The Search Party is Over: Seth Odell on AEO and Life After SEO

Kevin Tyler

Hello and welcome to Higher Voltage, a podcast about higher education that explores what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to change in higher ed marketing and administration. I’m your host, Kevin Tyler.

Hello everyone, welcome back to Higher Voltage. Today is our very first repeat guest. He’s a buddy of mine, we have worked together at places like UCLA and other higher education initiatives. He’s a wonderfully, powerfully brained human being who’s doing some really great work in the higher ed landscape and my household, my husband and I, are the lucky beneficiaries of his very generous holiday Kanahoma box of which the coffee mug I haven’t been able to use because my husband has taken it. So it’s good, he would be very pleased to know that he loves your coffee mugs from Kanahoma. Seth Odell is here to join us today.

Seth is one of higher education’s leading voices in enrollment marketing with nearly 20 years of experience at institutions including Southern New Hampshire University, National University System, and UCLA as I mentioned earlier. He is the founder and CEO of Kanahoma, one of the fastest growing marketing agencies in higher education where he partners with colleges and universities nationwide to drive enrollment growth. An Emmy Award winning marketer, Seth has been recognized for his innovative brand strategies and his expertise in helping institutions navigate growth, mergers, and acquisitions in the rapidly evolving education landscape. Seth, I am so excited to have you back on Higher Voltage for this conversation.

Seth Odell

Kevin, so good to see you. Thank you so much for having me on and what an honor to be the first repeat guest. I didn’t know that. That’s so cool. Well I’m gonna try to live up to the expectations that come with such an invitation.

Kevin Tyler

Well I appreciate that. We have a lot to talk about today. I’m happy to have you here. The reason why you’re here today is because I recently attended a webinar about the future of search that you hosted. And when I tell you that it was one of the richest, most substantive kinds of demonstrations of expertise and really incredible, deeply researched information, plus your perspective is always so thoughtful and intentional. I wanted to have this conversation for an extended audience because I imagine not everyone who needs to hear what you were saying on that webinar was in attendance. And so I want to help amplify some of the points you made around the future of search and what institutions can do to prepare for how students are searching, but also how the marketing function kind of functions on campus. And so to set the table for this conversation, obviously AI is on the front of everyone’s mind in higher education, and of course outside of higher education, and search tools are changing how people find information and cutting into traditional search traffic. SEO strategies are being somewhat upended. Click-throughs are down, search traffic is down. You cover all of these kinds of metrics that we typically look at in higher education. And things are changing, and the things that are changing are causing folks to scramble and adjust to this new world of AEO. So before we get into the nuts and bolts of the information that you shared on your webinar, just give me the lay of the land here in like early 2026 about the size of the challenge that these shifts are making for higher education.

