The Pulse of Higher Ed

Recent Center for Research and Strategy studies have explored different facets of today’s new learner. Explore these studies for details on how your institution can best meet new learners’ needs. 

The Six Personas of the New Learner: Changing Motivations and Situations of the New Learner Landscape (with Thinking Cap)

As we move into the future, the adult learner will become more and more important. However, there are many faces to the adult learner. UPCEA collaborated with the Thinking Cap Agency to unmask some of these segments. While there are certainly older learners, professional learners and others, we focused on the Generation Z and Millennial segment of adult students. The analysis revealed that six personas that tended to fall on gender and age cohort lines. The study shows that the six personas rely on social media differently, as well as have different preferences and motivations, all of which are critical for institutions of higher education to reach and communicate more efficiently with them in the future.

Supporting & Retaining the New Professional Learner (with Salesforce.org)

Today’s new adult and professional learner is very different from past generations. However, our systems and processes to respond to students and especially inquirers have been built to previous generations. UPCEA partnered with Salesforce to better understand the intersection of people, processes and technology as it pertained to the adult learner of today and of the future. The research that we jointly conducted identified that today’s adult learner demands greater accessibility to the resources of the college or university, as well as expects immediacy and flexibility to their needs. As a result, colleges and universities need to leverage the tools of technology and automation and weave in the human element at critical junctures. This requires deliberate planning, creating a student-centered process and having a strategy for engagement.

Today’s Disengaged Learner is Tomorrow’s Adult Learner (with StraighterLine)

Over the past decade, higher education enrollments were steadily declining, but at a slow and almost unnoticeable rate, with the likely reason being increasing tuition, lower disposable household income and not necessarily a significantly improved product to justify the cost increase. Students today expect greater value and a higher return on investment. The pandemic accentuated this problem with the value equation thus forcing many students to the sidelines, primarily 18 to 22 year-olds. With over 37 million Americans with some college but no degree, higher education has an opportunity to re-capture their lost students. However, value, messaging and relationship management will have to improve. UPCEA and StraighterLine embarked on a research initiative to better understand this disengaged student to help institutions reconnect with them to help fuel a new economy and contribute in new ways to society.