Why Most New Online Degree Programs Fail (and How to Launch One Right) | Gjergj Dollani

Gjergj Dollani: welcome to the newest episode of the Enrollment Clinic. So today, I decided to cover how to start an online program. what are some of the things that I would look into if I were to start a program from scratch? and the reason why I chose this topic is this because there's so many parallels to Business, it's but because of the environment of higher education and how enrollment marketing sits in the institution and the relationship that these two departments have with the programming departments, which are, for example, your history department or your business department A lot of times, unlike business, where marketing tends to drive the discussion in higher ed institutions, a lot of these decisions are actually driven outside of marketing and outside of enrollment, So, think about how many times. as a admissions, enrollment professional director, VP, how many times you've been in a meeting where the dean of a certain department says, we don't have an online program for I don't know, AI. And we need to have a an AI online program because I've seen, this five other competitors of ours Have the AI program. So we need to start one, And then everybody starts, gets together and starts setting that up. or they come to you, as the marketing or enrollment manager or director, and they say, listen, everything is ready. We can do it online. We're currently teaching it online to our current students. they're taking it as a as just an online class. We should open it up so we can have. specifically online enrollment to everybody, and just open it outside of on campus and we need you to get this done. So a lot of times like a lot of the programs that we're pushing are programs that almost like products that have been handed down to us and said, here, this is a good idea, you should sell it. Right. And what I would do ideally in an ideal world, what you want to do is actually you want to start completely backwards. there are five or six steps that you want to take before you even decide this a certain program is a good program to start or not. Right. So like the first thing, and this is this is really how Consumer packaged goods products run, the first thing they do before they decide, I have a great idea to launch a product is they identify if there's a market or not for the product, So you start with validating the market. and when you validate the market, a lot of times, and this is that happens in business all the time. You look at this blue ocean out there, and blue ocean means there's no other competitors, And then the natural progression is let's just dive in there, let's own that space. But you have to ask yourself a question: Is it a blue ocean? Because you're the first one to discover it? Or is it a blue ocean because people have gone there, have not succeeded, and it's not an area that really works, And more often than not, it's the second, so you have to go there and validate the market. And the way you do it, you actually start with what type of jobs are there that are available? What is the need there? And then start working backwards into okay, what type of curriculum do we need to provide prospective students so they all they're able to fill these jobs that are going to be in high demand? In the next two, three, four, five, ten years, So you start there first. And then you look at, who are the employers that are recruiting there. You're going to look at what are the salaries. You're going to look at, what's the growth rate of these specific positions, not just as a as a whole in the country, but also look at it from a perspective of in your specific area, if you're in Idaho and you're in Boise, let's say, you have to look at that specific market around there. You're not going to look at, okay, well, there's a lot of need for AI jobs in Texas and California, so let's just prepare students here in Idaho to go and work over there, That's you might be faced with a lot of competition there that's closer to those jobs than you are, and then you have to look at your competition. how many programs are there that are making the same promises, providing the same structure, the same type of curriculum that you are offering? MBA for example is one of those programs where everybody is it's just so tough to compete, online with an MBA program because Obviously there's a lot of money being thrown into it. The keywords are becoming very expensive. and everybody's fighting for even the small geographical zip codes. so you have national competitors that are fighting with very small competitors, So you want to also figure out with your competitor from a pricing standpoint, What's the tuition? What type of discounts are they're offering? And also what is the why for each one of them? Like why are students specifically using, any one of these competitors? So you have to start here because this is the mistake that many institutions do. They just go straight with like, hey, we have the product ready. Let's now go find the market. And what happens is most more often than not. It will take so much time to find a product market fit. they're going to be spending a lot of money on advertising, a lot of money trying to really get who the ideal student is that fits the mission of the institution. And that might take years or it may never happen. and at the end of the day, that's just, good money that's thrown after bad. Right. The next thing is once you identify what the market is, once you identify y who the competitors are and what type of jobs you're posi you're looking to fill, Or what type of need you're looking to fill with the program that you're launching. Now you have to start looking at the funnel, So you have to identify, again, working backwards for the entire steps of the funnel. And adult students are very different than traditional undergrad students, online adult students, different need, different type of market. and the decision is also very different. So for example, and