829: LIVE from ⁠InsightsEDU⁠ 2024 - with Wendy Colby, Vice President & Associate Provost for BU Virtual, Boston University

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back, everybody. It's your time to up on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. We're doing that here at Insights EDU in Phoenix, Arizona, a conference hosted by Education Dynamics all about marketing and enrollment for the online student or the modern learner as I heard it revealed earlier yesterday. The modern learner - let that sink in. What does that mean? That's a good question that I just asked myself. I can't answer it though, because it means so many things.

There are a lot of takeaways from this conference and I highly, highly, highly recommend that if you are serious about increasing the population of online learners at your university, this conference is a critical one to attend. If you're not here in 2024, you better be there in 2025. By the time 2025 comes around, there'll be so many more changes for the adult learner. A year of AI, another year of AI trends, how students are feeling, their fickle nature, the transfer portal - there's so many things that we have to keep eyes on. And I can't keep track of them all. So I depend on guests and guest co-hosts to help me do that.

One company that loves to keep track of things is Google, and he is my guest co-host, ladies and gentlemen, he's Andrew Fleischer, and he's head of industry at Google. And he's back as a co-host. Now, Andrew, couldn't get you out of bed, but we got you back on the mic.

Andrew Fleischer: I loved being here so much. Came back second time. Thanks for having me again.

Joe Sallustio: I'll give you that 20 later, man. Thanks a lot. I'll pay for that compliment. Andrew, so many insights here. So many great people. How is your time here going so far?

Andrew Fleischer: It's been a blast. So many great conversations, so many like-minded individuals, so many people focused on learner outcomes and evolution of this ecosystem and how digital is accelerating and has accelerated this space. You said it AI, AI, AI. What will AI do to this space?

Joe Sallustio: Well, I don't know. I'm going to ask you that question. Ladies and gentlemen, our esteemed guest here she is. Her name is Dr. Wendy Colby. She's VP and Associate Provost at BU Virtual at Boston University. Welcome to the mic Wendy. How are you?

Dr. Wendy Colby: Great to be here.

Joe Sallustio: Did they give you a break between the panel you just finished? Didn't you just do a panel and did you panel this morning then off meeting with the team?

Dr. Wendy Colby: No breaks yet.

Joe Sallustio: True. Well, we don't give you breaks around here. We just keep you going. It's all good. Talk about your role as VP and associate provost for BU Virtual. What is BU Virtual? How long has BU Virtual been around? Who do you serve and how do you serve? A lot of questions in there.

Dr. Wendy Colby: Thanks. Happy to address it. So I lead a unit that we call Boston University Virtual. It is designed to put a focus on our online programming at BU. Like a lot of universities, we've been in the space of online for a number of years, primarily through our continuing education unit, where we continue to offer a lot of online programs.

But more recently, we introduced what we call some online at scale programs, really with a new business model, lower price points, ways to open access to new segments of learners. I'm the inaugural leader of this unit. This unit was formed upon my arrival about 18 months ago. And we're really making a lot of headway inside of a large R1 university, 17 schools and colleges, to really look at ways in which we enhance our mission at BU to serve a broader segment of learners. So that's pretty exciting and happy to talk a little bit more about what we're doing.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, let me ask one more real quick. Is that easy change making? Is that hard change making? Is it, you know, BU traditional? I mean, you know about what it takes. Do you have the resources? Are you fighting for resources? Can you give us the story?

Dr. Wendy Colby: It's a great question. You know, I'm inside of a large university that has been around for a number of years and has done some amazing things. Every day I feel like I am still learning from a lot of my colleagues across BU. But as this is a new effort, and we've been talking a lot about this at the conference here at Education Dynamics this week, which is... It does take a change agent. It does take setting up vision and mission and where are we going?

I do a lot of talks today on "If you build it, will they come? Rethinking the academic portfolio in times of change." And so we have to really rethink the portfolio and where are the market signals today and who do we want to serve and how do we drive enrollment?

I think it's so important to set up a unit dedicated to this. I've been delighted to see this at this conference. There are a lot of folks like me now in positions across universities because you need that leadership, right? You need that focus. It is not what I call a copy-paste, right? From our residential to our online operations. So we have to think very differently about markets we're serving, how we're setting up our instructional design, our learning experience, how we're engaging students, AI, right? All of these things that are becoming important to why students want to move into an online experience.

How do we work with faculty? Often that's where the biggest resistance is today. How do we educate? How do we bring them along? How do we help show faculty that they can make a broader impact to more segments of learners? And when that happens, it's a viral effect and you see that continue to grow.

It's also about the technology. It's changing a lot of the traditional mindsets, right? And sometimes that's on admission standards, academic calendars, right? All of those things you have to change.