Seth Odell

I’d be happy to. I love this conversation and this topic. So the first thing is that when we talk about search, like obviously online internet search, that is where the majority of engagement with colleges and universities starts as far as what we’re able to track. You know, 80-85% of folks are starting online searching for an institution, and we can have a conversation later in the podcast about the things that happen even before that, but the reality is search is the front door for our industry for discovery, for finding your institution, finding what you’re looking for, whether you’re a grad student trying to find a program, or an undergrad student trying to find the right fit for where you want to go for residential experience. That search environment, and by and large when I say search I often refer to really Google, is changing a lot. So there’s a rise in what’s called zero-click, which has been around, you know, for a while, but 60% of Google searches now end without a click. And the reason is, for anybody listening, you know when you do a search you get that AI answer box that pops up, and Google is trying to give you the answer to the information you’re looking for without even having to click off to another website. Now keep in mind they do that because they want you to prompt another search that lets them drive another ad and get more impressions, but like AI answer boxes are changing a lot. 60% of searches now result in no click at all, which means the traffic never makes it to us in the first place. At the same time, we have a rise in like LLMs, large language models, by and large ChatGPT but Claude and many others. And so folks, about 15 to 20% of the market is starting their searches on AI platforms. I’m one of those, I often refer to ChatGPT first before Google. And about 50% of folks in the US are saying that they’re using it in some capacity in search. So they’re actually like bouncing back and forth. So we got like 15% of the market that’s now disappeared from Google, 60% of the folks on Google that are getting the information they’re looking for without a click. And at the same time, the third trend that Google doesn’t tout as publicly is that overall search for higher ed is actually down as well. And so in the fall, we saw over 10% declines in grad specific searches, undergrad specific searches, just overall industry impressions. There’s less demand. So we talk a lot about the demographic cliff for traditional undergraduate higher ed, like less students graduating high school. There’s also just less people searching for things related to higher education on Google in the first place. So when you have this rise of zero-click, this rise of folks leaving traditional search engines for LLMs, and you have less people searching overall, what it means is declining organic traffic, which is what a lot of our institutions are seeing. And a lot of our industry, especially at the adult and online side, is built on paid search ads. Paid search ads are almost always the largest investment for most adult online institutions, grad programs in particular. And so this has been like the bread and butter pipeline for prospective students from a marketing perspective to get in front of people. And I don’t want to say it’s drying up. I do not believe the platform is on fire, but as I shared in the webinar, it is melting. And like we should be aware that search changing is probably the biggest impact we’re gonna have in recruitment since the introduction of really web and then into social media. So if you blended those two trends from late 90s into the mid-aughts to like maybe 2010 when social really boomed, like we’re going through another era like that and I think the impact will be larger. And so it’s easy to look at it in isolation. I see folks have a conversation about “Oh rise of zero-click.” It’s easy to talk about “rise of ChatGPT,” but when you combine what’s really happening, which is that search is fundamentally changing, I think you realize that like this is a bigger shift than a lot of people realize and it’s going to disrupt the way we market and recruit and it’s going to have to reflect the way we resource and structure ourselves if we’re going to navigate it effectively.

Kevin Tyler

So I love that. I love that there are two components really to this conversation. I feel like a lot of times in marketing conversations, specifically in higher education, we kind of talk about the ingredients instead of talking about the meal. And I think that there were some really interesting analogies that you kind of surfaced in the conversation in the webinar around this is not only about what we are doing, but also the structures in which, like you just referred to, the structures of marketing in higher education as an idea, as a philosophy, as a function. Can you speak to what this means from a leadership level? Like what should folks be thinking about at the leadership level to kind of respond to these shifts?

Seth Odell

There is a lot. So one of the first things from a leadership level is that our primary recruitment channels are gonna remain under pressure and they’re gonna become less efficient. So how does a leader react to a challenge? You’re probably going to get two key things from your marketing team. One is that organic traffic is down to the website, and that’s going to freak people out and you need to understand it’s not that your team necessarily did anything wrong. It’s that a percentage of the traffic you used to get is now getting all the information they need from a search engine or an LLM without having to come to your website in the first place. And so traffic is going to go down. So how are you going to react to that? And that’s one piece. Second thing is you’re going to get told at the same time that your paid channels, like Google and specifically paid search, are now producing either less leads and/or they’re more expensive to acquire. And so you’re going to find that your paid channels are less efficient at the same time that you need them to offset organic. You know, a lot of leaders I think react to that by demanding change and improved performance rather than being aware of the macro trends. I think the folks that navigate this successfully will not just sort of whack-a-mole the end result or the output, which is “Hey how come cost per inquiry has gone up on this report?” But instead say like “What are we doing to look at our media mix, our investment strategy, and ask some tough questions?” Just one of those tough questions is the fact that in almost every case, I don’t think I’ve ever engaged with a college or university in my career that I think invests enough in SEO. Like search engine optimization. It is like at best five, maybe 10% of a marketing budget. And yet organic is the primary driver of all enrollments. It’s very, very rare that I’ve ever found an institution where when you actually look at starts the primary source is paid. And so we are just dramatically and grossly under-invested in SEO exactly at a time when search is changing. People got to have a conversation about that. Like the way we’re structured may be different, the way we resource may need to look different. And so I think the biggest thing is leaders need to know what’s coming. If I could speak to every president and CMO I would say like your organic traffic will likely decline and your paid efficiency will likely get worse. Be aware of that now before it shows up in next month’s marketing report and start to have those conversations. You don’t need to wait to get the end result of that. And depending on people’s recruitment cycles, there’s some folks that I honestly think aren’t going to be aware of how much search has changed until next fall. Like they’re gonna end up being soft on their fall target next year and say what happened, and it’s like it already has happened. Like it’s already in your pipeline. Hopefully you’re aware of what’s going on and you’re tracking this. So see what’s really happening at a higher, like more elevated level, and see it as soon as you possibly can. That’d be definitely my advice for leaders.

