Audience: Undergraduate

Higher education is navigating a complex landscape marked by shrinking budgets, intensified enrollment pressures, and a shifting political climate. Institutions are tasked with achieving more with fewer resources, making strategic Student Search more crucial than ever. It’s time to rethink traditional approaches and embrace adaptable, resource-efficient strategies.

Understanding how seasonality shapes the undergraduate enrollment funnel is critical to building effective enrollment marketing strategies in higher education. Each year, student behavior follows a predictable cycle aligned with academic calendars and application deadlines, driving shifts in search volume, intent, and conversion actions across the funnel. From early exploration in the fall to decision-making in the spring, these fluctuations signal when prospective students are researching, applying, or confirming their enrollment.

Not all enrollment marketing and student success partners are created equal. And in today’s higher education landscape, where expectations are high and the stakes even higher, choosing the right partner is one of the most important decisions an institution can make.

In today’s competitive higher education landscape, digital marketers are under more pressure than ever to prove ROI, track student journeys across multiple touchpoints, and make data-informed decisions. As browser privacy settings evolve and third-party cookies face increasing restrictions across various platforms, traditional tracking methods—like browser-based pixels—are becoming less reliable.

That’s where LinkedIn’s Conversions API (CAPI) comes in. For colleges and universities running LinkedIn ad campaigns, CAPI offers a powerful, privacy-conscious digital marketing strategy that bridges the data gap and boosts attribution accuracy.

Recently, Carnegie hosted a webinar with leaders of national higher education associations for a candid discussion about the demands of the moment and how leaders can navigate the uncertainty while fulfilling the mission of higher education. We opened the conversation to our attendees to ask questions directly to our hosts and panelists. Our panelists couldn’t get to all of the amazing, thoughtful questions posed during the event. We’ve compiled some of them here with answers from our hosts, Shankar Prasad and Emma Jones, as well as some of our favorite quotes from our panelists.

Last month, Carnegie’s Slate experts teamed up with Technolutions to host a Stump the Slate Squad webinar. With hundreds of institutions tuning in, the questions poured in—everything from quirky form logic to complex reporting challenges and student record edge cases.

We’re proud to announce that Carnegie won two 2025 Communicator Awards. Explore how we’re impacting higher ed marketing with creative design and storytelling.

The higher education landscape is shifting. Shrinking student populations, evolving expectations, and intense competition are forcing institutions to rethink their approach to attracting and enrolling students. The traditional methods of outreach and engagement are no longer enough.

The higher education landscape is shifting. Shrinking student populations, evolving expectations, and intense competition are forcing institutions to rethink their approach to attracting and enrolling students. The traditional methods of outreach and engagement are no longer enough.

As marketers, we’re used to abbreviations like CRM, CMS, CRO, and CTA; some of these are the bread and butter of what we do and how we do it. However, it’s easy to fall into a pattern with these concepts—to distance ourselves with abbreviations and routine, forgetting the true impact of their work.