Joe Sallustio: We're going to talk, Wendy, because we're going to talk. I have to tell you, I don't know if you know this, but before you came up, Andrew made me play sound effect. He wanted me to play it before he asks questions. So I got to do that. Listen to my important question.

Andrew Fleischer: Yeah, Joe, I definitely asked you to play that. Wendy, I'd love to understand like the plan and vision for BU virtual. Is it going to stand alone from the broader university or will do you see in the future that students will take some classes virtually even if they're on campus students?

Dr. Wendy Colby: It's a great question. So we are a unit inside of Boston University. So BU Virtual is part of the fabric of Boston University. And of course, I work very closely with my colleagues, deans, administrators, our president, our provost right across the university. We are focused today on graduate-level education. So, you know, I think that's generally where we see opportunities. Like many universities, we're seeing some softening in our graduate residential operations.

Many students want choice today. They don't want to step out of their families, their work lives, you know, so enter online. So we've been very deliberate and intentional about the kinds of programs we want to go after initially. And this was really for us, I touched on crafting new business models, right? So looking at areas like business, like healthcare, like data science is another area that we're approaching here, right? And looking at how we bring those to life really shows success in those models and then look at how we extend.

I think over time we're gonna see more hybrid online operations across the whole journey for students, undergraduate to graduate level and beyond. Think workforce partnerships, with all the changes we're seeing in higher ed today, as we well know as a community here, that demographic of our 18 to 24-year-old pool is changing. And so we're starting to go after more first-generation students and after the workforce segment.

And so we want to look closely at that. Who can we best serve while also really protecting, amplifying the reputation and rigor and advantage that an education from BU brings? We also have a very vibrant urban population in Boston. Many are attracted to coming into Boston. So we want to sort of live adjacently to that, if you will, but open these opportunities right for other students. And we feel a part of our obligation as a selective institution in Boston is to open up access to that mission and to that education again for others who might normally not be able to come into Boston.

Joe Sallustio: I mean, I think Boston is one of the greatest college cities in the entire country and nobody could deny that. You mentioned earlier faculty as sort of being a potential roadblock or obstacle to get around as we shift online. How has the faculty adapted to teaching virtually in a one-to-many environment, especially in this post-grad world?

Dr. Wendy Colby: Yeah, another great question. I think we tried to start with our business school, which is often where you see early adopters and champions and entrepreneurs who want to do things differently.

I think a lot of it comes down to, I would say educate, educate, educate. You know, bring everybody together in a room, help them understand, you know, the greater impact that they can achieve by moving online. For instance, one of the things we did at BU is we created a live studio. It's sort of like your BBC studio where a professor comes in and then can present to and be part of a community with 200, 400 students. Amazing.

And what's really nice about this - at first, I was a little bit skeptical about the model, right, because we can do this from anywhere today. But what it has done is really given a bridge to our faculty. And so our faculty now, and it's all also built community and collaboration with students. And so when you have those champions, I think what happens now, we have people teaching inside of our online MBA program, and they don't want to go back. They love it so much.

And so building upon that, as we go out to new schools who may have less familiarity with online, right, that helps to sort of pass that education forward.

Joe Sallustio: Talk a little bit about you said online at scale programs. What defines an online at scale program in your mind?

Dr. Wendy Colby: Yeah, so in our case, it is looking at where you have the largest, I'll call it demand signals for larger enrollment of programs and where you can scale to a larger population. In our residential classrooms, we might have 20 or 30 students, right? We are looking at how we reach far more students, but in ways that we can be efficient, right, around how we deliver that education and can scale it.

So for instance, in a university like Boston University, we have tenure faculty, we're a research one university. There are a lot of demands on our faculty time. Complications. Demands on our faculty time, right? And again, we cherish the research that is done and that impacts the world here from a BU perspective. But at the same time, we realized we couldn't scale our programs, for instance, with just tenure faculty. And so what we do is look at the model.

It's the same way in which you might think about a startup model if you're developing a new product. And so we have now around the faculty member, you know, put in learning facilitators like teaching assistants, you know, ways in which we can still facilitate community, chats with students, grading, all of those things that help support the growth and scale of programs.

So as I said, we've started to focus on some of the big areas where we're seeing very large enrollments today and we're still seeing quality at scale. So if you look at our online MBA program as an example, interestingly, only about 16% of our recent cohort come from the Boston area and environs. So we're seeing really global students now from all over the world that are working as directors, VPs in business, and that brings a tremendous kind of peer-to-peer collaborative spirit to these programs as well.

Andrew Fleischer: That's a fact. That's a fact. You just alluded to this out of curiosity, like what percentage of folks in the post-grad business world are coming from international markets?