Kevin Tyler

100%. And I think it’s worth noting that this does not mean, this conversation we’re having, especially around search and the performance of a website, this does not mean that your website is less important, right? It means actually the opposite.

Seth Odell

100%. So one of the things that most folks are seeing is a decline in organic traffic and an increase in conversion rate. Which means of the folks that do make it to your website, more of them are taking the action you want, whether it’s to fill out an RFI, like a request for information form, or to start an application. The traffic that is coming to your website as a result of the shifts in search is higher intent. And that makes sense logically, right? It’s like, well, if they could have gotten the information from an answer box or from a ChatGPT, then they wouldn’t have bothered coming to your site. So folks are only making it to your site once they’ve done that, like surface-level fact-finding search behavior, and now it’s deeper and they’re much higher intent. They’re like, “Okay I’m really ready to understand the nuances here. I want to learn more about you. I want to know how this is going to work if I attend your institution.” And so it is more important than ever because the traffic is higher quality. The second thing I would note is it’s also more important than ever just because like one of the ways that you offset a problem in your marketing funnel is by solving it in another place, not where the problem exists. So a lot of folks are going to see that organic traffic is down and they’re going to see that paid is inefficient. And they’re going to ask their teams, “How do we increase organic traffic and how do we make paid more efficient?” Those are good questions to ask. But the other, more important question to ask, in my opinion, if you want to make your fall, is to say, “Because we are seeing less organic traffic, and because we are less efficient in paid, we now are projecting that we’re going to come in, let’s say, 10% down in our starts. How can we navigate and replace that 10% so we still hit our target?” One of those ways is by improving the conversion of your website. You already have traffic coming every single day, and so few higher ed websites are really built for conversion rate optimization and really focused on helping a student navigate the journey of finding their program, gathering information, taking an action that’s requested. And so it’s a huge opportunity to use CRO, lower funnel, to offset a gap and a miss upper funnel. And so a lot of times people will get, they’ll try to fix the problem where it exists, which you should do, but the real way to make up for the gap is by finding it in other places. So can you improve your application start to application submit? Can you improve your admitted to enrolled rate? Those will take different behaviors and changes to do that, but that’s how you actually kind of collectively offset what we’re seeing as a real kind of softening of the upper funnel.

Kevin Tyler

Yeah I appreciate you surfacing the CRO conversation because that was one of the points that you raised as well in the webinar. And the things that are being measured, or the way performance is being measured is also changing obviously, right? As the inputs change, obviously the outputs do as well. And so what is the new currency in terms of measurement when it comes to these shifts around search?

