Want to know why enrolments, attendance and engagement are declining at your higher learning institution?
Here's a simple question.
Have you studied at your own institution recently?
Not attended a graduation. Not visited an open day. Actually enrolled as a learner.
If your role has kept you under constant pressure, it's easy to become disconnected from the experience your learners are having. Meetings, reporting, budgets and compliance can gradually replace direct understanding. Over time, assumptions fill the gaps.
The fastest way to understand what's really happening is to become an enrolled learner yourself.
Go through the enrolment process. Complete the forms. Navigate the systems. Wait for the emails. Try to find the information you need. Attend the classes. Experience the learning environment from beginning to end.
You will quickly discover where the frictions lie.
You'll understand whether your communication is clear or confusing. Whether your systems support learning or create unnecessary barriers. Whether learners feel welcomed, connected and confident, or overwhelmed before they have even begun.
You'll experience your organisational culture as your learners experience it, rather than as your colleagues describe it.
Most importantly, you'll stop guessing what the problem is.
Too often, institutions blame external forces: AI, demographic change, cost-of-living pressures and competition. While all of these can be contributing factors, they can also become convenient explanations that prevent us from examining the experience we actually control.
AI isn't making your enrolment process frustrating.
AI isn't creating disconnected communication between departments.
AI isn't responsible for lengthy programme course descriptors, assessment tasks written in institutional language, the repetition of tasks to achieve a single learning outcome, or timetables designed primarily to meet the needs of the institution.
Those are organisational experience design problems.
If we want better outcomes, we need to become more curious about the learner experience and less attached to our internal assumptions. The barriers that seem invisible from the boardroom or management meetings are often obvious to someone experiencing them for the first time.
Educational institutions exist to facilitate learning. That should include learning about themselves.
Sometimes the most valuable professional development isn't another conference or strategic planning session. It's enrolling in your own institution and paying close attention. You may discover that the problems you've been trying to solve aren't the ones your learners are actually experiencing. And that's where formulating a meaningful response begins.
If we don't experience learning as our learners do, how can we be confident we're solving the right problems?
