredentials and stackable credentials will continue to be held up as a key area of innovation with slow demonstration of how it can be readily utilized by students due to institution inertia.
Students will continue to look for institutions that provide a modern engagement experience with personalization and value add services available seamlessly through online services.
Amrit Ahluwalia, Senior Director of Strategic Insights
Microcredential adoption will continue to accelerate: More colleges and universities will offer a wider range of microcredentials to provide alternatives for people to engage in meaningful learning without forcing them to enroll in a full degree program. This will also drive increased adoption of competency-based learning models.
Higher ed will align more closely with the workforce: Colleges and universities will work to align offerings more closely to workforce needs, creating pathways for adults to engage in professional development to keep pace with industry changes while also streamlining the learner-to-earner pathway for degree-seeking students.
Colleges and universities will prioritize the student experience: To stem growing stop-out and drop-out numbers, higher ed institutions will begin to invest in mechanisms to improve student belonging and communication and will look for approaches to accelerate degree completion.
IT leaders will play a more strategic role: Historically, institutional IT leaders have played a largely operational role. But as technology plays an increasingly central role in the management of the modern postsecondary institution, these leaders will be asked to have a larger influence on the strategy and direction of their respective institutions. This will have a significant impact on higher education’s approach to customer/student engagement, leveraging/securing data, and software management.
Institutional IT leaders will be looking to address the “Digital Jungle” of software and vendors operating on their campuses. During the pandemic, colleges invested in massive numbers of disconnected and overlapping technology tools to deliver on specific needs through a challenging time. But now that we’re on the other side, CIOs and CISOs will be looking for ways to reduce the risk associated with having so many tech vendors operating simultaneously on campus, improving data security and simplifying the institutional tech infrastructure.
Keith Renneker, VP Sales for Modern Campus Connected Curriculum and Modern Campus CMS
AI will continue to be a hot button topic – how to leverage in education delivery, impact on research, recruitment and engagement of students – essentially the whole education ecosystem.
Financial survival – while some schools have been able to thrive, others continue to struggle, with Birmingham Southern the most recent example of a school trying to avoid closure. What will be the impact on affordability for students? Will campuses close or merge? Budget scrutiny will continue to slow and formalize more procurement processes.
A more politicized environment with government seemingly more engaged from the K-12 environment into higher ed – a leading example is loan forgiveness. Schools will be challenged with strong public views on political topics, creating risks for schools and including impact to donors.
Greater efforts on campuses for increased efficiency – platform solutions vs multi-vendor. Continued call for services – for school and students. Modernizing the experience for the learner. Stronger tools to integrate different campus solutions from different providers.
David Cashwell, VP Sales for Modern Campus Lifelong Learning
More centralization of CE programs in universities. For example, School of Education, School of Business, etc. They are sharing resources more, and that includes software.
Defining microcredential quality standards – this has become a more important issue with the American Council of Education, who oversees accreditation.
The Definition of FTE has become problematic because such a high percentage of full-time students are on financial aid and many “part time” students are paying in full. The question remains as to whether Pell dollars will be usable for students seeking a short-term job training program.
The higher ed institutions that are not well-endowed and who struggle with enrollments will be more deliberate about creating career pathways for their students. This will not be an issue for the most prestigious R1 universities who have 20% and below acceptance rates.
Institutions will be more focused on programs and marketing that focus on the stop out population through degree and non-degree programs. They will look to these populations as a supplement to the shortage in traditional demographics.
CIOs will continue to prefer purpose-built platforms that will play nicely within ecosystems. This shift in purpose-built solutions will be great for those that provide them assuming they can seamlessly integrate into “main campus” systems.
LMS providers will continue their momentum on combining with other solutions or building extensions of their LMS systems (see Instructure, Anthology (bB) and D2L). This will allow them to differentiate from each other outside of traditional “bake off” differentiators.
Institutions will continue to tighten up their security requirements. Universities have no regulations so it’s a big chance for cybersecurity in organizations.
Andy Gould, VP Sales for Modern Campus Student Engagement Suite
Retention efforts/funding will redirect to enrollment support in the face of continued enrollment decline, which will put effective student engagement at further risk.