Seth Odell

Yeah. So there is no good answer to that. I was just having a text exchange with two CMOs yesterday. And one of them was literally texting me saying, “Is direct attribution really still the best way to go? Is there really nothing else we can do?” And I have a contrarian opinion, which is that like true attribution doesn’t exist. Um, and there’s a lot of people out there that are going to sell you vaporware that says they can solve it, and there are solutions to increase visibility and to better see what’s going on, but like attribution is so blurred with what’s going on. People are searching in Google, they’re searching back over to an LLM, they’re going directly to your website, they’re doing some of that behavior on a phone on a home Wi-Fi network, some of it on a work laptop at an office. Like it is impossible to truly know what’s going on. And so I always tell people the best thing you can do is first and foremost focus on business understanding and performance. So move as high level 60,000 feet as possible. What’s our marketing budget? What are our total inquiries, total apps, total starts? We can measure that. We can measure volume. Volume in the funnel is perfectly measurable. It is not perfectly attributable. And so focus first on understanding volume and what can influence volume. You want to measure volume, you want to measure rate, you want to measure cost, and velocity. Those are the only four things you can ever measure in higher ed. You can slice and dice it a million ways. Um, don’t, I guess my advice is like don’t chase attribution assuming that perfect attribution exists. Like even in this conversation I had yesterday I said like one of the things I love from an attribution perspective is like if you want to measure your media mix, which means like how much should I spend in Google versus paid search or versus like SEO versus awareness marketing. I still believe in old school geo holdout models, which means if you run one media mix in one DMA, like one city, and another media mix in another, and then you track what’s happening both with paid and organic and you know the variable difference between the two is your shifts in investment strategy, you can directionally see what’s going on. And I learned that one way back at Southern New Hampshire. I worked with a great head of data who told me where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And he said, “If you want to be a good marketer, look for smoke and make changes as soon as you have more information today than you did yesterday. Don’t wait till you find fire.” Meaning like if you know there’s smoke, there’s fire somewhere in that general vicinity. And he’s like, “The best thing you can do as a marketer is like as soon as you pick up a new sense that something is better or worse, act on that behavior and move forward.” And that a lot of times people slow down. We have a couple partners at Kanahoma that invest significantly in like multi-touch and blended attribution modeling. And it’s helpful, but like even after we spend tens of thousands of dollars to do this analysis, like none of us have total confidence in it. And it still ends up being a gut check. And so like, you know, what can be measured is that’s different and new is you can understand your visibility in these platforms and I will say that’s the best place people to start. So I don’t want to dismiss all measurement, but I would say that like are you aware of what’s happening in organic traffic? Are you aware of your cost changes, your impression volume changes in paid search? Are you aware of how you’re appearing in LLMs? So like generative engine optimization, GEO. Are you aware of where you’re appearing in answer boxes? You cannot get the level of visibility into that that you can in like paid search through Google’s ad console or through GA4 like with their analytics platform. But there are solutions out there that you can use, that we use, that can tell you roughly how you’re appearing and in what categories and how well. And so you know, you do want to establish a directional baseline. And so that’s important, but I’d say first focus on the business metrics that matter most. Second, understand your current state visibility across answer box and LLMs. And then the third is like don’t get caught up chasing perfection because perfection is not achievable in this market. And even if you measure it this month, there’s going to be a change next month that completely, you know, changes everything else anyway. And this space is moving so fast that measurement over time is directionally beneficial but not actually, you know, something that you can completely build a strategy upon.

Kevin Tyler

So often what you’re saying, especially about the visibility piece, calls to mind at least for me, the kind of default practice of higher education looking into looking to itself for how to structure websites, and we’ve seen over the last 10 years like this kind of whatever the website is looks like the other 16 that you’re looking at essentially, right? And so what does visibility look like when you’re up against innovation in an industry that is so easily comparable to itself?

