I have always appreciated how honest wood is. Look at a cut stump and the rings tell a story: good years, lean years, drought, recovery. That feels like the right way to read the newly released 2026 State of Continuing Education report from UPCEA, Modern Campus, and The EvoLLLution. As this partnership reaches its five-year…
In the world of online and professional continuing education, we often talk about “meeting students where they are.” When it comes to the military community, that isn’t just a metaphor, it’s often a physical location. For marketing teams at UPCEA member institutions, military installations are a unique ecosystem. To succeed here, you cannot simply port…
Many of us utilize AI daily in our higher education work, yet we may not have assessed the ethical and human-centered nature of the tool we have selected and trained through our prompts. AI tools are no longer a relatively simple search engine that is driven by marketing metrics to help us conduct our research.…
The spring semester is coming to a close with the normal host of routines. Yet, beneath those routines, something is unfolding in the labor market that will greet your new graduates who will face an incrementally tighter job market. I asked Claude Sonnet 4.6 Extended Thinking to research the tasks relevant to preparing our new…
UPCEA Encourages Passage of FUTURE Act
UPCEA joined with other organizations in a letter to the House and Senate to express our strong support for H.R.5363, the FUTURE Act. Following our letters, both the House and the Senate passed the bill, sending it to the President’s desk for signature. This much needed legislation addresses a few important issues. First, it would…
Policy Matters | Department of Education Releases Final Regulations Following Negotiated Rulemaking (November 2019)
Welcome to the November edition of Policy Matters. Each issue has the latest updates and actionable items in public policy for adult and nontraditional education stakeholders. Major Update Department of Education Releases Final Regulations Following Negotiated Rulemaking The US Department of Education has released its final rules that are a result of the negotiated rulemaking session held…
2019-20 UPCEA Benchmarking Research Agenda Announced
How do your programs, staffing and salaries stack up in the dynamic world of professional, continuing and online education? What marketing tactics are your peers using to get enrollments and fill their classes? Do you need solid benchmarking and stats to share with your campus leadership? UPCEA has exciting news—our Chief Research Officer and Center…
A Glance at the Realm of Higher Education
By SmartBrief Editors This post is produced in partnership with UPCEA. Former associate provost for outreach and engagement at the University of Southern Indiana and current vice provost for continuing education at North Carolina State University, Mark Bernhard offers insight into success within the profession of continuing higher education. Question: Tell us about your…
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…
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…
Some conferences feel long. This one flew by. And still, I kept thinking I wish I could have attended even more sessions. Over the past few days at the UPCEA Annual Conference, a few very clear themes kept coming back. Not just in presentations, but in conversations with people across institutions. Yes, AI is still very much…
Online enrollment leaders don’t need another mandate to “use AI.” They need relief. Most teams are already stretched thin by demands to manage inquiry volume, follow-up expectations, data hygiene, and prospect responsiveness. They lack the capacity to take on yet another complex initiative, especially one that feels abstract or disruptive. AI mandates promise transformation when…