Students will continue to demand more mobile-focused, interconnected, and personalized technologies be a part of their experience.
Soft skill development/articulation demand will increase as employers reduce forces, putting pressure on recruiting high quality new graduates.
Academic support will receive increased pressure and existing technologies are in need of modernization. Products like TEDU will see quick adoption.
Centralized student platforms like Pathify will gain increased traction as institutions and students alike face technology overload and more demand for a personalized experience.
Chad Rowe, VP Product for Modern Campus Lifelong Learning
Continuation of the rise and adoption of alternative credentials including digital badges.
Tighter integration of CE focused student information systems with customer relationship management systems to promote student engagement throughout their journey and lifetime.
Adoption of new tools and integration connectors to improve the student experience; tighter integrations between the CE-focused student information systems and the main campus SIS for more engaging catalog display.
Cautious exploration of AI use cases in the administration, reporting and predictive analytics or CE programs.
Kim Prieto, SVP Product
As enrollments continue to decline, and budgets are stretched, institutions will work to meet students where they are at:
Continued and growing focus on micro-credentialing
Support of online and hybrid programs
Communicating clear paths to post school employment
As the costs of education rises, community colleges will see higher growth than 4-year institutions, increasing the need for clear and easy transfer paths.
Campuses will look to gain efficiencies in their vendor management – looking more for platform vendors who can fulfill multiple needs.
From the accelerated adoption of microcredentials to the strategic role of IT leaders, and from the integration of AI to the focus on student engagement, these changes reflect a broader shift in educational priorities and methodologies. Higher education institutions must adapt to these changes, balancing innovation with the enduring values of accessibility and quality education. In doing so, they will not only meet the evolving needs of students and the workforce but also lead the way in shaping a future where education is more adaptable, inclusive, and aligned with the ever-changing global landscape.
Modern Campus, a provider of higher education solutions for driving student enrollment by attracting, engaging and converting students, recognized eight colleges and universities for excellence in website design and management.
These eight winners were chosen from more than 700 postsecondary institution websites powered by Modern Campus Omni CMS, the only content management system purpose-built for higher education. The winning websites were recognized for their effectiveness at providing students with informative content and engaging user experiences, driving conversions, maintaining interest, and improving enrollments.
In no particular order, the Best Higher Education Websites of 2022 are:
Since the website is the front door to an institution, it plays a crucial role in driving student enrollment by attracting, engaging, and converting students. It’s one of the first places that prospective students visit and serves as an important touchpoint in their enrollment decision.
Modern students expect higher ed websites to be optimized for their phones, deliver personalized experiences, and showcase the return on their higher ed investments upfront. They also prefer to experience the campus virtually before applying for it, found a recent study of higher school students conducted by RNL.
“Colleges and universities have been leveraging their websites in innovative ways to improve their prospective students’ digital experiences,” said Kimberly Prieto, vice president for product at Modern Campus. “On behalf of Modern Campus, I’m really excited to recognize the institutions that are leading the innovation and accomplishing specific goals with their websites. These websites share the very best of what the institution has to offer in a highly engaging manner.”
Only 21% of continuing, workforce and online education leaders say their divisions have the staff needed to execute on their critical work. However, more than half of leaders also report that their division’s roles have increased since the pandemic. This is according to the Modern CampusState of Continuing Education 2022 report, conducted in partnership with The EvoLLLution and the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA).
The study explores the opportunities and challenges facing leaders of professional, continuing and workforce education divisions at colleges and universities across North America. These divisions are often responsible for both making the expertise of the institution more accessible to the community and delivering critical upskilling and reskilling programming that help people find great jobs in sustainable careers.
Moreover, while two-thirds of survey respondents said they had support from senior executives to scale and grow, more than half pointed to administrative burden as their greatest obstacle to scale. In fact, an overwhelming majority of respondents indicate that they don’t have access to numbers as basic as real-time enrollment data—while being increasingly relied on to drive revenue and enrollment growth for the institution.
