Interesting Reads This Week

Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Sign up, and get your own copy of the news that matters sent to your inbox every week. Sign up for the On EdTech newsletter. Interested in additional analysis? Try with our 30-day free trial and Upgrade to the On EdTech+ newsletter.

So many higher education decisions are being driven by budget concerns and worries about student debt, so it's not surprising that my inbox was flooded with economics-focused articles this week. What did I read, and what did I find interesting?

Inquiring minds

I'm far from a higher education marketing expert, but I believe understanding marketing is crucial for grasping online learning market dynamics. So, I consume as much online education marketing content as possible. Much of it, honestly, is poor quality. I swear there are 1,000 online learning marketing podcasts and with most of them I seem to know less at the end of an episode than I do at the start. Still, I pounce on any new insights that come my way.

Search Influence and UPCEA recently released a report on higher education marketing metrics. The two organizations surveyed professionals in continuing and online education about their marketing measurement practices, and the results are fascinating.

A minority of institutions are tracking the cost of inquiries and enrollments.

For those who do track the costs it averages out at $140 but the range is $29.03 to $450.

There’s some interesting information in the survey, but a couple of caveats are in order.

• It’s less a survey than a gathering of illustrative information. With only 96 respondents, and just 44 completing the entire survey, the sample size is tiny. I know size isn’t everything, but this data should be considered illustrative rather than definitive.

• The fact that most respondents don’t track costs per inquiry or enrollment is surprising. This might indicate a bias in the types of people who typically answer surveys. As you may recall, I covered the UPCEA State of Continuing Education 2024 Report in March, which found that a majority of respondents were uncertain about their enrollment numbers. It’s possible that the marketing survey respondents were heavily drawn from professional and continuing education, which tends to be both distributed (making centralized metrics difficult) and perhaps less data-driven.

Of time, tuition, and borrowing

There's a new and interesting paper by Adam Looney examining the changes in college tuition costs and borrowing over time. He finds that while the listed or "sticker price" of college has more than doubled since 1993, the actual cost to students has remained relatively flat when considering increased financial aid and tax benefits.

But increases have been stronger among private institutions, rather than among publics.

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.