Dr. Wendy Colby: Yeah. So I think right now in, in at least our online MBA program, we're seeing on the order of about 20% of our students that are coming from international markets, telling it like it is right. And we're seeing this kind of viral effect of students coming in, the word of mouth, our satisfaction rates are really high, our graduation rates are really high, students can complete this again on their own time from wherever they are in the world, right? So yeah, it's really creating this diaspora of students everywhere.

Joe Sallustio: We're doing very similar work. At my institution, we're also trying to access the adult learner, the new majority. Lindenwood's an institution that has about 7,000 students, a lot smaller, but it's a traditional institution with almost 200 years of history. There was a lot of pulling people along to look at what's different, what's off. When somebody said, you've got to serve the adult student, I said, blow up the academic calendar. That's where I start. That's where I start. There is nothing else that I go to before I go to that. Because if I've got to try to serve the adult learner on a traditional calendar, they will not wait for the start dates. They're not going to wait the two months, it's going to be forever.

So you have to start knocking the terms off tracking, looking at non-standard terms, overlapping terms, non-term competency-based education. But when it's a sacred cow in academic calendar, and it's very hard to disrupt it and get people to really buy into disrupting that calendar, has that been something that you are dealing with or how do you want to go into that?

Dr. Wendy Colby: Yeah, it's a great question. I'd say we are already disrupting it. It takes, again, it's education. You know, I think in most universities, when you start to sit down with the folks who run the academic calendar, I understand and appreciate that they're trying to get to some level of commonality, especially in a case like BU, we have 35,000 plus students, right?

At the same time, I think helping them understand that the online student here is very different. The online student is not taking a spring break. The online student is not taking a summer break, right? The online student actually wants to use that time. They're on the holiday. They're on their assignments. And often you're seeing universities have, you know, multiple start dates. We're still working often with two start dates, but going fully through summer.

Joe Sallustio: Like that's the other piece, right? Like blow up the calendar and then give me frequency of start dates. Because if you want to, if you want to achieve scale, you need frequency to start. And on demand, right? Like you live in this world of instant gratification, the Netflix, the Hulu - you want to watch a program on your own time on your own schedule. Adult learners want to consume their education on that.

Dr. Wendy Colby: You're preaching to the choir, right? 100%. But it does take educating inside a traditional institution. I think once you start to showcase the power of that, again, we're on a journey. The other piece you have to look at is admission standards.

Joe Sallustio: Big time. Admission standards are the same way. Right. You know, it's not like we're going to take eight weeks to review. We're only going to accept a certain number of students.

Dr. Wendy Colby: Helping our teams really understand that. Because often the view is, well, we'll minimize quality if we're not adopting the same standards we use in our residential. Not the case. Or you've got a 2.7 in your bachelor's degree GPA, but now you've gone on and done 12 years, you're at a VP level, running a business. Do I care about that 2.7 or I care more about your resume?

Joe Sallustio: By the way, that's my personal example. Let me know if you find places that don't care about the 2.7. Well, it's funny, that was a very personal story because that's me. And the institution I wanted to go to said that I needed to take foundational courses because my high school GPA was below 3.0. And I said, I ain't doing that. And so I went to a school that didn't make me do that. It was that simple. Because I was like, I've had 12 years, I'm a VP, I oversee 300 employees and dealing with HR every day. There's no way I'm doing that. In fact, it was almost offensive that you told me I needed to do that because I'm a different person. I had a kid.

It was totally, it was a totally different person. You know, so I think that's something that we have to reconcile for an adult. They come at it so differently. And there's a fickle nature to the student, isn't there? Like if I don't get the service, I'm gonna go somewhere else. And that's, so we're like selling all the time.

Dr. Wendy Colby: You have to eliminate the friction points, especially in online, I think today. You know, the other one we found that we just made a change recently in one of our schools that required an application fee online. And guess what? We were seeing a decline in the number of applications, right? The minute we removed that and waived that, which has to go through a series of approvals inside a university like ours, suddenly we were seeing huge volume again, right? And again, you have to look at your competition. You have to look at what others are doing in the online space. We're not alone in this space by saying we've removed an application fee, right? But eliminate the friction points because back to your example on Netflix, I want it now. I want it on demand. If you're not going to help me, there's somebody down the road or across the street who will.

Joe Sallustio: So what's next? You're 18 months into this journey. It's still new, but there's a bright future ahead and almost endless possibilities. We're only in post-grad and some select areas of study. What does the future hold?

Dr. Wendy Colby: Yeah, you know, I think what's really wonderful about being an entrepreneur in kind of a startup unit like this inside of a large R1 university - and again, I come from a background of having been in public and private and startup in state now in R1, right - is, OK, this has been a great launch pad to show some success, early success in some of these programs. But I think there's so much more we can do.