“The future of higher education is lifelong learning—we at Modern Campus know that. Engaging learners beyond traditional two- and four-year programs is the best way for colleges and universities to thrive,” said Brian Kibby, chief executive officer at Modern Campus. “This year’s State of Continuing Education research—along with nearly every conversation I have with presidents and provosts—confirms it. To support our communities, though, we need to better serve the CE and workforce development administrators who made it clear in this survey they don’t have the resources they need.”
While there’s little wide-ranging research available on the continuing, professional and workforce market, these units tend to be at the forefront of transformation and innovation in the higher education industry. Understanding the trends in CE provides a high-level view into where the rest of the postsecondary industry is moving.
“The results of this year’s State of Continuing Education study highlight what UPCEA members already know – that online and professional continuing education leaders often lack both the data and resources needed to achieve the institutional goals set out for their unit,” said Bob Hansen, chief executive officer at UPCEA. “This is a time of unparalleled opportunity for online and professional continuing education units to improve the broader higher education field, and the data in this study is a key tool as they advocate for institutional change.”
Response from Amrit Ahluwalia, director of strategic insights, Modern Campus.
I’ve had conversations with hundreds of provosts and senior administrators at colleges and universities across North America, and around the world, all reflecting on how the industry is evolving, how student needs are changing, and how institutions are adapting to keep pace with those shifts.
While many institutional leaders try to reflect on whether changes are flashes in the pan or meaningful disruption, the fact is that higher education has been on a consistent trajectory to make education increasingly modular and to make the student experience increasingly flexible and learner centric.
Promising: Better Student Engagement
We’re seeing colleges and universities invest in technologies built to support the learner in ways they haven’t before: Platforms built with the specific goal of engaging learners. Technologies that give learners direct pathways to success with clear career outcomes, that personalize the online experience or even simplify things like registration—these digital assets take the modern student from a ‘learner to earner’ in the most personalized and efficient path possible. The fact is that students enroll in higher education to get a job—58% of freshmen say this is their primary motivator for enrolling—and the industry is elevating to support those needs.
Technologies that put the student engagement and experience first—that support the ‘learner-to-earner’ journey—must become the norm in higher education. The modern learner is savvy, they have alternatives to the traditional path to higher education and therefore colleges and universities must adapt to the needs of the modern learner. We saw this during the pandemic: while freshman enrollment in higher education dropped 13% industry-wide, bootcamp enrollment grew 30%. The many alternatives to higher education keep pushing the status quo in how we serve modern learners.
Challenging: Transactional Infrastructure
It’s expensive for colleges and universities to attract students, but most institutions continue to focus on two- or four-year transactional relationships with students. This is a particular head-scratcher when 70% of learners are non-traditional, and when 68% of adults considering enrolling in education programming say they prefer non-degree or alternative credential options.
The commercial world outside of postsecondary education, would go bankrupt if we focused on merely short term, transactional relationships. We always search for ways to provide an experience that lets us work with that customer for life; not for two or three or four years. If that’s the length of our relationship, we go out of business. The relationship between students and institutions must change to reflect the new model of lifelong learning, and it can start with systems and processes that make learners want to stay with you.
Promising: Workforce Innovation
Higher education technology is starting to provide the framework for more workforce-oriented education and credentials. There’s a tremendous amount of innovation that’s not necessarily coming from colleges and universities, where businesses like Guild Education, 2U, Coursera, and others are filling the skills gaps that many schools view as ‘too vocational’. Innovation is coming into their space in spades, and it’s disrupting the system. This makes higher education more competitive, and those colleges and universities will innovate as a result.
Challenging: Low Coachability
Higher education’s acceptance of innovative technologies can be slow. Many colleges and universities are seeing their competitors doing things like workforce innovation well, but they’re folding their arms saying, ‘Well, that’s not for us.’ There are people like Dr. Crow (president of ASU) who’ve been amplifying their technologies and facilities for decades, but other colleges and universities aren’t hearing the call. They’re not being coachable. The innovation is out there, but institutions need to take it and make it their own.
