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Regional Public Institutions (RPUs) are under increasing enrollment pressure, even as other parts of the public sector continue to grow. Online learning is often seen as a bright spot. As a group, RPUs have expanded their online enrollments—particularly at the graduate level—suggesting that online education may help offset broader declines.

But that story looks different once we shift from overall to the markets where RPUs actually operate. RPUs are, by design, state-based institutions. And despite the perception of online education as a national market, much of online enrollment remains local or regional.So rather than asking whether RPUs are growing online, the more relevant question is: What does their position look like within state-level markets?

Using data from Phil’s Hidden Geography of Online Learning project, I examined fully online enrollments across states. What emerges is a more complicated picture: RPUs are often competing in markets where they are not the dominant players—and in many cases, not the strongest ones.

Methodological note: First, his analysis uses Phil’s analysis which uses data on fully online enrollments, and so excludes students taking a mix of online and on-campus courses. That is an important issue, and one where RPUs likely would shine, but we must defer that to another day. Second, defining RPUs is not straightforward—there is no single agreed-upon category—so I use from the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC). While imperfect, this approach provides a consistent basis for examining RPU positioning across states.

Just over a year ago, Phil wrote about Diverging Fortunes in Public 4-year Institutions. He was responding to a report from the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC), but extended the analysis to show how enrollment in RPUs was diverging sharply from non-RPUs.

Phil did find a bright spot in enrollment trends. RPUs have been far more aggressive than non RPUs in growing online enrollments, particularly in the graduate space.

But this is aggregate data, and RPUs are typically state-focused. Additionally, while this is shifting, much of online learning remains local. What does fully online enrollment in RPUs look like at the state level?

Phil’s Hidden Geography project, which looked at fully online enrollment by state, gave me an opportunity to explore this. What emerges are three different types of RPU positioning in state markets for online learning.

It is not easy to do a 1:1 comparison across institution types, as there are different numbers of institutions, but ratios tell us a lot about market strength regardless. My analysis looks at all RPU, community college, private, and other public enrollments—not just those shown on the Sankey charts—but the charts continue to provide excellent illustrations of market structure.

Looking across states, three patterns emerge in how RPUs are positioned in online markets:

In some states, RPUs are significant players in fully online enrollments. States such as Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Idaho fall into this category. In these markets, RPUs capture a meaningful share of in-state online students and compete directly with both community colleges and national providers.

But “competitive” does not mean dominant. Even in their strongest markets, RPUs rarely control the online landscape. Instead, they operate as one of several major players in a system where community colleges often anchor access and scale, and where national providers maintain a steady presence. In Texas and Georgia, for example, the scale of the RPU sector contributes to their visibility, but these states also have large and active community college systems and a wide range of other institutional actors.

We might expect RPUs to play a strong role in states like Texas and Georgia, given their scale. But even in smaller systems, such as Arkansas, with only eight RPUs, they can still emerge as major providers—suggesting that scale alone does not determine their position.

What this means is that RPUs are not shaping the market so much as participating in it. They are able to attract students, sometimes at significant scale, but they do not have a structural advantage that allows them to dominate in-state online enrollments.

Even in their strongest markets, RPUs are not setting the terms of competition. They are operating within systems shaped by other actors—particularly community colleges—and competing for share rather than defining the market itself.

If this is what the strongest RPU markets look like, other states reveal a very different reality.

If the competitive states show the upper bound of RPU success in online markets, other states reveal a very different reality. In some states, RPUs are simply not meaningful players in fully online enrollments. The most striking example is California, where RPUs—primarily the Cal State system—are largely absent from the in-state online enrollment landscape. Due to California not participating in SARA, I cannot show the data the same way, but note that apart from National University, all others in the Top 12 list are community colleges.

What is notable is not just that RPUs are weak in these states, but that other sectors are filling the space. In many cases, community colleges dominate by aligning closely with workforce needs and price sensitivity, while national and private providers capture demand for scale or specialization, as we see in Iowa.

These are not isolated cases. States such as Mississippi, North Carolina, and Michigan show similar patterns, albeit to varying degrees. In these markets, RPUs are present but capture only a small share of fully online students, often trailing far behind other sectors. In these states, RPUs are not simply losing share—they are ceding their traditional role within the state’s higher education ecosystem, and it will become increasingly difficult to re-establish that role in a competitive online market that is becoming increasingly mandatory.

If the competitive states represent the upper bound of RPU success, and the minimal states show where RPUs are largely absent, the most common pattern falls somewhere in between.

In many states, RPUs are neither dominant nor missing. Instead, they are one competitor among several in highly contested markets. States such as Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York illustrate this pattern. In these markets, RPUs are present and often enroll substantial numbers of online students—but they do not appear to have a clear advantage over other sectors. New York is a particularly striking example of this type of market, made more surprising by the large number of RPUs in the state.

What distinguishes these states is not just the number of competitors, but the nature of the competition. RPUs are competing across multiple dimensions simultaneously. National providers bring scale, brand recognition, and significant marketing capacity. Community colleges offer lower-cost, locally-oriented programs that align closely with workforce needs. Private institutions often occupy niche positions, whether through mission, modality, or program specialization.

The result is a form of structural competition in which RPUs are squeezed from multiple directions. They are not simply competing for share within a single market segment—they are operating in an environment where different types of institutions are better positioned to meet different aspects of student demand. RPUs are competing, but on terrain defined by others.

This helps explain why RPUs often struggle to establish a strong position in these markets. Their traditional strengths—regional identity, access mission, and broad program offerings—do not translate as directly into advantages in fully online education, where scale, cost, and specialization play a larger role than they do on-campus.

In these states, online education has not created a new avenue of growth for RPUs so much as placed them into a more competitive and structurally complex market—one in which they are rarely the dominant actor.

Across these different state contexts, one pattern is clear: RPUs have entered online markets, but they are rarely the institutions shaping them.

Taken together, these patterns point to a different way of understanding the challenge facing RPUs. The variation across states suggests that the challenge is not simply one of adoption. It is one of position.

The key question is increasingly not whether institutions should move online; it is where they sit within the markets they enter. RPUs (at least outside of California) have clearly embraced online education. But as the state-level data shows, simply offering online programs does not confer advantage. In many cases, RPUs are entering markets where other providers—community colleges, national institutions, and privates—are already better positioned to compete.

A modality shift is not a strategy (expect to hear more about this from me in the coming weeks). It does not, on its own, change an institution’s competitive position.

Much of the discussion around online education assumes that the primary competition comes from national providers. In some states that is true, but Phil’s Geography of Online Learning project shows that national providers constitute an important but thin overlay across what are fundamentally state-level markets. In most states, the more immediate competition is local. Community colleges, in particular, play a central role in shaping online markets, often dominating enrollments by combining lower cost, local access, and workforce alignment. Private institutions add another layer of competition through niche positioning and program specialization.

The result is that RPUs are not simply competing “up” against national brands. They are competing in multiple directions at once—and often against institutions whose strengths are more directly aligned with the needs of online students.

Online education is often framed as a way to transcend geography and expand reach. But in practice, it tends to reinforce underlying market structures. Institutions with scale, strong brand recognition, or clear cost advantages tend to benefit most. Those without these advantages often find themselves competing in more complex and fragmented markets.

For RPUs, this means that online is not a neutral expansion of opportunity. It is an environment that amplifies both strengths and weaknesses. In that sense, online education is less a growth strategy than a stress test—one that reveals how well institutions are positioned to compete beyond their traditional boundaries.

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