Seth Odell

There’s like a very tactical answer to that and there’s a very broad answer to that. The tactical answer is I think it’s really critical to understand what are the few core reasons why someone does or doesn’t choose your institution. So this is, I’m speaking from a place of like a tuition-dependent institution that’s trying to drive enrollment. It’s very easy to have a complicated brand strategy, but at some point you need to just acknowledge things like we’re a private institution and that means we’re priced higher than the local publics, or we’re a private faith-based institution which means we’re probably not going to attract students that aren’t interested in, for example, like a Christian education. There’s a few core drivers if institutions do like non-matriculation surveys. Understand not just where the students that applied and went elsewhere went, but understand why. I’m a huge believer in non-matriculant because the truth is like there are like two, three, four core drivers usually in the enrollment experience. And so when it comes to comparison, comparison is no longer about the whole institution, it’s about understanding that actually we have this amazing scholarship program at a great discount rate and we’re far more affordable than people realize. Okay, we can talk differentiation and positioning and information around that. And we can pressure test that across LLMs, answer box, and search in general to understand like if someone is looking to compare where do we come up. We had an institution that we were doing a scan for on LLMs and there was like factually incorrect information that claimed that you couldn’t transfer a certain amount of credits to them, and you actually could. And so there was like this wave of misinformation that is out there because LLMs are ranking authority in a very different way. They’re giving authority to a lot of third-party sites that maybe shouldn’t have it. And so this was a case where one of our partners was there was information that if you asked like “Compare these three or four institutions,” you actually get incorrect information. If you’ll entertain me for a tangent, this is something I did not hit on in the webinar that I would love to share with folks. Which is like exactly how do I look at how we position and understand where the LLMs are positively or negatively influencing the perception of that. So what I will do is I’ll work with an institution and I’ll say “Give us your top institutions that people select instead of you. So like if they’re thinking about you and three or four others, who are they?” I’ll go into ChatGPT and I’ll say “I’m a prospective student.” I give all sorts of information about that. And I say “I am interested in the following four institutions, A, B, C, and D. Can you please build me a table that compares these four institutions by the top important value props that you think I should consider such as location, cost, quality, outcome,” and I go through all the things that drive someone’s decision. “Do you have my program? How much does it cost? How fast can I finish?” And then ChatGPT will actually build me a table and compare value props for me. And then it’ll source where it gets all its information. And so that’s where when I was doing that for a partner it uncovered that it said that they’re not as transfer friendly. And I’m like, “That’s not true. You guys have a great transfer policy.” We clicked through, there was a third-party site that was very questionable that had wrong information, and all of a sudden prospective students are now being navigated wrong. So like we’re not in control of how our brand is being like assessed and analyzed because people are outsourcing some of that assessment to technology to do for them. So that’s like a tactical ground level. I then will take it up to 30, 60,000 feet, which would just say that like the reality is brand is more important than ever. And understanding who we actually are is more important than ever. Like we’re an industry of 4,000 institutions and we all look and sound so similar. And I think the institutions that are going to navigate this effectively are going to be the ones that know exactly who they are, what they stand for, what they offer, and why, and they communicate that consistently everywhere. Whether that’s through PR, whether that’s through their own media on their website, through organic and social. And so I think we’re going to see this exposure where people are being pulled right now into tactical recruitment marketing because that’s where the pressure is because organic traffic is down and paid is less efficient. But the truth is the solve for that is going way upper funnel and being like, are we clear on who we are, who we serve, what we offer, and why. I think folks that do that will be successful. And unfortunately I think a lot of folks are going to miss the reality that there is a call for brand in this moment, but it’s not clear if you’re not listening.

Campus Docket ad read

Kevin Tyler

So obviously it’s no secret to either of us and really anyone else listening to our conversation that, you know, marketers are, you know, at ground zero for so many of the shifts happening in higher education, right? What happens to the industry gets reflected in the duties and responsibilities that marketers on the ground have to respond to. And so this is yet another, like this future of search and how marketing teams are structured is yet another shift. And so I’m curious if there’s a bit of good news here, some opportunities that have presented themselves in this new way that search is happening that you can kind of just share and lift up the spirits of folks going through it.

