See below for the full set of all blogs hosted by the association.

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Perspectives on Online and Professional Education
from UPCEA’s Research and Consulting Experts

Maximizing Audience Lifetime Value: The Role of Branding, Partnerships, and Alumni Networks in Credential Success

October 13, 2025

Shifting Student and Employer Priorities Create Opportunities for Higher Education Interest and innovation in workforce-related programming and credentials continue to surge, emerging as one of the fastest growing markets in higher education. Two-thirds of colleges and universities are making significant investments in this area, with more than one-third also embedding professional certifications into their online…

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Preparing Four-Year Institutions for Workforce Pell

September 23, 2025

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,…

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Unique biweekly insights and news review from Ray Schroeder, Senior Fellow at UPCEA

AI Hallucinations May Soon Be History

October 2, 2025

An 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…

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AI Teaching Learners Today: Pick Your Pedagogy!

September 18, 2025

University 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…

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Your one-stop shop for the latest Association happenings, policy updates, plus thoughts from the desk of CEO Bob Hansen.

7 new standards for excellent online learning leadership (eCampusNews)

“As online learning evolves from amateur experimentation to a mainstream professional entity on campus, new standards for quality online learning leadership are emerging in order to not only sustain these distance programs, but ensure they meet the growing demands of 21st-century academe. The UPCEA has released a report detailing seven hallmarks of excellence in online…

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Can Associations Attract Millennials with Credentialing? (Associations Now)

“The degree will always be an important credential, but it won’t always be the gold standard,” said Jim Fong, director of UPCEA’s Center for Research and Marketing strategy, in a press release. “As millennials enter the prime years of their career and move into positions of greater power, we’ll see more alternative credentials for specific…

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Department of Education Releases Proposed Rules on State Authorization

The Department of Education released Friday July 22 their proposed regulations on State Authorization, following an earlier failure to reach consensus as part of negotiated rule making. State authorization for distance education — the proposed regulation for institutions administering a program in which a distance or online education student is present in another state. The administration has proposed…

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Alternative credentials now a must-have for traditional universities (eCampusNews)

Millennials prefer badging and certificates to traditional degrees, according to researchers from UPCEA, Penn State and Pearson. More than half of higher education institutions (64 percent) participating in a recent survey said alternative credentials are an important strategy for institutions’ futures. That same survey also found that millennial students are likely to support the use…

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Musings on trends and updates from UPCEA CEO Bob Hansen.

Foreword by Bob Hansen Featured in The COLO Guidebook

July 10, 2025

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…

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A new direction for the Distance Teaching and Learning Conference

November 7, 2024

Over 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…

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Valuable insights from UPCEA's trusted corporate partners.

AI and Cybersecurity: The New Power Couple on Campus

October 10, 2025

Innovation attracts attention, and not all of it good. Protecting data, students, and credibility now means securing every AI experiment before it secures you.   The Bright Side, and the Blind Spots, of AI in Higher Ed AI is higher ed’s new favorite partner and, like any power couple, it comes with complications. It’s rewriting…

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Workforce Pell Is Now Law Under the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB)

October 6, 2025

Is your institution ready to deliver, comply, and compete? This update is intended to highlight key portions of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) that affect colleges and universities. The goal is not to offer opinion, but to bring clarity around the law’s implications—especially the arrival of Workforce Pell. The OBBB is a broad, multi-issue…

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