The Pulse of Higher Ed

Higher education is facing significant financial pressure. Revenue is growing more slowly than costs across the sector. State funding is contracting. The demographic cliff has arrived. The institutions feeling this most acutely are being asked to do something that sounds simple but is not: spend less and generate more at the same time. For a detailed look at the funding pressures public institutions are navigating right now, the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Higher Education’s Uncertain Fiscal Future is a useful starting point. 

For those of us who have spent our careers in online and professional continuing education, none of this is new. Our units have always operated closer to the market than the rest of the university. We run on revenue we generate ourselves. We respond to enrollment demand in ways most academic departments never have to. What is different now is the extent to which the rest of the institution is looking to these units to carry more of the financial load, often without a corresponding increase in the resources needed to do so. 

Online and professional continuing education units often incur hidden costs unrelated to their core operations. They are frequently required to cover expenses through service fees, while academic departments present marginally viable program ideas expecting these units to support them. Unfunded mandates continue to pile up, leading leaders in these units to manage budgets that must generate revenue, subsidize institutional priorities, and operate efficiently. This challenge is distinct from simply “doing more with less’ and demands a different leadership approach. 

That response is intrapreneurship: the practice of applying entrepreneurial thinking within an existing institutional structure rather than building something outside it. In a financial context, that means treating the budget not as a constraint to manage around but as a strategic tool. It means making resource allocation decisions with the same discipline a business would bring to its investments, protecting what generates revenue, sunsetting what does not, and building the financial case for what the unit needs to grow. Intrapreneurs do not wait for resources to arrive or permission to be granted. They identify leverage points, quantify the cost of inaction, and move with market awareness and accountability that most academic units are not structured to match. In online and professional continuing education, this is not a new concept. It is, in many ways, simply a description of how effective leaders in this space have always had to operate. 

Doing More with Less Is About Choosing, Not Just Cutting 

The phrase gets overused to the point of meaninglessness, yet there is something real in it. The most important version of the idea is not about cutting. It is about the constant “make or buy” discipline that effective online and professional education leaders develop over time: being clear about which functions to manage internally, which to source through partnerships, and which to stop doing altogether. In lean budget years, that discipline is not a nice-to-have. It is how the unit survives without hollowing itself out. 

In my experience, a few approaches consistently pay off. Deepening relationships with existing audiences almost always yield a higher return than launching new programs. Online and professional continuing education units already serve adult learners, alumni, corporate clients, government agencies, and healthcare professionals. The untapped opportunity is rarely a credential that does not yet exist. It is usually a more intentional relationship with someone already in the ecosystem. Alumni engagement strategies, employer partnership models, and government training contracts can generate meaningful revenue without the lead time and overhead of building something from scratch. 

Operational infrastructure is another area where the instinct to cut tends to backfire. The online and professional continuing education operations that are growing their revenue most consistently are almost always the ones that invested early in systems that connect program delivery to learner experience. When those systems work, a small team can operate on a real scale. When they do not, even a well-staffed unit hits a ceiling. In lean budget years, protecting infrastructure spending is often more strategically important than protecting headcount, even though headcount feels more tangible. 

Short-form credentials are worth taking seriously as a budget strategy, not just a program strategy. New degree programs are expensive to develop, slow to launch, and difficult to wind down when enrollment does not materialize. Microcredentials and stackable pathways, when well designed and aligned with labor market demand, can be tested with far less financial risk. Strong enrollment in a short-form offering also provides meaningful evidence when making the case for deeper program investment with institutional leadership. With Workforce Pell moving forward, the policy environment is beginning to support what online and professional education practitioners have long understood. For data on how institutions are approaching audience diversification, workforce alignment, and credential strategy, the UPCEA/Modern Campus State of Continuing Education 2026 report is an essential resource. UPCEA members can also explore trend forecasts and strategic guidance in the UPCEA Predictions 2026 report. 

The Budget Habits That Actually Matter 

Having spent years working inside these units and alongside the leaders who run them, I have noticed that those who navigate lean years well share some habits worth sharing. For broader context on how senior leaders across the sector are approaching these pressures, UPCEA’s Leading Change in a Time of Financial Pressure is worth reading alongside what follows. 

They scan the environment constantly and use what they learn. The leaders who budget well are not just managing the numbers in front of them. They are tracking enrollment trends, watching what competitors are launching, reading what employers are asking for, and paying attention to policy shifts before those shifts become budget problems. That kind of environmental awareness is what separates reactive budget management from strategic financial leadership. It also produces better forecasts, because the signals are usually there before the numbers move. 

They are clear about which costs generate revenue and which do not. Marketing, enrollment support, and the operational infrastructure connecting those functions to learners are not overhead. They are the engine. When they get cut first because they look discretionary on paper, the unit loses its capacity to grow at the exact moment it needs to. Leaders who protect those investments can also explain precisely why to a skeptical CFO or provost, and that ability matters. 

They know their walk-away position before they enter any negotiation. Whether they are negotiating a revenue-sharing arrangement with an academic department, a technology contract, or a partnership with an external organization, the leaders who fare best have defined in advance the minimum terms they will accept. That clarity does the work that wishful thinking cannot. It keeps online and professional continuing education units from entering arrangements that look good in year one and become a burden by year three. 

They treat the program portfolio as requiring active financial management. Every program carries a different margin, growth trajectory, and strategic rationale. In lean years, continuing to fund low-enrollment, low-margin programs out of institutional habit is a budget choice, and it rarely gets named as one. The leaders I have seen navigate this well review their portfolios with the same discipline a business would apply to its product line: investing in what is growing, supporting what has potential, and sunsetting what is neither. That process consistently frees up resources without requiring additional funding from the central administration. 

Making the Case Upward 

None of this stays internal for long. Budget pressure is not only an operational challenge for online and professional continuing education units. It is also a visibility challenge. At a time when the unit is being asked to contribute more to institutional financial health, evidence suggests that institutional leadership’s focused attention on continuing education is declining. That gap matters because the resources online and professional education units need to grow rarely come without making a sustained, credible case to senior leadership. 

The intrapreneurial response is not to wait for recognition. It is to reframe the conversation. Online and professional continuing education is not a service unit on the institution’s margins. It is a revenue diversification strategy. It serves learners the demographic cliff is pushing away from traditional pipelines. It builds workforce partnerships that employers and state governments increasingly expect of higher education. It moves faster than most of the rest of the institution, and in an environment where speed and market responsiveness matter, that agility is worth highlighting. 

That means connecting online and professional continuing education enrollment data to institutional headcount projections. It means bringing proposals for staffing and technology investment that are tied to specific revenue outcomes. And it means documenting the opportunity cost of under-investment, not just the cost of investment itself. Senior leaders are under real pressure right now, and the online and professional education leaders gaining ground are the ones who have made it easy for those leaders to understand what their unit makes possible for the institution. 

The Opening Inside the Constraint 

The budget pressure is not going away. Neither is the opportunity it creates for online and professional continuing education leaders who are willing to manage through it with intention. The demographic cliff is sending exactly the learners we are built to serve. The policy environment is moving in our direction. The institutional appetite for what we do has never been higher. 

Intrapreneurship is not a response to the crisis. It is what we have always done. The difference now is that the rest of the institution is paying attention. 

 

Michael Jones, Ed.D., MBA, is a higher education consultant and strategist with a background in financial leadership and program development. He is also a Professional Development Faculty Member with UPCEA, where he teaches “Forecasting, Budgeting, and Managing Money in an Environment of Uncertainty and Risk.” Learn more about UPCEA professional development at https://elevate.upcea.edu/.