What Higher Ed Gets Wrong About Online Education (opinion)

Recently, I was explaining to a peer that Ohio does not have an enrollment problem; it has a migration problem. NC-SARA data shows that in 2024, more than 61,000 Ohio residents enrolled in fully online programs offered by institutions outside the state. When I named the institutions enrolling the largest numbers of Ohio students, the response was immediate: “I don’t think we should compare ourselves to those institutions. They aren’t R-1.”

That response illustrates one of the most significant strategic misunderstandings in higher education today. Universities define their competitors by institutional classification. Modern learners define their options by cost, time to degree, accessibility and career outcomes. The modern online learner is not choosing between an R-1 and a regional university. They are choosing between the option that fits their life and the option that does not.

Higher education often talks about innovation, but the biggest barriers to innovation are rarely external competitors. The barriers are internal. Semester-based calendars designed for residential students, traditional semester start dates, slow curriculum approval processes, rigid transfer credit policies, financial aid structures tied to traditional terms and organizational structures that separate academic units from market realities all slow institutions down.

Many institutions fear that expanding online programs will cannibalize existing enrollment. In reality, online programs often reach entirely different students: working adults, place-bound learners, career changers and students who would otherwise not enroll at all. The number of times I have had to explain that these audiences are different is difficult to count. The traditional residential student and the online adult learner do not represent the same market, yet institutions often treat them as interchangeable.

I sometimes wonder where I have gone wrong—not in my career choice, but in how I position online education within the university. If I could climb to the top of the tallest building on campus with a megaphone and chant, on repeat, “They are not the same,” I am still not certain the message would be heard. And yes, of course people would hear me, but are they listening?

The largest competitor in online education is not another university; it is nonconsumption. It is the adult learner who decides that a degree is too expensive, too slow, too complicated or too inflexible to pursue. When institutions focus only on competing with peer universities, they miss the much larger population of students who are choosing not to enroll anywhere at all.

The institutions that will grow in the next decade will not necessarily be those with the highest rankings or the most programs. They will be the institutions willing to change internally by revising policies, calendars, pricing, transfer models and program structures to serve the modern learner. They will build employer partnerships, create stackable credentials, offer low barriers to entry, recognize credit for prior learning, offer multiple start dates and design programs around working adults rather than around institutional convenience.

The real competition in online education is not other universities. The real competition is institutional inertia. Those that do not change will continue to watch students choose faster, cheaper, more flexible options elsewhere or choose not to enroll at all.