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When it comes to EdTech news, it always seems to be either a boom or a bust. There’s either an overwhelming flood of updates or barely anything at all. I wish the industry would pace itself a bit to make life easier for newsletter writers!
This week was one of the quieter ones, but let’s see what I did read.
The modern condition of learners
Education Dynamics recently released its Engaging the Modern Learner: 2025 report, which explores the preferences and behaviors shaping higher education. While the survey includes students intending to enroll in on-campus as well as online programs, it continues to provide valuable data on online learners and insights relevant to them. The findings include comparisons with data from the Online College Students Report, which Carol Aslanian first launched 13 years ago.
The report captures student preferences with an alliterative summary: cost, convenience, and career. While it digs into each of these factors, one of the more striking insights is the shift in how students search for programs. Over the past decade, there has been a notable move toward prioritizing institutional brand over individual programs or fields of study when choosing where to enroll.
In 2015, 13% of fully online respondents indicated that they would initially search for the institution of interest. Just over 60% of fully online students in 2015 sought the program of interest initially, while 25% sought the school and subject information at the same time. However, in 2025, about 60% of online learners sought schools first. This was followed by subjects (in a binary choice.) A school’s brand and reputation has become increasingly important and indicates that Modern Learners are more aware of schools than they were just 10 years ago.
I wonder how much of this shift is due to the inclusion of students intending to study on-campus. In those cases, institutional reputation and location are likely to be key factors. This may explain some of the difference, but probably not all. Institutional brand has become more important now than in the past.
Another interesting takeaway from the report, and one that appears consistently throughout, is how non-traditional undergraduates increasingly resemble graduate students in their behaviors and decision-making, rather than traditional undergraduates.
One area where I question the report’s findings is students' ability to find information on institutional websites. My skepticism is more about the degree of difficulty rather than the nature of the issue itself. I think the report paints an overly optimistic picture of students’ ability to navigate these sites. Having spent over forty years engaged with higher education in various capacities, I frequently struggle to find even basic details about programs, formats, and costs. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong on that.