Modern Campus, a leading engagement platform for higher education, announced the appointment of Jessica Phinn as chief people officer. In this newly created role, Phinn will lead all aspects of human resources, from recruitment through onboarding, employee engagement and beyond. The announcement aligns with the wider focus of Modern Campus continuing its terrific growth, maximizing the potential of its over 400 team members to transform the higher education industry.
Phinn joins Modern Campus with a wealth of experience across more than 20 years of progressive human resources leadership at multiple large organizations, including Pepsi Bottling Group and Loblaw. Before joining Modern Campus, Phinn held the position of senior vice president, people and engagement at Nelson Education, Canada’s leading K-12 education company.
“Maintaining our rapid growth requires creativity and passion at every level of the organization,” said Brian Kibby, chief executive officer at Modern Campus. “Bringing in Jessica as Modern Campus’s Chief People Officer positions us to continue our exponential growth by harnessing the talent and engagement of every member of our team. Her leadership will enable us to create a truly welcoming environment for everyone who’s joined Modern Campus recently through acquisition, while continuing our tradition of excellence in building a workplace that rewards and nurtures leaders.”
“Modern Campus has a well-earned reputation as a beacon for top edtech talent, and because of this and the highly engaged leadership team, it is a role that I found to be extremely compatible and one that I simply couldn’t pass up,” Phinn said. “I’m a firm believer that employees are truly a company’s most valuable asset, and with this I found a perfect match in Modern Campus. I am truly excited to join the organization and engage with all my new colleagues as they continue on their growth trajectory.”
Phinn holds a Bachelor of Human Resources Management from York University and is a certified human resources leader (CHRL).
The rapid growth of Modern Campus is due in part to welcoming five new companies in the past 12 months. The company acquired interactive campus map and virtual tour provider nuCloud in early 2021, followed by academic catalog and curriculum management provider DIGARC, and student engagement and development leader Presence. In January of this year, Modern Campus announced its acquisitions of leading higher education text-messaging provider Signal Vine and Augusoft, a leader in enrollment management for continuing education and corporate education programs.
Modern Campus partnered with Partners in Publishing on this executive search.
By Amrit Ahluwalia, director of strategic insights, Modern Campus.
Historically, education IT professionals have supported their respective colleges and universities from the behind the scenes. They’ve provided and maintained the critical infrastructure that allowed their institutions to serve learners, largely in the shadows, maintaining everything from server racks to campus Wi-Fi, to the printers in the library.
Of course, leading technology is no longer a “nice-to-have” for any business, and higher education is no different. Arguably, the technological infrastructure is as critical to helping set learners’ expectations of the institution as programming itself.
So, for the modern education IT professional, the most important topic they should be focused on is the student experience—both inside and outside the classroom.
By modernizing the digital experience being used to engage learners, IT professionals can help their respective institutions make massive strides to becoming environments better suited to the expectations of the modern learner, no matter their age.
Everyone today is first and foremost a digital consumer; they use Netflix, Amazon and Uber on a daily basis. Modern colleges and universities need to ensure students are able to access critical institutional information, resources and administrative tools when and where they want.
This means creating a secure environment that allows students to log into a portal to access receipts, request (and pay for!) transcripts and perform other bureaucratic and administrative tasks that are usually performed by front-line staff. It also means creating environments that automate adaptive communications, ensuring that learners are receiving relevant messaging from the institution through their preferred channels at the right time.
What’s more, IT has a role to play in supporting the delivery of high-quality academic experiences. That’s not to say the CIO will be teaching classes, of course. But it does mean creating an infrastructure that allows program catalogs—which are generally PDFs uploaded to the website—to be digitized and updated from a single location. It also means creating workflow structures that allow program approval processes to be automated and simplified, so that everyone from the program chair to the accreditation body is in the loop when something changes.
Modern Campus has acquired Augusoft, an enrollment management solution for continuing and corporate education programs. The acquisition extends the Modern Campus customer base to nearly 2,000 colleges and universities across North America and allows the company to further advance and improve the delivery of continuing education while engaging modern learners for life.
With enrollment for traditional two- and four-year programs declining across most campuses, higher education institutions are investing in continuing, professional, and workforce education to fuel enrollment growth while delivering on their institutional mission to expand learning experiences, reach diverse populations, and create employment opportunities.
