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Can summer be over already? Much of what I read this week seemed to be speaking directly to my tendencies to overthink and procrastinate. The three reports I have chosen to highlight this week cover very different subjects: online learning, AI preparation, and worker retraining. Together, they ask what happens after institutions and policymakers identify something as a priority. Online units need authority and resources, students need structured opportunities to prepare for AI, and effective retraining requires far more than a curriculum. Across all three, the promise is easier to articulate than the operating model needed to deliver it.

UPCEA’s annual Benchmarking Online Enterprises report examines how institutions organize, fund, and staff their online operations. The small sample limits the conclusions we can draw, but the responses reveal an important organizational tension. Institutions increasingly treat online learning as strategically important while constraining the authority, resources, and institutional reach of the units expected to deliver it.

The findings require caution. Although 169 people began the survey, only 62 completed it, and some financial measures rely on fewer than 40 responses. The respondents are also disproportionately drawn from large and research-intensive institutions. I therefore treat the results as signals from participating online leaders rather than representative estimates of the sector.

Online learning is persistently presented as an entrepreneurial engine for the institution. I see it in the many online strategic plans and new program proposals I read: online programs are expected to attract new populations of students and generate new revenue.

In the survey results, I was struck by the disjuncture between the entrepreneurial expectations placed on online units and the institutional arrangements under which many operate. General institutional funds are the most common primary financial model, reported by 39% of respondents. Only 17% use a revenue-sharing model, while 11% report a revenue-dependent entrepreneurial model.

Moreover, 74% report having no separate startup fund for launching and incubating new programs. Only 42% report being able to carry forward operating reserves or year-end balances. Approximately one-third cannot, while the remainder say that it depends or that they are unsure. Even that uncertainty suggests that these are not always stable, clearly understood operating rights.