7 Trends to Inform Online Program Expansion in 2025

As I reviewed the new IPEDS data release last week, I was looking for the data and intelligence that would be most helpful for online enrollment leaders to have in hand to underpin and inform this year’s success. These points, in combination with key trends that became clear in other sources I reviewed late last year will enable online leaders to succeed this year as well as plan for the future.

Note that I am not discussing changes that may emerge after January 20, but I will be doing so after a long talk I have scheduled with Cheryl Dowd from WCET who tracks online regulations and with whom I will be co-presenting at the RNL National Conference this summer.

So, what do you need to know:

1. Online and partially online enrollment continue to dominate growth.

Four years after the pandemic, more students each year are continuing to decide to enroll in either fully or partially online study. While year-over-year change in every post-pandemic year has seen some “return to the classroom,” when compared with pre-pandemic enrollment (2019), 2.3 million more undergraduates and 450k more graduate students are choosing fully or partially online study. Perhaps more important, 3.2 million fewer undergraduates and 288k fewer graduate students are choosing classroom-only programs. Institutions seeking to grow enrollment must develop processes to quickly determine the best online programs to offer and get them “to market” within 12 months.

2. Institutions seeking to grow online enrollment are now competing with non-profit institutions.

As recently as five years ago, your strongest competition came from for-profit institutions. In some ways, these institutions were easy to beat (excepting their huge marketing budgets). They had taken a beating in the press to the extent that students knew about it, and they were far away and unknown. Today, institutions face no less of a competitive environment, but the institutions dominating the scene – and most likely a students’ search results – are national non-profits. These institutions are, of course, not local so they aren’t well known, but they have not been through the scrutiny which eroded interest in the for-profits. Student search engine results are also now filled with ambitious public and private institutions seeking to “diversity their revenue streams.” As such, institutional marketers need to adjust their strategies focused on successfully positioning their programs in a crowded market, knowing that they can “win” the student over the national online providers if they ensure that they rise to the top of search results.

3. Online enrollment growth is being led by non-profit institutions.

Seventeen of the 20 institutions reporting the greatest growth in online enrollment over the last five years are nonprofit institutions—a mix of ambitious public and private institutions and national non-profits. What is more, the total growth among institutions after the two behemoths far exceeds Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors University. These nimble and dynamic institutions include a variety of institution types (with community colleges well represented) across the higher education sector. Institutions seeking to grow online enrollment should research what these institutions are offering and how they are positioning their programs in the market and emulate some of their best practices.

4. New graduate program growth is dominated by online/partially online offerings.

In 2024, a research study by Robert Kelchen documented growth in the number of available master’s programs in the U.S. over the last 15 years. Not only did Kelchen document a massive expansion in availability (over the 15-year period, institutions launched nearly 14,000 new master’s programs on a base of about 20,000), but also that the pace of launching online or hybrid programs dramatically outpaces classroom programs. This rise in available offerings far outpaces the rate of growth of the online student market, resulting in significantly higher levels of competition for each online student. Institutions seeking to grow their online footprint must ensure that they fully understand both the specific demand dynamics for each of their programs and the specifics of what online students want in their program. A mismatch on either factor will inhibit growth.

5. Online success is breeding scrutiny of outcomes.

We all know something of the power of social media today. This was reinforced for me recently by an Inside Higher Education story which focused on the 8-year rates of degree completion among the biggest online providers. The story was triggered by a widely read Linked IN post and followed up by numerous other stories and posts and comments across the platform. This is just the kind of exposure that is most likely to generate real scrutiny of the outcomes of online learning – which were already taking shape over the last year or more. In fact, this focus on outcomes ended up as one of the unfulfilled priorities of the Biden Education Department. I have long said that institutions seeking to enter the online space have an opportunity to tackle some of the quality issues that first plagued the for-profits, now challenge the national online non-profits, and will confront others if not addressed soon.

6. Key preferences for online study have been changed by the pandemic.

RNL’s own 2024 online student survey surfaced dozens of important findings that online leaders should consider as they chart their course. Two findings stand out as reflecting profound changes in online student preferences, and both are likely the result of pandemic-era experiences. First, all but 11 percent of online students told us that they are open to at least some synchronous activities in their program, likely the result of hundreds of online meetings during the pandemic. Similarly, they told us that the ideal time to communicate with recruiters/counselors from online programs is now during business hours. This is also likely to be related to the pandemic period, in which millions of people working from home began to regularly contend with some personal business during their day. Institutions should assess both of these factors as they think through student engagement (to address point #5), and the intense competition of the online space (to address point #3).

7. Contracting institutions are not focusing on online enrollment.

Finally, we return to the new IPEDS data to see that institutions that have experienced the greatest enrollment contraction over the last five years demonstrate almost no access to fully online study (dark blue lines in the chart below), and only limited access to programs in which students can enroll in both online and classroom courses (light blue lines). Even where there has been some online or partially online growth, these efforts have not been given adequate attention to counterbalance contraction among students enrolled in classroom-only programs (green lines). These data again make it clear (as stated in point #1) that institutions facing classroom-only contraction must either amend their goals to account for reduced enrollment or determine which online or hybrid programs would be most attractive to students in their region and then ensure that such offerings are visible in a highly competitive higher education market.

Explore more at our webinar

Join us for a deeper dive into trends during our webinar, 5 Enrollment Trends You Need to Know for 2025. This discussion with me and a number of my RNL expert colleagues will look at research and trends that should shape strategic and tactical planning over the next 12 months. Particularly, as we enter what has been identified as the first year of the “demographic cliff,” data-informed decision-making will be more important to enrollment health than ever before. Register now.