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It’s been a heck of a week. On top of everything else, I’m trying to wrap things up before I head to Edinburgh for MoodleMoot Global 2025. If you’ll be there and want to chat, I’d love to connect.
But beyond bracing for as many Scotch pies as I can manage in five days, what did I read?
Quality metrics or brand reality?
I’ve continued tracking announcements of enrollment gains at U.S. institutions. My focus is online enrollment, though I’m watching overall numbers too. The good news keeps coming for some campuses, for example, Belhaven University reported enrollment growth this year.
Belhaven University's enrollment is up this year compared to 2024, adding to the growth in the past five years.
Total enrollment for fall 2025 has not quite settled, but [snip] the number is approximately 4,500, or a little more. [snip]
Belhaven's enrollment has been growing in the past five years. Since 2021,
[snip]
Along with the approximately 1,050 traditional students, the university has approximately 1,200 online undergraduate students and approximately 1,400 online graduate and doctoral program students.
My sense had been that the good, or at least not terrible, news was spread across a range of institutions. It isn’t. A new AEI report by Preston Cooper shows that “higher-quality” institutions are doing far better on enrollment than those with weaker metrics. This pattern isn’t new.
Cooper defines “quality” using four College Scorecard metrics:
