UPCEA Webinar Series: University of Illinois Recap

Labor market data is a critical part of evaluating new and existing program offerings at colleges and universities.

Adam Fein

That was the main takeaway from Emsi’s latest webinar featuring Adam Fein, the assistant provost for educational innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The webinar was part of Emsi’s UPCEA webinar series.

Fein talked about how he uses labor market data to evaluate new program offerings for continuing online and certificate programs. With more than 72,000 enrollments in online courses this year, University of Illinois has a lot of stakeholders depending on relevant programs.

Here are a few key takeaways:

• Fein primarily uses our program market demand feature in our Analyst. It provides a snapshot of the competitive landscape, which includes what other peer institutions are doing with a certain program and what the labor market is looking for.

• When he researches programs, Fein labels them as green, yellow, red. Green means there is healthy demand in the labor market, the university already has faculty expertise, and other peer institutions aren’t offering much in the subject. Red means the opposite, while yellow covers everything in between.

• Fein also uses Analyst to inform marketing efforts, especially when determining which employers or metro areas to target. More data equals more efficient spending.

• Fein typically uses Emsi’s data at the beginning of the program review process. Then Illinois works with groups like Eduventures or the Education Advisory Board to conduct further study.

• Emsi’s user-friendly interface allows Fein to quickly pull up research and detailed reports when he’s talking to university leadership. “It’s not only super helpful and thorough, but it’s also expedient,” he said.

If you missed the webinar, you can watch the recording below.

For more information about Emsi or our data, please contact Rob Sentz, visit EconomicModeling.com, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.