Artificial intelligence has become part of higher education’s operating environment. New capabilities, applications, and predictions emerge almost daily. Staying informed is important, but awareness alone is not leadership. Leaders must determine what these developments mean for their institutions, their people, and the learners they serve. Leadership Conversations in the Age of AI begins an ongoing…
A follow-up from the 2026 SOLAR COLO Convening By Julie Uranis & Tim Lehmann FSA awards more than $120 billion a year to roughly 13 million students. Some of those enrollments are fraudulent. Fraud rings use stolen identities, synthetic identities assembled from real and fabricated information, and sometimes complicit individuals to enroll, obtain aid, and…
The technology of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) gained worldwide attention with the initial release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, and it has continued to expand at awesome speed and capability ever since. This has generated fear and anxiety among some observers and enthusiasm among others. The enthusiasm is for the many ways in…
The field of higher education is notoriously slow to change. Yet, when faced with the extraordinary challenges of today, our associations are quick to foster support, collaboration and unity. I just returned from the UPCEA Annual Conference held in Denver. A record attendance of some 1,300 administrators, faculty and staff from member institutions gathered to…
2026 UPCEA MEMS Award Recipients Announced
26 recipients chosen across three award categories WASHINGTON, D.C., September 16, 2026 — UPCEA, the online and professional education association, has announced the recipients of the 2026 Excellence in Enrollment Management Award, the Excellence in Advancing Student Success Award, and the Excellence in Marketing Award. All three awards are sponsored by UPCEA’s Marketing, Enrollment Management,…
New Research: AI Answers Decide Which Schools Prospects Choose as Consideration Sets Continue to Shrink
UPCEA and Search Influence’s 2026 study finds prospective students question AI more, but increasingly use and trust it in their search for programs NEW ORLEANS, La. — September 16, 2026 — Prospective students consider just three or fewer continuing and online education programs before applying, and AI-generated search overviews increasingly shape which ones make that…
Post-Pandemic, Online Ed Has ‘Staying Power’ (Inside Higher Ed)
“The surge in online enrollment forced by the pandemic is leveling out. And the modality is now far more popular than it ever was during the 2010s, according to newly released federal data. The Education Department published fall 2024 online enrollment data last month, covering more 5,615 institutions. The data shows nearly 54 percent of college students…
Unlocking Opportunity: How Tax Policies Like Section 127 Can Drive Employer Partnerships
By Chelsea Miller, UpSkill America, and Amy Heitzman, UPCEA This piece was originally published in July 2025. It has since been updated to reflect changes to Section 127 as a result of the 2025 tax reconciliation bill. Updated September 1, 2026. Partnership is a key driver to unlocking opportunity in America. This is why UPCEA and UpSkill…
In 1915, UPCEA’s founders built this association on a simple idea: carrying knowledge to the people. That founding purpose never had an expiration date, and it does not have one now. It is why, more than a century later, the question in front of us was never whether professional learning needs to change. It is…
The tagline for Convergence, Credential Innovation in Higher Education, raises two important questions: First, what kind of credentials are we talking about? Is the scope of credentials unlimited, blue sky, or confined to incremental changes on the margins of the status quo? And second, who is leading that innovation, and what do they need to…
At UPCEA SOLAR 2026, OES Learning Solutions joined Stevie Rocco of Penn State University for a session that asked an important question about how we should be thinking about inclusivity in higher education: What changes when accessibility is treated not simply as a compliance requirement, but as a catalyst for better learning? For PSU, said…
Three years ago, I joined my first UPCEA event without knowing many people in the room. Today, Drieam is a UPCEA Silver Partner, and I’ve lost count of how many Coffee Chats, webinars and conversations that partnership has led to. What has stayed consistent across those three years is not the format of the conversations,…