Graduate Program Marketing Deserves More Than a Side Hustle Strategy

For many institutions, graduate enrollment is a vital — and growing — revenue stream. But the way we market these programs hasn’t kept pace with their importance. Too often, we see decentralized strategies, underfunded efforts, and unrealistic expectations placed on people who aren’t marketers.

Faculty Are Experts — But Not in Marketing

Graduate program directors are brilliant scholars and educators. But most haven’t been trained in lead generation, digital strategy, or audience segmentation. Asking them to own marketing and recruitment — on top of everything else — is unfair and ineffective.

The Cost of Competing

Marketing graduate programs, especially MBAs and online degrees, is expensive. These are hyper-competitive markets, and the cost per lead is high. Institutions often underestimate what it takes to stand out — and then wonder why applications fall short.

Dispersed Teams, Disconnected Strategy

Graduate marketing is often decentralized to the extreme. Programs operate in silos, leading to inconsistent messaging, duplicated work, and missed opportunities. Without coordination, there’s no clear path to measuring — or improving — performance.

KPIs That Ignore the Big Picture

Many schools still prioritize undergraduate enrollment in their KPIs, even as graduate programs become essential to the bottom line. This mismatch in priorities makes it harder to secure the resources and attention these programs require.

It’s Time to Get Serious

If we want to grow graduate enrollment, we need to:

• Centralize strategy while honoring program-level nuance

• Fund graduate marketing appropriately

• Align KPIs with institutional revenue goals

• Rely on marketers to do the marketing

Graduate programs are too important to be an afterthought. Let’s invest in them like we mean it.