And so for instance, today we're also looking at where do we take data science? You know, McKinsey calls this the AI and data economy and in an interdisciplinary, in a very unique way. And so that is not only through degree pathways, but thinking about skills and credentialing and prior learning, as you were talking about here earlier as well.

I think another big piece, again, looking at these demographic shifts is what can we do to open more access to the mission of Boston University? And that's a big piece we are putting some emphasis on today as well.

And finally, I'd say, right, this journey is not for the faint of heart as we've been talking about. And we don't have it all figured out yet. And so part of this is also laying the groundwork for what it takes to run a successful online operation. And that is everything from your marketing enrollment, your instructional and learning design, and the experience that surrounds that, the technology framework. Leveraging core technology you may have at the university, but in a way that's gonna follow the whole of that student journey and then the workforce piece. And so we're very much still building that whole approach so we can sustain, scale and grow. And that's what's exciting.

Joe Sallustio: You know, one of the biggest differences between traditional marketing and online marketing is the infrastructure is totally different. If you can get the academic programs, you can get the calendar that you want, you still are entering - and I don't mean, I mean, you, plural - if you're entering to try to go after an online student, you have to be really good at marketing and you have to have a much bigger investment many times than you do traditional-wise, right? The traditional marketing is totally different. And a lot of schools don't get that. And they may not be willing to make the investment that it takes to go online and work for an online student. I just want to say that because I think a lot of people don't realize it.

But I do. My question is more about you. Higher Ed, I wrote an article about the assimilation culture of higher education. If you're a disruptor and you're a startup founder, in this case you are, everything is built to tear, to slow you down. And this is not Boston University or Lindenwood University, this is higher education. It's built to slow innovation. Committees and change and management. And you get to this point of in the assimilation culture where you start to go - this is the danger point - where you go, "I know I need to change that but is it worth the fight? Is it worth the energy?" And the minute you say no, that is not worth it, you've assimilated and it's very very hard to keep that fight - might be the wrong word - focus on creating change. What's your secret?

Dr. Wendy Colby: Yeah, you know, what do they say? Universities are built to last, not built to innovate. And I don't know, I think my own DNA is one of being an entrepreneur and one of continuing to try to educate, collaborate with teams, help everybody understand where we're going. You know, we're seeing so much pressure, as I said, on higher ed today. But I hear what you're saying, this inertia exists, right? That moment where you're thinking, is this, you know, sometimes, you know, I'm sure you want to stop and say, is it worth fighting that battle?

Joe Sallustio: Know your battles. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it might not be worth fighting a battle.

Dr. Wendy Colby: Yeah. But I try to keep - I call it keep my eye on the prize. Right. If we can focus on what is going to impact more students, if we can focus on opening access to more students, if we can deliver a better experience than anybody else out there today, everyone wins. Students win, faculty win, administration wins.

But it always is - I'm also conscious of how a world like ours and like mine fits in the broader context of our university as well, which has many priorities and many stakeholders that we have to serve. And so the more I can understand that and be a leader alongside the other leaders at Boston University, and I think a unit like mine can also continue to play a really big role in driving digital innovation, academic transformation, right? That's going to come from units like ours to lead that charge.

Andrew Fleischer: I was just going to say congratulations. It sounds like you're staying core to BU's mission and its core tenets as a university. You are the champion within the walls of BU of innovation and wishing you lots of success as you continue to innovate ahead.

Dr. Wendy Colby: Thank you so much.

Joe Sallustio: Anything else you want to say about BU Virtual or anything else you have going on? Open mic, open mic.

Dr. Wendy Colby: Apply, enroll, apply, enroll, try out our online MBA program or online Master of Public Health program. You know, exciting programs there at lower price points than many of the programs out there today.

Joe Sallustio: So affordable, affordable. Better way to say it.

Dr. Wendy Colby: Thank you. I need you for my marketing agent right now. Yeah, and sky's the limit. I think there's so much more we can do here and it takes a village. What I do love about Higher Ed and even events like this is it's collaborating with others and it's learning from others and it's bringing that back to our institution so that we continue to just raise the opportunity for all.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, before I let my guest go, I got to say as his first co-hosting gig, he's done a pretty good job. He's Andrew Fleischer. He is head of industry for education at Google. Andrew, what do you think? What do you think of this?

Andrew Fleischer: You might be coming for your seat soon. Please come over here and give me a break. Honestly, I'll give it to you right now. But thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure and I'm looking forward to doing it again.

Joe Sallustio: Our guest today, your guest today, she's Dr. Wendy Colby. She's VP and Associate Provost at BU Virtual at Boston University. Wendy, did you have a good time today, at least?

Dr. Wendy Colby: It was great. Enjoyed the conversation with both of you. Thank you so much.

Joe Sallustio: Amazing. Ladies and gentlemen, you've just ed upped.