2024 Master Class Series

New for 2024!

Stop navigating enrollment droughts and budget drains in the dark. Join Gray DI’s FREE Master Class and unleash data-informed insights to transform your academic portfolio.

What will you gain?

• Master the art of informed program decision-making: Ditch the gut-feeling guessing game and fuel growth with robust data analysis.
• Spot enrollment goldmines: Identify booming fields and unmet student needs to launch programs that attract and retain future leaders.
• Revive your existing offerings: Uncover hidden growth potential and optimize programs for maximum impact and student satisfaction.
• Navigate tough choices with confidence: Pinpoint struggling programs in declining markets and make strategic decisions about their future.
• Forge faculty-admin unity: Build consensus and eliminate silos for smoother program implementation and institutional harmony.
• Safeguard your financial future: Make sound economic decisions at the program and course level, avoiding costly mistakes and maximizing your ROI.

1. Build a thriving academic portfolio that meets student needs and fuels institutional growth.
2. Lead with confidence through data-informed insights.
3. Become a champion for smart resource allocation and sound financial stewardship.

Master Class 1: Market Demand for Academic Program Growth

Featuring Bob Atkins and Zach Paz

March 5, 2024, 2-3:15 pm ET

What academic program should I start or grow? How can I tell if a program will drive enrollment? Will it prepare students for the job market? Are there already too many institutions offering this program? This session will teach you what market data you need to ensure you invest in the best programs to align with your mission, fill seats, and teach the right skills for student success after graduation.

Master Class 2: Program Economics and Curricular Efficiency: How to Avoid Dumb Cuts

Featuring Pete Starrett and Steve Probst

March 12, 2024,2-3:15 pm ET

In this session, you will discover the importance of strong program margins and efficient instruction, which enable healthy student outcomes and faculty research activities. You will learn how to calculate the direct instructional economics of your programs on a per-student credit hour basis with instructional costs, enrollment revenue, and contribution margin. Additionally, we will analyze the revenue and direct costs associated with each course section your institution delivers. You will benchmark costs across your programs and compare them to other institutions.

Master Class 3: Program Management:  Data, Process, and Key Decisions

Featuring Bob Atkins and Mary Pahissa Upchurch

March 19, 2024, 2-3:15 pm ET

As a decision-maker, how do you implement, manage, and sustain a program evaluation and management process at your institution? This interactive session addresses the key decisions academic leaders make regularly, including which programs to start, stop, or grow, hiring, and resource allocation. We will walk you through a data-informed evaluation process that is fast, transparent, and inclusive – a process that brings together key stakeholders and builds consensus and support for these critical decisions. You will work with your peers in breakout teams to decide on programs to grow and sustain based on mission, academics, markets, and economics.

Master Class 4: Advanced Analytics and AI

Featuring Zach Paz and Youssef Aljabi

March 26, 2024, 2-3:15 pm ET

Join us as we present how artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other new tools can model the impact of program decisions on your institution’s future. Using demographic data and market trends, we will demonstrate how to project the size and growth of programs in a proposed portfolio. Using predictive scenarios, we will show how to evaluate the effects of program decisions on your institution’s bottom line. We will show a prototype of a tool that evaluates the academic content of the courses in an academic program and identifies the skills taught. It compares those skills to Gray DI’s data on skills employers seek.