again, there's so much information out there on this, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but the decision making part of from an undergraduate standpoint starts, three years before they even go to school, So you have a longer time To work with these students before they actually enroll in your classes. Whereas the average adult student takes within, three to six months to make a decision from the point that they have this awakening of I need to complete these, my degree, or I need to get a master's, or I need to get a certificate. The timeline is very short and depends on the student as well. Like if you have a student, for example, who's just Try and take advantage of a promotion that's coming down the bike in a very short amount of time. That person is going to start looking for certificate programs that will finish in a very short amount of time, or a master's program that is, quick, so they can take advantage of that promotion that's coming down the bike, whether it's in six months from now or a year from now, whereas you also have, prospective students who are Completing credits, they have a little bit more time, They're still trying to figure out, does it fit with their schedule? they have families, they have jobs, what type of time commitment, what type of golar commitment it's going to take. So you have to work the funnel backwards. You have to first identify, okay, how many students do I need to actually make this viable from a PL perspective? how much does it cost to run the program? How much does it cost, materials, whatever, professor, things like that. And then work backwards and say, okay, in order for me to have a program that makes sense, I have to have at least 10 students, And then if you've never run online programs before in your institution, I guess the easiest thing to do is just look at your funnel metrics for as an institution. But you also want to compare with funnel metrics from an from a from a nationwide online perspective. There's tons of research out there that's done by a lot of third parties on funnel metrics. So you may not find the ideal one, but as a as an old boss of mine in CPG used to say, would rather have some direction than have no direction at all. So you want to use those metrics and work backwards. know how many starts do I need that means how many deposits would I need to get the starts how many admits do I need to have how many applications that are completed do I need to have so the funnel goes bigger how many applications total do I need to have and then from that is how many leads from an impression standpoint at the at the top of the funnel, So you kinda have to work backwards and then obviously the first cohort is going to be a trial run and then you're going to dial up those metrics and the cost specifically but you have to have you have to have a limit in terms of how much are you willing to pay for a lead how much are you willing to pay for an application and cost per start, things like that. because it's very easy to and it happens a lot for institutions to lose sight that and end up paying, at times of seeing ten thousand dollars, thirteen thousand dollars for a start when the average could be, four or five thousand dollars, Something like that. So you do you don't want to overpay for any at any point or any part of this funnel. once you've identified the market, once you identified the funnel and the metrics and you have an idea, okay, what do I need, from top of the funnel to get to the bottom of the funnel, then you have to build an operation. And many institutions leave this out. they feel like the admissions staff they have on hand is capable of handling these types of leads and these types of applications. the main difference between on campus and online is speed delete. there's a statistic out there that I've read recently that If a student or a prospective student has three universities in mind, they are roughly about 65% more likely to go with the institution that calls them first, even if that is not their first choice, So that's why you have universities like Southern New Hampshire or Maryland Global Campus, where their entire operation is built on. Calling the prospect the moment that name or phone number comes up. And I've tested this as well. I've signed up for some of these, secret shops, some of these universities just to identify this for myself and I think that's the biggest deciding factor on whether you're going to pursue a university or not, It's how fast they get to you. Because at the end of the day. for a lot of the students the choice is not necessarily just brand the choice is the choice is already made right there's a recent research out there that said that roughly about sixty percent of all adult students only have one or two universities in their choice list that's it right so if they're calling you you're Definitely one of their top ones, one either the only one or one of the two, So you want to make sure that you call them back. But in order for that to happen, you need to have staff, That's specifically dedicated to handling online students. You need to have an admissions and not just a call center, but an admissions person who specifically measured on online enrollment and online. students. This is where the institutions that do a great job separate themselves from the ones that are struggling, Because their operation is specifically built to support this new channel. once you've identified the market, built the funnel, and then set up the operation, is just remove as much friction as possible from the online process. you one of the things to keep in mind is like remember who the end user is here or the prospective student is here. These students are working. they're not only have the job, many of them have families or they have elderly parents they're taking care of and, besides the kids. So the last thing they want is to keep chasing Different requirements from the application process. and I know this is hard, because there are many institutions who have a very robust