When you’re steering around potholes and ice patches, it’s not always easy to remember to keep your foot steadily on the gas so you don’t just stop.
Your next year’s enrollment numbers will depend, in part, on the attractiveness of your program offerings. If your website was promoting Statistics when your peers were offering Data Science, that was a challenge. Now, as prospective students are making their decisions, if you’re promoting Data Science while your peers are offering Artificial Intelligence, you’re at a disadvantage – because the students who want Artificial Intelligence will enroll elsewhere.
The 2024 Peak in Higher Ed Program Announcements
Gray DI has been tracking announcements of new academic programs for ten years. 2024 was a record year, with 1,029 new academic programs announced. So, institutions were investing in their future. At a minimum, by keeping their program portfolios fresh, they were keeping their gas tanks full so they didn’t inadvertently drift to a stop.
The Threatening 2025 Drop in Higher Ed Program Announcements
In contrast, 2025 saw a drop in new program announcements to COVID-era levels. The many challenges of 2025 distracted institutions from building the new programs that will attract students in future years.
Identifying High-Demand New Academic Programs in Your Market
Without a steady flow of new academic programs, institutions will struggle to maintain enrollments. Therefore, colleges and universities need to identify the best new program ideas for their institution.
Often, institutions start with an idea and then gather the information to assess that idea. The first problem with this approach is the lack of rigor in coming up with the best ideas in the first place. The second problem is the lack of easily-accessible information for comparing competing program ideas to judge what the best options are for the institution. Gray DI’s tools help at each stage of this process:
- PES Markets and PES Predict Program Size can help by creating ranked lists of promising ideas, based on metrics like institution-specific enrollment forecasts for each program, high-growth programs at similar institutions, or programs with particularly strong employment opportunities. These systems include data for more than 1,500 programs for every geographic market in the United States.
- PES Program Remix can generate institution-specific program ideas that can be developed primarily by remixing the institution’s currently-offered courses. These remixed programs should be faster and less costly to build than programs that require many new courses and capabilities.
- PES Markets can help with assessing individual program ideas, considering student demand, competition, employment outcomes, and cost benchmarks – relative to other program ideas, not just in isolation.
- PES Markets and PES Program Remix can help build program content and support, with additional data, easy-to-use reports, and guidance on reusing existing courses and creating new courses
If you’re not regularly recharging your academic program portfolio, you’re going to struggle to maintain forward momentum with enrollment. Don’t wait until you’re rolling backwards down a steepening hill to restart your new-programs engine.
