Higher Ed News & Whatnot: Business Plan for New Majors

A Business Plan for New Majors

If you are contemplating adding one or two new majors to your academic portfolio, answering key questions in four areas will dramatically increase the odds of new program success.

In this blog, we will present the first two sets of questions. Next week we will outline the remaining questions.

Strategic:

• Have we created a constellation of new programs and chosen the one or two that have:
  • The greatest chance of success?
  • Will help us advance our mission, vision, and strategic plan?
• Have we defined what success looks like for this new program? Enrollment? Revenue? Brand?
• Do we have a faculty champion who will live and breathe this program?
• Will the resources for this program draw resources away from other critical areas?¹
• Will this program be truly high-quality, or will it be marginalized because of scarce resources?
• What chances for collaboration with other organizations does this new program offer us?
• Will beginning this program allow us to cut another program that is in less demand or is no longer viable?
• Will this program lead graduates to high-paying jobs and thereby reduce the negative impact of cost and college debt?
• Will this program generate true excitement on campus and in the marketplace?
• In five years, will this program be a rising star or a problem child?²

Marketplace

• Could this be a signature program, something that attracts regional, or even national, attention?
• Is this program unique, or are similar programs offered by competitors?
• If this program is not unique, can we offer it in unique ways (aggressive internships, collaborations with other schools, co-branding, unique teaching and learning opportunities)?
• Will this program survive the Internet commoditization of programs?
• Have we tested interest in this program with:
  • Prospective students?
  • Employers?
  • Donors?
• Can we describe the benefits of this program quickly and easily?
• What absolutely solid, external data do we have that indicates this program is and will be a winner?

Commentary: The goal of these questions is to help you identify those programs that will help you improve your market position. Central to our thinking is the idea of competitive differentiation. The goal is to identify those programs in demand not offered by your competitors, and not to offer programs that make you look more like your competitors.

6 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2024

In January, Erica Julson of The Unconventional RD published a blog and video on what she views as emerging marketing trends. The six she identified were:

• Trend #1: Optimizing for SGE and AI platforms
• Trend #2: Diversifying beyond the publisher model
• Trend #3: The Rise of Social Media SEO?
• Trend #4: Email Marketing Becomes Popular Again
• Trend #5: Personalization and good user experience will matter more than ever
• Trend #6: More people will PAY for information they trust

Commentary: We are intrigued by trend #6, more people will pay for information they trust. At first blush, this didn’t seem like something that would hold true in the higher ed space. Or would it? While she was proposing the idea that people will pay money, we think that students will use a different currency: time. If students find content that is engaging, they will spend more time with it.

In the old days marketers focused on frequency and reach. The theory was that you needed to spend enough money to achieve a certain level of saturation to be noticed. In today’s marketplace, we call that noise. In other words, a frequency and reach mentality means that you are merely adding to the din instead of generating buzz.

As a marketer, your goal, instead, is engagement. This means you are shifting from an institutional focus to an audience focus and your content is less about you, and more about your audience.

An AI-generated note on Google reveals that engagement marketing is a strategic approach that aims to create meaningful interactions with customers and build brand loyalty. It involves understanding customers’ needs and preferences and then tailoring marketing efforts to meet those expectations. This approach recognizes that customers are active participants in the brand’s story, not just passive recipients of marketing messages.

Influencers in Higher Ed

In May, CMSWire published an article on marketing trends. One of the trends they noted was the continuing/growing importance of influencers and we wondered, logically, are there influencers in higher ed?

It didn’t take us long to realize that there are three distinct groups of influencers: current students, alumni, and faculty.

Many current students remain linked to key groups including their high schools and churches and other religious institutions. Alumni immediately exert influence (validation) largely through the jobs they landed and the grad schools they attended after graduation. Alumni remain influential. And finally, faculty.

Related reading: How to Know When a Program Has Run Its Course: Using Academic Program Assessments

1. We believe that it is important to create a constellation of new programs and then, using market research, decide which of the programs should be launched. ↩︎
2. Rising stars attract external resources like students, donors, and media attention. Problem children require institutional resources to stay afloat. ↩︎