application process in terms of the requirements from recommendation letters to essays to letters from the employer or if the employer is sponsoring, or they have they need references there's just so many requirements there, official transcripts, obviously. I think it's very important to decide which ones of these requirements do we have because it's something that we've always done with traditional students. and which ones are requirements where we really need to have, because what happens is most of the students don't have the time, it will take probably a month for them to get recommendation letters. a lot of the essays, you run into the issue of did they use AI, did they not use AI, and how that's being done. Official transcripts is also another thing. They have to some of them may have not been in school for 20 years. So now they have to go chase down the school they went to, and whether it's a bachelor a high school or something like that, and chase those official transcripts, so they can send them to you, So first of all, the timelines are very sh very small, Because many schools, for example, have only five week cohorts, So The next one is starting, the next one is starting. And what happens is the student misses the window. Now she's got to wait another month and a half. and as if they're spending time chasing these requirements, to getting to actually pay and sit in class. Right. So the question is, and you don't have these things don't have to be done right away, but figure out if you can remove one, figure out if you can remove two. in at a university that I was working at, that was one of the issues that we noticed was happening. A lot of students were not completing the application, or were delaying it, were sending it, but actually when not sending it complete, because of all of the requirements that we had, the recommendation letters, the essays. So what we decided to do is just every cohort we would remove one and see what that would do to the quality. of the application. And what we noticed? We removed all the recommendational letters, we removed the essays, and nothing changed. or the change was minimal in terms of the quality of the students, and the percentage of the yield that we were able to get. Or so it was a no-brainer for us to keep that going. Now that may not work for every institution. I mean it depends on the brand right depends on the program but it but it's definitely worth figuring out ways to remove friction. And there's a tricky part here in the application process and this sneaks up on a lot of people that admitted does not necessarily mean enrolled, there's a big gap between the admissions letter and the first date of class. financial aid is a big one, where a lot of especially adult learners just drop off because they can't afford it, registration, figuring out the learning platform, orientation. So there there's just so many things that are requested or required of the prospective students from the moment they get that admissions letter to actually sitting in class, that they need a lot of hand holding. And this is the part Where I think many institutions just drop the ball. They just assume, okay, well, it's admitted, they've they just deposited, so now it's a done deal, But the question, the number one question that students have, Am I going to get supported? As I ramp up, I haven't been in school in such a long time, am I going to be able to not only to support the course load, but also understand the tech that's required to do all this online, So, and that's where a university can do a better job at supporting students so that they decrease the amount of melt, And finally, once you've got all of these. stages down, as I'll go back and say, once you've got the market down, once you've got the program down, once you've got the operations part of it down, once you got the admissions part of it down, then the next stage is basically just the first year, the first cohort is really a testing year. What you're doing there is you are establishing KPIs that work for your institution, And you're trying to figure out also it gives you a little bit of a runway to understand who is this the prospective student that actually ended up enrolling and ended up staying, and which ones are the ones that were stuck in the funnel, and how do we get that friction removed so that we can get more. students to apply to attend and also matriculate in the program. So that's basically the five steps that I would put together I think are the main ones. And again every institution is different every program development is different but generally they follow this types of structure. So, find out what everybody wants, do the math backwards, build the team that answers the phone immediately and gets to the phone as soon as it's done. and then just clear the path. Just remove all the frac all the friction so students can finally be able to attend the schools they want. it's not it's not flashy, It's a lot of it is common sense. but in my experience, the programs that get it right are not the ones that have the best launch campaign, Like you can throw a lot of money at program and still keep, losing prospective students, losing applications and you can throw good money after bad because what needs to happen is not necessarily a great launch campaign. What needs to happen is to have a really robust system that is frictionless from prospect to start, And that's what makes a great institution or an institution work well. So One actionable plan you can you can do just right away is you can do this week. Just pick a program, pick one that you're about to launch, or one that's been struggling, take a piece of paper and just ride the funnel backwards, from the number of students you want to starting all the way down to the inquiries you need. And if the numbers don't add up, good. you just found something to talk to your leadership about. or your marketing team. it's also important the marketing team, admissions team, and the product development team work together