The Online Graduate Student: What They Want, What They Expect, and How They Choose

Online graduate enrollment isn’t just “graduate enrollment, but online.” Students pursuing fully online graduate degrees evaluate institutions through a distinct mix of priorities, motivations, and support expectations. In collaboration with NAGAP, we’ll translate findings from Carnegie’s Online Learner Study into clear implications for graduate enrollment teams. We’ll uncover what online graduate students want from programs, what drives them to start now, and which supports most influence persistence. We’ll also examine attitudes toward AI—where it adds value, where it raises concerns, and how students use it day to day. We’ll map where they search, what they expect to find at each step of the journey, and what that means for positioning, messaging, recruitment, and retention.