Institutions must begin preparing now for 2026 implementation. On July 4, 2025, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), a sweeping legislative package that reshapes federal student aid and accountability policy. Among many consequential provisions for higher education is the creation of Workforce Pell, which will extend Pell Grant eligibility to some short-term,…
Read MoreIntroduction Enrollment managers face a paradox: students demand personalized service, yet resources are shrinking. While AI is exciting, it is also an expensive endeavor for enrollment management divisions already stretched by staffing and resource challenges. Traditional methods—manual file reviews, siloed systems, and lagging indicators—simply can’t keep up. The solution lies in determining how to leverage…
Read MoreAn artifact of the race to the top in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is that mistakes inevitably occur in refining the models that are under continuous development. One of those many mistakes apparently led to hallucinations in outputs. We all are witness to the incredibly frenetic race to develop AI tools that publicly kicked off on…
Read MoreUniversity budgets across the country are broken. Overall revenue and accumulated financial support appear to be declining at most universities for a wide variety of reasons. New funding policies, administrative reorganizations such as those at the Department of Education, lean fiscal times for states, diminished regard for higher learning, fewer requirements for degrees among employers…
Read More196 Recipients Receive Honors Across 26 Categories for Excellence in Marketing
WASHINGTON, D.C., October 11, 2017 — UPCEA, the leader in professional, continuing, and online education, has announced the recipients of the 2017 Marketing Awards. The UPCEA Marketing Awards program recognizes the top marketing and creative work across the UPCEA membership. This year, UPCEA is honoring 196 recipients for their excellence in 26 awards categories across…
Announcing two exciting, new member-driven regional conference pilot programs!
Dear Colleagues, I want to share with you the results of the UPCEA Presidential Task Force on Regional Conferences, which conducted a comprehensive and iterative review of the signature deliverable of UPCEA’s five regions: a fall conference. The UPCEA Board of Directors charged the Task Force to make recommendations for reducing the number of regional…
UPCEA Addresses Trump Administration on DACA
UPCEA joined with HACU (Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities) and ACE (American Council on Education) along with other organizations to retain protections for those who are part of the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program until longer term solutions can be put into place. The letters call for the program to be retained…
How can colleges amend unsustainable business models? (EducationDIVE)
Current economic trends may lead to more socioeconomic divisions, according to Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the Association of American Colleges & Universities. In “Future Forward: The Next 20 Years of Higher Education,” most respondents said the preponderance of online education options had been the most seismic development in higher education during the previous two…
We are pleased to share the foreword by UPCEA CEO Bob Hansen from the newly released Chief Online Learning Officers’ Guidebook: A Framework for Strategy and Practice in Higher Education. The guidebook, now available from Routledge in paperback, hardback, and eBook formats, provides a comprehensive framework for today’s online learning leaders. Learn more and purchase…
Read MoreOver the last three years, UPCEA engaged in an innovative partnership with the University of Wisconsin–Madison to enable the latter’s Distance Teaching and Learning (DT&L) conference to continue under UPCEA’s leadership. The partnership’s goals included making this valuable event for the distance learning community more sustainable and accessible to online practitioners focused on teaching and…
Read MoreProtecting students, data, and credentials starts at the top, because hacks don’t take holidays. Cybersecurity Is Now a Leadership Issue Universities aren’t just academic institutions anymore. They’re digital enterprises. Student data, research, and online platforms are valuable targets, and attackers know it. That’s why cybersecurity has moved out of the IT basement and into the…
Read MoreSince the 1980s, higher education has steadily shifted from passive lectures to more active, student-centered learning. As Bonwell and Eison noted in Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom, this shift not only reinforces content mastery but also fosters critical thinking and problem-solving. Cynthia J. Brame, writing for Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching, defines active learning…
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