Gray Associates Demand Trends Blog

It should come as no surprise that margin, the difference between cost and revenue, emerged in blogs 1 and 2 as a key variable in the economics of teaching.  What may be less obvious is that faculty and academic administrators need to take margin seriously.  Conventional wisdom says that academics should focus on mission and its associated teaching and scholarly priorities while leaving the management of margin—and by extension the use of models that measure margin—to the institution's accounting and financial people.  This blog describes why the conventional wisdom is wrong:  why effective academic resource management requires mission and margin to be considered together, and why this is best done by the academic side of the house.

Our guest, Thijs van Vugt, Director Analytics and Consulting Team for Studyportals, reviews International Student Interest's Insights.  Studyportal's tracks 640,000 international student enrollments, 200,000+ courses in 120+ countries with the help of 3,500+ participating institutions.  Here he discuss global data, where to find it, and how to make it work for your institution.

Philosophy programs are under attack from all sides, but is it justified?  In this month’s webcast, Gray took a deeper dive to determine if the negative perception was justified.  What we found was somewhat surprising, students are showing interest in the program and the cost is not prohibitive.  But will students be able to find jobs when they graduate?  Watch our analysis below.

Gray has tracked inquiry demand for higher education programs since 2012. Here are some trend highlights presented during Gray Reports Monthly Webcast on March 21st.