Modern Campus’s Destiny One product is the recognized leader in non-traditional student management, with a broad set of offerings that enable colleges and universities to thrive in continuing, online, and professional education. With Augusoft and its flagship Lumens product, Modern Campus now offers the most robust set of capabilities including products, services, and partnerships to serve the complete needs of non-traditional learners.
Response by Amrit Ahluwalia, director of strategic insights, Modern Campus.
I’ve had conversations with hundreds of provosts and senior administrators at colleges and universities across North America, and around the world, all reflecting on how the industry is evolving, how student needs are changing, and how institutions are adapting to keep pace with those shifts. While many institutional leaders try to reflect on whether changes are flashes in the pan or meaningful disruption, the fact is that higher education has been on a consistent trajectory to make education increasingly modular and to make the student experience increasingly flexible and learner centric.
Promising: Better Student Engagement
We’re seeing colleges and universities invest in technologies built to support the learner in ways they haven’t before: Platforms built with the specific goal of engaging learners. Technologies that give learners direct pathways to success with clear career outcomes, that personalize the online experience or even simplify things like registration—these digital assets take the modern student from a ‘learner to earner’ in the most personalized and efficient path possible. The fact is that students enroll in higher education to get a job—58% of freshmen say this is their primary motivator for enrolling—and the industry is elevating to support those needs.
Technologies that put the student engagement and experience first—that support the ‘learner-to-earner’ journey—must become the norm in higher education. The modern learner is savvy, they have alternatives to the traditional path to higher education and therefore colleges and universities must adapt to the needs of the modern learner. We saw this during the pandemic: while freshman enrollment in higher education dropped 13% industry-wide, bootcamp enrollment grew 30%. The many alternatives to higher education keep pushing the status quo in how we serve modern learners.
U.S.-based high school students say the website is their most influential resource when conducting college research, and 40% will lose interest in a college or university if the website is frustrating or disappointing.
The research comes from Ruffalo Noel Levitz’s E-Expectations Trend Report, an annual survey of high school students exploring their behaviors and experiences as they research prospective colleges. The 2021 edition highlights the rising importance of personalization in engaging prospective students—and the need for colleges and universities to stand out in the increasingly competitive postsecondary marketplace.
“Modern learners think and act like consumers, so it’s critical for colleges and universities to build websites, social media presences and outreach strategies that address their needs and interests,” said Peter DeVries, president and chief operating officer of Modern Campus. “Those that do will thrive. We know this because we see it in our customers every day—on average they grow annual revenue by 19% and enrollments by 14%.”
Like any customer in any industry, prospective students conducting their college research are primarily trying to understand how the institutions they are considering match their needs and expectations.
Modern Campus announces the acquisition of Presence, a campus engagement and learning platform for higher education institutions. The acquisition extends Modern Campus’s learning partners to more than 1,400 colleges and universities across North America and enables each to serve their students with a massively personalized experience throughout the “learner to earner” journey.
With a practical approach to impacting student engagement, Presence helps higher education institutions increase student engagement to power retention, graduation rates and workforce readiness. A data-focused student engagement, learning and retention platform for student affairs divisions, Presence enables higher education institutions to:
Manage and automate processes: Simplify complicated and inconsistent practices by standardizing how involvement opportunities are structured and advertised. Integrated in one platform, users can improve both operational workflows and student accessibility.
Engage more students: Meet students where they are and simplify how they find involvement opportunities to ensure effective advertisement, quick access and more direct engagement. Remove barriers to involvement, including every student with automatic profiles.
Track and collect engagement data: Measure participation both qualitatively and quantitatively. Utilize scalable data collection through mobile devices and collect survey and assessment data in a single tool.
Assess behaviors and trends: Make data-driven decisions to increase engagement, ensure retention and boost graduation rates. Synced live with student information system data, users can identify trends, compare effectiveness and identify under-involved students.
Modern Campus
U.S.-based high school students say the website is their most influential resource when conducting college research, and 40% will lose interest in a college or university if the website is frustrating or disappointing.