Industry Insights

Valuable insights from UPCEA's trusted corporate partners.

Reasons Your Website Might Be Preventing Prospective Student Conversions

January 7, 2022

A lot of time and money are invested in your website and marketing tactics to drive traffic to your site. However, if conversions don’t follow, then you’re left wondering if you’re targeting the wrong audiences or if you need to invest more money. Fortunately, the answer is usually “no” – the real issue is often…

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Three Ways to Improve Communication and Increase Student Engagement

September 10, 2021

It’s no secret that COVID-19 disrupted higher education. Overnight, students and instructors shifted from traditional, face-to-face instruction to a fully-virtual model. Student retention was already top-of-mind for college and university administrators. But this sudden shift made the challenge of keeping students engaged even more difficult.   A return to traditional, in-person learning is imminent. But…

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The future of revenue diversification in higher education: Crucial insights for universities in a post-pandemic world

April 14, 2021

Financial sustainability is the biggest existential threat facing higher education today. In the United Kingdom, the universities in deficit have almost quintupled in the last five years, from 24 in 2015/16 to 119 in 2018/19. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this challenge, with London Economics predicting that universities will be hit by a $3bn shortfall…

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The Top 7 Ways to Recruit Professional and Continuing Education Students for Higher Education

April 6, 2021

Your future continuing education students already exist — researching and searching for your programs right now. So how can you effectively tap into the continuing education market and recruit new students for your programs?  Who are your future students? According to research from Thinking Cap Agency, professional certification students are an average of 31 years…

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Tune in: MindMax launches podcast on higher education

April 2, 2021

What has changed for you in the last year?   For the team at MindMax, almost everything has. Since March 2020, our company has shifted to an entirely remote workforce, helped our university partners pivot their marketing and enrollment strategies to meet the evolving needs of their current and future students, and overall, we’ve spent…

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Other Blogs and News:

Microcredentials, Modularity, and Mission: Insights from UPCEA’s Coffee Chat on Innovation in Healthcare Education

In partnership with the HELIX Summit on Continuing Medical Education  How are institutions navigating the dynamic intersection of workforce demands, digital learning, and credentialing innovation—especially in healthcare? That’s exactly what we explored in a recent Coffee Chat, where UPCEA leaders from across the higher education landscape gathered for an unrecorded but powerfully candid conversation on…

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Leading with Values-Based Influence in Higher Education

Why Values-Based Influence Matters Now  Higher education is undergoing seismic shifts—demographic changes, budget constraints, AI disruption, and questions of relevance. In this environment, how we lead and why we lead matters as much as what we do as leaders. Leaders who operate from a strong internal compass—those grounded in values—offer clarity, stability, and hope.  Values-based…

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Accreditation + Skill-Based Learning Addressed in New Executive Orders | Policy Matters (April 2025)

Major Updates Accreditation, Foreign Support, Skill-Based Learning Addressed in New Trump Executive Orders The Trump administration has continued issuing an unprecedented number of executive orders with recent directives directly impacting colleges and universities, addressing topics like accreditation reform, foreign influence, skills-based learning (including alternative credentials), and support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Two…

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Online education booms in an era of lifelong learning (WorkingNation)

‘Strictly online institutions tend to serve working-age or older adults requiring flexible schedules constructed around family obligations and work. “Folks arrive at higher ed for a multitude of reasons,” says Julie Uranis, senior vice president of online and strategic initiatives for UPCEA (the Online and Professional Education Association), a resource for online university programs. “Online learning gives them…

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Your Lifelong Learning Journey’s “Breadcrumbs” – How to Tell Your Story

As avid backcountry hikers, years ago my family decided it would be prudent to buy a GPS, even though we had a rescue dog with an incredible sense of direction. While many out-and-back or even loop hikes didn’t require high-powered digital GPS coordinates to find our way back to our vehicle, we did appreciate launching…

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Key Findings from 2024 UPCEA Marketing Survey

As more and more institutions face internal and external pressures to identify and cultivate new revenue streams, many are turning to online and professional continuing education to attract new learners and address fiscal shortfalls. While this continued increase in supply undoubtedly benefits the student, it makes an already saturated market even more competitive. UPCEA’s 2024…

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