Seth Odell

Yes. I have a couple thoughts on that. First I will speak to the, if you are earlier or mid in your career, so you are not an executive. This is your opportunity to absolutely become the in-house expert and become the linchpin. If you’ve ever read like Seth Godin’s Linchpin book. The reason is that the solution is not going to come from specialists, it’s going to come from generalists. Typically in an organization you start as a specialist, like “I do SEO” or “I do paid” or “I do design” or “I do copy.” And as you move up in your career you become a generalist, like “I’m now the VP of marketing, I’m over everything.” For the most part, the generalist leadership in our industry are not going to successfully solve this. I do not believe they have their collective finger on the pulse enough and I think there is this uncertainty. And so there is an opportunity for folks that are maybe mid-level in their career to become obsessive about all the solutions that live across channel. Cause this isn’t a paid search thing, or an SEO thing, or a website thing. And I just hearken back to like my own career. I joined UCLA the first go around in 2007. Right as social media was just becoming a thing. I set up the institution’s YouTube channel and Twitter account. MySpace, although I don’t always tout that one as proudly. And the reality is there was no one there to solve that. And when I left UCLA in 2011 there was a team of like five or six people that were doing the things that I alone was doing as an entry-level employee in 2007. I filled the gap, I stepped in when it was blurred, and like what should we do with video, and how should we solve for social? And so for me it was like massive career growth. So if you are looking for career growth, this is your chance to not be seen as a web content specialist, you know, or just a copywriter. Like because the solution is going to come from collaboration and you can just blur the lines and play across all of them. So for those folks that’s the biggest piece of advice that I would say. Now for the executive leaders that I do think that are generalists that are in a position of influence to solve some of these things. I will tell you the anecdote my father told me. Which was that we were hiking in the Appalachia mountains, and we came across a bear. And we were with a group of people and my dad leaned down and he said “Are you ready to run?” And I was like “Dad you can’t outrun a bear.” And he’s like “We just have to outrun the slowest person.” And my father is a little savage, and that was a hilarious moment, but the advice I give to people is like you only have to outrun your competition. So the pressure at night, don’t stay up all night and lose sleep saying like “How do I solve the future of search? How do I stay ahead of AI’s influence in marketing?” That is a path to no sleep and freaking out because none of us know. And anyone who sells you the solution like they know is just trying to get your money. But you can look at your competitors. And you can start to measure things like how are we showing up in answer box and LLMs, and how is our organic traffic doing, and how’s our conversion rate? And you can look at yourself against your peers. And so long as you’re better than your peers, you will be fine. There is a window open right now for folks that figure this out. You do not need to be first. You just definitely don’t want to be last. And so to me that’s like even what I tell myself as an agency owner. Like we’re working right now to try and evolve our paid search product to merge with our SEO product. Like why do I have an SEO team and a paid team when they’re both designed to service products to the same audience, which is someone searching? My own business structure doesn’t reflect the needs of today’s market. I just tell myself, okay when I’m up against other agencies, are they solving this too? Like have they already implemented that solution? And as long as I can get to that place faster than them, I’ll be fine. But like I acknowledge that even in my own business structure I am not positioned correctly to capture the opportunity. And it would really keep me up at night to think I have to solve that tomorrow. I don’t have to solve it tomorrow. But I do need to be outpacing my peers. And that is a very reasonable and healthy benchmark to set for yourself that I think makes improvement a little more achievable.

Kevin Tyler

This, this is, I’m having so much fun.

Seth Odell

Me too. It’s so good to see you. I love this stuff.

Kevin Tyler

Yeah, same. And the way that you speak about it is both obviously well-informed but also very easy to understand, and I think that’s a really hard needle to thread. And so I appreciate that. The piece from folks in the middle of career what their opportunities look like that makes really good sense, because some of that can feel kind of obscure for some at times in their careers. Listen, the next question is one I ask to everybody who comes through the doors of Higher Voltage. And it is what do you think higher education is going to look like in five or 10 years? And I can’t wait to hear what you’re about to say.

