As budgets become increasingly strained with every passing year, higher education institutions are turning to market research firms to investigate the viability of their current and potential academic programs. Many institutions require feasibility research as part of the program approval process, and for good reason. At RMS, we routinely conduct these studies, and have Read more

The following blog post is a summary of a market research project conducted recently by Research & Marketing Strategies (RMS) – a market research firm in Upstate NY. Background: A college was interested in learning the degree to which its inquiry and enrollment process for continuing education students was a barrier to their enrollment growth. (It Read more

What is secondary research? According to our friends at GMI, secondary research is the analysis of research that had been collected at an earlier time (for reasons unrelated to the current project) that can be applied to a study in progress. Secondary market research can be an excellent tool for decision-making and identifying future trends. Furthermore, using secondary market Read more

Over the past few years, there has been a continuing evolution of the community college’s place in the American higher education landscape. As the economy has declined, community colleges have enjoyed a wider appeal as a more affordable alternative to private and four-year public institutions, to the point where there is actually a “reverse transfer” Read more

Adult learners, sometimes called nontraditional students, have long been a part of the market for higher education, but in recent years the segment has grown in importance. In fact, a 2002 special analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics revealed that there were roughly the same number of nontraditional undergraduate students studying at American Read more