Modern Campus Reports that Employers and Students Spent Over $1 Billion on Continuing Education in 2022
TORONTO — December 13, 2022 — Modern Campus, the higher education industry’s leading modern learner engagement platform, today shared that students and corporations have spent over $1 billion so far in 2022 on programming offered by colleges and universities using its Continuing and Workforce Education solutions, Destiny One and Lumens.
Modern Campus reports that enrollments among its Destiny One customers have grown on average 15% annually since 2019, while industry-wide enrollments in more traditional programs have fallen 7.5% overall during the same period. The modern higher education consumer is looking for more flexible postsecondary options.
“Modern Campus is proud to support higher education institutions and their communities with Destiny One and Lumens, two purpose-built solutions for scaling continuing and workforce education programming,” said Peter DeVries, chief executive officer at Modern Campus. “Continuing, professional and workforce education is playing a more important role than ever in supporting learners, institutions and their communities. These offerings create substantial impact for enrollees, and as the economy continues to evolve people will continue to look to them to advance their careers and lives.”
The news about increased revenue and enrollments coming into continuing, workforce, adult and online programming—in sharp contrast to 1.4 million fewer students enrolled in degree programs 2019—demonstrates a major change. Communities are looking to colleges and universities to forge pathways to good jobs, and then continue to look to postsecondary education providers to help them upskill and reskill over the course of their careers.
“Learners want a pathway that will get them a credential and put them in a competitive position to get a job,” said Madeline Pumariega, president of Miami Dade College, during a webinar hosted by Modern Campus. “There’s an opportunity for us to blur the line between credit and non-credit, between skills acquisition and degrees. The future of work will require broad skills of all employees. We can begin to address these skills through microcredentials.”
Continuing education divisions are already playing a more central part in supporting innovation across their respective institutions. In the 2022 State of Continuing Education report, professional, continuing and online (PCO) education divisions of higher education institutions reported that their roles had expanded since the pandemic.
The report also found that many PCO units are under-resourced, despite their critical work. The State of Continuing Education report found that a quarter of these units try to execute on their innovative and complex operations using software designed for traditional programs—leading to significant dissatisfaction. However, institutions using Modern Campus Destiny One and Lumens overwhelmingly said they were satisfied with their registration system experience. Clearly, leveraging the right tools creates impact for these mission-critical divisions.
“As a School of Continuing Studies, we want to offer an Amazon-like experience. We want students to click a button, check out a class, and enroll immediately. And, if the course isn’t available, we want to simplify the process for them to be notified when it does become available,” said Saira Cooper, director of digital learning, IT and operations at Rice University’s Glasscock School of Continuing Studies.
According to Cooper, “With Modern Campus Destiny One, we’re able to offer an experience that is more carefree.”
About Modern Campus
Modern Campus is obsessed with empowering its nearly 2,000 higher education customers to thrive when radical transformation is required to respond to lower student enrollments and revenue, rising costs, crushing student debt, and administrative complexity.
The Modern Campus engagement platform powers solutions for non-traditional student management, web content management, catalog and curriculum management, student engagement and development, conversational text messaging, career pathways, and campus maps and virtual tours. The result: innovative institutions can create a learner-to-earner lifecycle that engages modern learners for life, while providing modern administrators with the tools needed to streamline workflows and drive high efficiency.
Learn how Modern Campus is leading the modern learner engagement movement at moderncampus.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
Last updated: December 13, 2022