Seth Odell

Okay, I’m going to take it at 10+ years because I think it’s easier to see on a long enough timeline. It’s very hard to see in the near term or midterm I guess I would say. So today we have over 4,000 tuition granting colleges or like title IV institutions in the US. Today we have over 4,000 colleges. In 10-ish years that number will be max 2500. We are going to see closures of colleges. They will disproportionately be private institutions and private faith-based. Private Christian institutions make up 15% of the market but 50% of the closures. There is a trend that’s happening at the tip of the spear is on people that are exposed to increasing price pressure. So we’re going to see increasing price pressure that will continue to mount. And that will happen. At the same time we are going to continue to see declining demand. So not only is there a demographic cliff, meaning less students graduating high school. But for those that are graduating they’re increasingly questioning and challenging the value of the degree. Employers are requiring the degree at a dramatically lower rate. 50% of employers last year reduced their degree requirements. Everybody’s pushing to decouple the degree, but nobody actually takes a course into a certificate into a degree. Like it doesn’t really work, even though everybody claims they want it. The market will say they want hybrid but they don’t, and they won’t enroll in it. They want to go fully online. We will see a boon in growth in 100% online programs for 18 to 23 year olds. And we’ll find a segment of high school students that are going to immediately path into online institutions rather than traditional residential. We are going to see a lot of shifts in the K through 12 pipeline. There is a massive movement that I’m calling the opt-out movement of public K through 12 education. The trend is not as clear because folks are looking at where they’re going. They’re looking at a growth in homeschooling or they’re looking at a growth in online high school. But when you look at everything, if you look at charter and voucher and homeschool, like what’s going to happen is a total siphoning of students out of public K through 12 schools. I would argue more than 25% may disappear in the next 10 years. The question that’s unknown is where do those students go to college if they go. At the same time we’re going to continue to see a rise in the trades. And a renaissance for folks that are looking for clearer like anti-AI pathways to good six-figure jobs. And one of those is absolutely the trades. It is a huge opportunity for folks. We’re going to see a huge rise in apprenticeship programs. The government has something like a billion dollars of unspent funds they allocated to apprenticeship programs and not enough institutions are setting them up. We are going to see AI completely disrupt the workforce and a total wipeout actually starting I think with white-collar and then moving its way down. Not not starting at the bottom and working its way up. And so we’re going to see a rise in unemployment. The question that’s unknown is does that rise in unemployment realize a rise in enrollment. Historically that has been the case. People get out of work and they go back to school to tool up. I think we’re going to see a rise in segment specific institutions. You know there is not an opportunity to build another SNHU or an ASU or WGU in my opinion. And what there is an opportunity though is to build the SNHU specifically for entry-level healthcare jobs. Like very tailored niche institutions like niching down. There’s a saying niches get riches and like that is going to be the future for folks that are successful is they don’t try to be all things to all people. That era has closed. And at the same time with all of that higher ed’s gonna mostly be fine. It’s largely ingrained. The folks that are good are going to continue to grow. We will see continued growth in publics and in big sports and in the tailgate culture weekend demand, which is one of the reasons like Southern big sport schools are growing right now. But I don’t think we’re gonna see total disruption with one exception. Right now higher education has a monopoly on assessment. People are coming because they need the degree to be able to apply for the job and to be able to grow. It is more sometimes for assessment than it is for actual skill. Skill in many ways has been democratized. You can go online and learn almost anything at your own pace whether it’s through formalized like MOOC-like courses or just through YouTube creators and free accessible content or using ChatGPT. And you may not even need to learn all those skills anymore if AI provides it to you at your fingertips or your agent can do it for you. And so the reality is like higher ed has lost the monopoly on skill but we’ve not lost the monopoly on assessment, which means there is still value in higher ed being able to say you have been here and here is a stamp of approval that you sat here and been part of this. Now higher ed measures time more than they actually measure learning objective and outcome. And they don’t necessarily measure where you started and where you finished. We’re built on the Carnegie credit. So it literally just says here’s how long you were in class. That today has still structurally held. If that collapses, and if assessment is commandeered by AI, and AI can handle do a better job of assessing someone’s ability to be an effective employee than something on a resume that says they went to a college for four years, then this industry is in trouble. And then this industry collapses. That today has not happened. But whoever is out there right now building the AI-powered assessment of the future, if they are successful, then this industry will absolutely collapse and turn over. If that doesn’t happen, then the reality is society still values the college experience and they value the assessment that comes with with the and the credibility that comes with saying you’ve been there and you’ve learned something and you’ll be fine. And in either case, to institutions I would say like the ones that focus, the ones that know who they serve, why they serve them, and that they are really focused on outcome, will be fine. Because the reality is if students come to you with perceived probability of success and you deliver it because they’re better prepared and they are better successful later, then no matter what comes you will be okay. But there’s a lot of institutions out there that have measured time more than outcome and for them if assessment doesn’t hold then I do think a lot will change.

Kevin Tyler

Yeah I think that all makes good, really good sense. And I think there’s a lot of great nuggets in what you’ve just said. And I appreciate quite significantly the point around K-12. And I agree with all the points you made there. I also think that, you know, there are these cities, Columbus being one of them, Indianapolis I believe has one, Boston, these career connected learning academies that are popping up that kind of bridge the gap between high school and the desire to go to college, right? And I think that there are opportunities for institutions to get involved in those programs or initiatives I should say, because it will calcify the value of college…

