Most colleges don’t have a growth problem, they have a “newness” habit. When enrollment gets tight, we default to launching a new program or chasing a new audience, then act surprised when learners see it as interchangeable and marketing has to work overtime to explain why we’re different.

I’m Maya Evans, and I’ve been thinking a lot about learner lifetime value and what changes when we stop treating one enrollment as the entire relationship. We unpack what a growth strategy is supposed to do in higher education: point the institution toward the places where it can create the most value from advantages it already has. That includes a simple rule that can save you years of wasted effort: do no harm. If a growth plan pulls you away from your strongest relationships, capabilities, and credibility, it makes every downstream step harder, from enrollment strategy to program strategy to differentiation.

From there, we break down three clear paths leaders usually take: new learner growth, new program growth, and relationship growth. We talk about when recruiting adult learners actually makes sense, what has to be true for a new program to create durable enrollment growth, and why the most underexamined opportunity is often the learners you already taught. If you want a real lifelong learning strategy, you have to design the relationship so the next step is obvious to the learner and workable across institutional units, not a maze of disconnected answers.

If this sparks a growth question for your campus, send it my way, subscribe to Beyond the Ivory Tower, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review so more higher ed leaders can find it.

Prestige can save a tuition-dependent institution, but chasing it the wrong way can quietly wreck enrollment, trust, and identity. We start with a surprising business lesson from Coach: it didn’t “lose” to Louis Vuitton, it refused to play the European heritage game and built democratized luxury instead. That framing unlocks a better question for colleges, universities, and education brands: what if you’re not failing at prestige, you’re just trying to win the wrong version of it?

From there, we put a clear stake in the ground: prestige is a verdict, not a claim. When leaders try to claim status with new language, a shinier logo, or a rushed rebrand, the market often reads it as prestige cosplay. We walk through two cautionary tales with direct parallels to higher education marketing and institutional strategy: JCPenney’s attempt to “go elegant” before giving customers a reason to believe, and Jaguar’s high-fashion repositioning that boosted awareness while sales collapsed. The takeaway is blunt and useful: looking elevated is not the same as being chosen.

We then map a practical order for earning real prestige, grounded in brand research and proven examples: start with a strength you genuinely own, choose the kind of prestige you can actually win (including mass prestige), upgrade the real offer before you upgrade the story, and let credible validators carry the signal for you. If you’re weighing a doctoral program, a university rename, a rankings push, or a “prestige” campaign, we end with one question to run before you spend a dollar. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with your answer: are you earning a verdict or claiming one?

Your strategic plan might be polished, inspiring, and endorsed by everyone, and still be doing almost nothing. We start with a simple challenge: if most colleges list the same priorities, can any of them honestly call that strategy? From student success and belonging to online growth, graduate expansion, technology upgrades, and the obligatory AI mention, the familiar template can feel responsible while quietly avoiding the hardest work: making consequential choices.

We dig into why higher education defaults to process. Committees, listening tours, and 18-month timelines reduce anxiety because they focus on what we can control. But enrollment decline, tuition pressure, employer expectations, alternative credentials, and public trust do not pause for a planning cycle. Drawing on ideas associated with Roger Martin, Henry Mintzberg, and Michael Porter, we separate planning from strategy and name the uncomfortable truth: strategy demands trade-offs, clarity, and the willingness to say no.

Then we get practical. We walk through Richard Rumelt’s signs of bad strategy and explain how “fluff” shows up on campuses when real values like innovation, student success, and belonging get promoted into vague strategic priorities. Finally, we lay out what real higher education strategy can look like: a one-page strategy that forces specificity, decision rules that govern resource decisions, and the simplest test of all, the budget. If you want strategy that changes outcomes, follow the money, the choices, and the accountability.

If this sparked disagreement, that is a good sign. Subscribe for more, share this with a colleague who lives in strategic planning meetings, and leave a review with the hardest trade-off you think your institution should make.