At RNL’s recent Graduate and Online Innovation Summit, I had the chance to sit down with Stephen Drew, RNL’s Chief AI Officer, for a wide-ranging conversation on how AI is going to change how we do and what we do in higher education. Steve and RNL’s AI development team are hard at work getting ready to launch RNL’s first AI-driven solutions in May of this year, but he was happy to sit down to cover topics ranging from the highest level like “What is AI?” to “Why won’t we solve today’s challenges without AI?” (a question that Steve astutely reframed for me) and on to “How does AI help instituti ..read more

Pipeline. Inclusivity. Omnichannel. Give-to-Get. Collective Impact. HENRYs. When it comes to analysis of donors by generation, the nonprofit blogosphere is full of flashy buzzwords, with many consultants and organizations offering their take on a “quick fix” for reaching and retaining the youngest alumni donors. The supposedly elusive “Gen Z” donors have been labeled difficult to recruit (and even more difficult to retain), disconnected, untrusting, and incentive-seeking. Some of the proposed “magic solutions” for engaging this new generation of donors and fundraisers seeks to combat or avoid ..read more

Read the report This blog was written by Howard Heevner, a fundraising leader for more than two decades, serving in key giving roles at institutions including the University of Iowa, Penn State, The University of Michigan, DePaul University, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Howard currently serves as executive director of annual programs at the University of California, Berkeley, a leadership role he has held since 2019. It was a pleasure to collaborate with Howard and 15 institutions participating in the RNL 2024 National Alumni Survey project. RNL has just released the results o ..read more

At RNL’s recent Graduate and Online Innovation Summit, I had the chance to sit down with Stephen Drew, RNL’s Chief AI Officer, for a wide-ranging conversation on how AI is going to change how we do and what we do in higher education. Steve and RNL’s AI development team are hard at work getting ready to launch RNL’s first AI-driven solutions in May of this year, but he was happy to sit down to cover topics ranging from the highest level like “What is AI?” to “Why won’t we solve today’s challenges without AI?” (a question that Steve astutely reframed for me) and on to “How does AI help instituti ..read more

Graduate students face many challenges with work-life balance. In the pursuit of knowledge, students enrolled in higher education often find their educational path intersects with the pressures of performance. Amidst the excitement of discovery and the pursuit of scholarly excellence, they tend to focus on keeping up on coursework, maintaining their relationships, and attending to their work, all while disregarding their own personal needs. Graduate students are the cohort often overlooked in the increasingly prevalent conversation on mental health and well-being. As a current student in pursu ..read more

Over the years, I have consulted with dozens of institutions that, in understanding the market dynamics of our time, began the process of expanding their online offerings. The key challenge for many schools has been not just a lack of bandwidth, but also not having the in-house expertise needed to create, manage, market for, recruit, and enroll students in online programs. Some decided to invest in their internal capabilities, but many more chose to offload all or some of this work to an online program management provider (OPM). Market forces disrupting OPMs As online education has moved from ..read more

The 2024 RNLNC will feature more than 100 sessions across 7 tracks. If you haven’t registered for the RNL National Conference in Dallas (July 23-25), do so now! We have just finalized our graduate and online track, and it is chock full of sessions that will help you maintain your momentum and keep up with the latest trends and tactics regarding: student preferences and their impact on institutional success; the application of AI to processes and policies; best practices in enrollment expansion and optimization and much more. We have 25 sessions planned for the Graduate and Online Enrollment tr ..read more

RNL graduate student data helps institutions better target graduate students Cost and flexible program options are two of the biggest enrollment factors. Do you know why your graduate students choose to enroll at your institution?  Understanding why your students select the institutions in which they enroll can help you to refine your messaging to focus on the things most important in graduate student enrollment decisions as well as ensuring alignment in your recruitment process. Knowing why students make the decisions they do can guide you toward refinements to their experiences as enrol ..read more

This blog was co-written by Jessica Ickes, Vice President for Market and Research Services Crucial questions to ask to harness market needs Developing new academic programs and innovating within ones to meet evolving external market demand is critical but can be a daunting challenge for many colleges and universities. It may be overwhelming to consider where to begin with understanding what appeals to students and assessing the needs of the labor market. Depending upon your college or university sector, institutional culture, and established governance and planning processes, the intentional u ..read more

Co-written by Dan Preston, Senior Consultant Nearly 140,000 students from the RNL Student Satisfaction Inventory across three academic years, and over 20,000 families from the CampusESP/RNL University Family Engagement Report were asked a series of questions regarding their satisfaction level with a variety of finance, financial aid, pricing, and communication and information surrounding these topics. A few demographics about the families: 65% reported household incomes of $100,000 or greater; 80% of parents responding were born between 1965-1980; Two-thirds of their students attend institut ..read more