Seth Odell

So one thing that’s been on my notes in my phone to write about. A lot of times I’ll write down a topic that I want to discuss. Sometimes it’s something I know well, and I’m like, oh I should post about that. And other times it’s things I want to research. And one of the ones that’s been in my notes for like two weeks has been more colleges should own and run K through 12 institutions. And it was like, help me understand why our industry has made this decision to only be post-secondary. And there are some that have online high schools, right? Like a Penn Foster is a huge online high school and a college division. Um, but there’s not many. And it’s not the normal state of affairs. And I do think that like understanding that the job to be done at K-12 and college certainly changes at different levels, but the reality is it’s development and a pathway to an improved quality of life. And so I do think folks that solve that better will have more success. We’re seeing like one of the only growth areas in higher ed is in dual enrollment. And there’s states now that mandate it that every high school graduate is going to leave with some form of college credit. There’s huge opportunities for improved pathways between K-12 and college. I don’t yet am informed enough to sort of speak to exactly what they are, but it’s been on my list of like, I need to lean into that. That hits me as something that is a truth that is not yet defined.

Kevin Tyler

Yeah. I mean Paul Quinn College in Dallas has a K-12 school on their campus. And you can see, I mean there’s all the benefits that you can imagine with having that exposure at that young age. Purdue has their charter school, etc. I think that, I mean one of the things I think about in terms of, you know, speaking to the ideas rolling around your head is that, you know, I think about the ways in which we are expecting folks who come out of, well folks who are in the middle of their high school experience we have never had to market any other level of education to any of these people before. You just go to the school you’re told to go to. And then all of a sudden when you’re in ninth, tenth grade you start getting all these things and we have not kind of softened the ground for what to expect, how to assess the places that we are going to to further our to enrich our futures, right? And there’s not only the learning of like what this function or this machine is about, the higher ed marketing piece, but that you don’t get any exposure to it before it’s already time to make the decision. And so I think that if colleges are reaching back further into the K-12 educational experience, we can you know, again, soften that ground for the messages that we hope to land softly in.

Seth Odell

Yeah. And I would just say on this point, like one of the reasons I think this question is so important even to today’s topic is like, it is so easy to look at the shifts that are happening in search and say, “Oh no, we need to change something about the way we market with paid ads.” Or like, “Oh it’s bigger than that. It’s actually paid and it’s SEO.” Oh got it, okay. Well actually you’re going to offset the declines in volume by improving your website and conversion lower funnel. Oh, so this is more cross-channel marketing and multi-stage. Well actually yes, but it’s really being influenced by brand and PR. So it’s actually moving up. And it’s like all of this like, the picture becomes clearer the further out you go. And like I feel like that is one of the most important jobs that I have when I speak to people is to like grab them from the weeds and pull them out and say like, it’s like you’re looking at a pixel and I’m trying to show you a picture. Step back and it will make sense. And so like there’s a reason why we’re talking about the future of search and then we’re talking about the relationship between K-12 and college because like what is happening here is so much bigger than search. And like answer boxes and LLMs will not have as big of an impact on the future of college as what’s happening broader at a more macro view. So don’t think like this is the thing. This is just one of many that you need to be aware of and consider when you think about how to navigate it and how to drive growth.

Kevin Tyler

Seth Odell. You buy the whole seat, but you only use the edge. It’s always great checking in with you. I really appreciate you making time for this conversation. You’re a good dear friend. I’m so glad you’re doing so well. And I would love to invite you back later, maybe in a year or so to see what these trends look like after this conversation. Seth Odell, we will have all of the information from his webinar, including his slide deck, which he has been so gracious to share with us, we’ll post that on the episode page as well as any other contact information that is necessary. But I just want to express my sincere gratitude for your time and your expertise today on Higher Voltage.

Seth Odell

Kevin, so welcome. I love the conversation. I always love seeing you and any excuse to catch up with you is just great. So I just love chatting with you.

Kevin Tyler

The mutual love society on Higher Voltage. Thanks buddy. I’ll talk to you soon.

Seth Odell

Exactly. Take care.

Kevin Tyler

That’s it for this week’s episode of Higher Voltage. We’ll be back soon with a new episode and until then you can find us on Twitter @VoltHigher Ed, and you can find me Kevin Tyler on Twitter @KevinCTyler2.