A shorter version of this article was originally published in University Business.
In 2020, colleges and universities around the country had to move online to continue serving their students in the midst of a global pandemic. Most weren’t ready. What began as an emergency response has evolved into a fundamental transformation of how we deliver education. Online education isn’t merely an alternative—it’s an integral component of the education ecosystem.
During this current moment of turbulence in higher education, developing a credible and sustainable online strategy is once again an imperative. Amid declining international enrollment, changes in endowment taxes, and cuts to federal and state funding, schools must seek alternative revenue streams to fill the gaps and continue serving students. The current boom in interest and enrollment in online education may be the solution.
Universities must adopt a strategic and data-driven approach to scale their online programs successfully. Simply adding more online courses is not enough. Provosts are in a unique position to centralize this work, ensuring it is the institution-wide priority it must be. With growing interest in artificial intelligence across higher education, institutions should also consider all the ways AI can work alongside human insight and strategy to help scale and optimize their online programs.
Here are the six areas that every provost should consider when scaling their online offerings and how AI can help.
1. Market Research: Understanding Student Demand and Competitive Landscape
Before expanding online programs, it’s essential to understand market demand and how your offerings compare to competitors. Student demand signals, such as search trends and query data from tools like Google and IPEDS, provide insights into which programs are most in demand.
Taking it a step further, the truly innovative institutions should look to the labor market trends and identify future workforce needs to design programs for emerging roles.
Evaluating both quantitative market data and qualitative industry insights can create distinct program portfolios. The success of these programs will not just be in how many students they enroll but in the sustainable pathways to career advancement they create.
AI Boost: AI can help synthesize massive volumes of data—from labor market analytics to student search trends—and surface predictive insights about emerging program opportunities. Paired with strategic interpretation and contextual understanding from experienced academic leadership, great insights can be gleaned in half the time.
2. Brand Messaging: Crafting a Unique Message for Online Learners
We know online learners are motivated by different factors than traditional students—flexibility, career advancement, and personalized support. Your brand messaging should reflect these core attributes, but also adapt to your institution’s unique methodologies and expertise. What can you offer online learners that they won’t find at other programs?
Take a page from how on-campus programs market themselves—thinking beyond just metrics and outcomes to highlight culture, belonging, and transformative educational experiences.
Institutions should also develop distinct personas for different types of online students—working adults, career changers, military-affiliated learners, and first-generation college students. Crafting messages that resonate with these groups helps foster emotional connection and trust, both essential for increasing yield and student satisfaction.
This approach will ensure prospective students understand how your institution can align with their personal and professional goals, ultimately driving engagement and conversion.
AI Boost: Building on humanistic branding rooted in values, identity, and mission, AI can assist in automating the execution. It can generate message variants, A/B test creative, and analyze sentiment across channels to understand what resonates most with different personas.
3. Program Profitability: Evaluating Financial Sustainability and Growth Potential
Financial sustainability is essential for scaling online programs. Program profitability evaluations should go beyond reviewing basic cost structures. Every program should have a robust profit and loss statement to track investment requirements, costs, and revenues. And the finances of all programs should fit together into a larger profitability plan.
Institutions should establish a clear framework for evaluating the lifecycle of each program—from launch to maturity—and consider key financial milestones. This includes analyzing cost per acquisition, retention rates, breakeven thresholds, and average revenue per student. These metrics can inform strategic decisions about whether to sunset, sustain, or scale specific programs.
With data-driven financial analysis, institutions can identify new revenue streams and optimize pricing strategies, ensuring programs remain profitable and capable of funding further growth and innovation.
AI Boost: Financial planners can use AI modeling tools to forecast enrollment trends, simulate tuition scenarios, and automate performance dashboards. These outputs can be used to inform long-term institutional goals.
4. Enrollment Management & Online Support: Streamlining the Student Journey
A streamlined, seamless enrollment process is critical for driving conversions from inquiry to enrollment. For traditional undergraduate students, this can mean personalized attention, academic advising, career coaching, and enrollment counseling. Why shouldn’t online learners get the same experience?
Institutions should assess if their enrollment management systems are fully optimized to accommodate online learners and give them robust, personalized enrollment journeys. Prospective online students should feel as supported, confident, and well-informed as their on-campus counterparts.
Modern enrollment systems should integrate intelligent automation tools that help personalize outreach at scale—using data from prior engagements to suggest next steps, trigger nudges, or escalate high-priority prospects for advisor intervention. Slate, for instance, is a leading CRM & enrollment management system that offers tremendous advantages. Additionally, expanding virtual advising services and peer mentoring can create a support-rich ecosystem that builds trust and drives persistence.
AI Boost: AI-powered chatbots, workflow automation, and nudging systems can increase responsiveness and reduce administrative friction. This frees up human advisors to do what they do best: being a human. Building confidence, creating connection, and addressing nuanced student concerns.
5. Marketing & Recruitment Infrastructure: Ensuring Scalability and Efficiency
As online programs scale, institutions must ensure that their marketing and recruitment infrastructure can handle the increased volume of prospective students. This includes assessing systems such as CRM, telephony, SMS, and email systems, ensuring that they are fully integrated and capable of supporting personalized outreach while still being scalable.
Institutions should also evaluate their internal staffing structure to ensure the right mix of roles and responsibilities—from marketing automation specialists to student success coaches. Partnering with third-party service providers for overflow or specialized services can be a cost-effective way to remain nimble and competitive during periods of rapid growth.
A robust, well-integrated infrastructure allows institutions to manage larger volumes of inquiries and recruitment efforts, ensuring they maintain high-touch engagement with all types of students even as they scale.
AI Boost: AI tools can support lead scoring, email timing optimization, and audience segmentation. These systems are most effective when paired with human creativity and messaging judgment.
6. Program Design & Teaching Online: Meeting the Needs of Distance Learners
Online programs must be designed to meet the unique needs of distance learners, who often require more flexibility, interactive learning, and personalized support. The most transformative online programs leverage the unique aspects of a digital environment, rather than attempting to replicate traditional classroom experiences.
We are strong believers that online pedagogy should be grounded in learning science and instructional design best practices, including modular content, multimedia engagement, formative assessments, and collaborative tools. Faculty should be trained not just on technology use, but on creating inclusive, community-driven digital spaces that sustain student motivation and participation.
Institutions should review the design of their online programs so they are not only academically rigorous but structured in ways unique to online instruction. Thinking ahead, this also means investing in training and support for faculty who lead online instruction.
AI Boost: Faculty can use AI as a virtual TA to support classroom instruction. AI can assist in generating adaptive assessments, suggesting supplemental content, or flagging engagement risks in LMS platforms.
Scale Your Online Programs With Carnegie
The prevalence and demand for online programs will continue to grow. The schools that succeed in this space will be those that treat online education like the powerful and unique offering that it is. Celebrating and optimizing around what’s great about online learning rather than making up for what it lacks.
By implementing a more holistic and agile approach—rooted in ongoing assessment, human insight, and selective AI support—schools can ensure their online strategy evolves alongside student expectations and market trends.
Looking for a partner to help you build or expand your current online offerings? Carnegie offers a flexible partnership model that will transform your institution’s approach to online growth. Reach out and start a conversation.