Meghan Rodgers joined 2U as chief marketing officer last year as part of a new wave of senior leaders bringing fresh perspectives to a company operating at the intersection of two complicated, fast-moving worlds: higher education and digital marketing. Both are industries grappling with large-scale evolution. Universities are navigating questions about value and differentiation, while AI is fundamentally changing how learners search, compare and make decisions. I was curious what Meghan’s take was on marketing in this new environment—and what institutions need to rethink to stay visible and relevant.
Full disclosure: I am an (unpaid) member of the 2U University Partner Advisory Council.
Q: Online program marketing has evolved quickly over the past five years: more competition, more noise and a learner-discovery process that AI is actively reshaping. What does it take to actually reach the right students today, and how different is that from even five years ago?
A: Five years ago, institutions with strong programs and disciplined marketing could compete effectively. Clear academic positioning, steady investment in brand and search, and a well-organized website were often enough to capture demand when prospective students were actively researching.
Today, the model has shifted. Search continues to anchor many journeys, and the institutional website remains critical because it serves as the reference source for AI overviews and large language models. What has changed is how learners discover and validate information during their search. They read peer discussions on Reddit, review salary and outcomes data, scan rankings, and increasingly encounter AI-generated summaries before they ever visit an institutional site. By the time they arrive on a university website, they are often validating what they have already learned elsewhere.
Reaching the right students now requires clarity, consistency and discipline. Programs need to be specific about who they serve, the skills they build and the outcomes they deliver, while ensuring unified representation across AI-driven platforms. A structured approach to creating, maintaining and aligning program details across channels is essential.
All that said, brand still matters. Search still matters. But discovery is no longer a linear, self-directed process. Universities that present themselves with clarity, consistency and discipline will reach the right students. Those who don’t won’t even be in the conversation.
Q: Universities are being asked to do more with tighter resources and higher expectations. Where are you seeing institutions make smart marketing investments right now, and where might they be putting energy into approaches that no longer deliver the same return?
A: Universities are under real pressure to demonstrate return on every marketing dollar. The most successful institutions invest in systems that connect marketing efforts to enrollment outcomes.
This begins with analytics and measurement. Leading institutions are connecting marketing, enrollment and student outcomes data to understand which programs, audiences and channels actually drive results. This foundation powers AI-driven bidding models and campaign optimization.
Strong SEO still matters, but it has evolved. Many university websites are not built for how search and AI systems now surface information. LLMs and AI overviews rely on fast, well-structured, crawlable pages. If a site is slow, fragmented or technically constrained, its content is less likely to be surfaced. If a site is difficult to navigate, prospective students simply move on.
Institutions also need a content strategy that answers prospective students’ questions. High-performing universities provide clear program positioning, transparent outcomes and structured information on skills, costs and career paths to help search engines and AI systems accurately interpret programs.
Institutions lose efficiency when they spread effort too broadly. Chasing emerging platforms or running undifferentiated brand campaigns without a clear strategy can consume significant resources without moving applications. Not every institution needs to be everywhere, and not every new channel will drive meaningful enrollment.
In a resource-constrained environment, discipline beats volume. Institutions that focus investments, strengthen search and technical foundations, and tie marketing to enrollment outcomes will outperform those that simply add activity.
Q: AI is forcing marketing teams to rethink everything from content creation to audience targeting. In higher education, specifically, what separates marketing organizations that are adapting strategically from those that are simply reacting to the technology?
A: The real difference comes down to whether AI is treated as a set of experiments or built into the core marketing strategy.
Organizations that adapt strategically embed AI into their end-to-end marketing and enrollment operations. The underlying funnel is changing, and AI is accelerating this shift.
At 2U, we use AI to improve how we allocate marketing investment, understand demand and strengthen operational discipline. We optimize around signals that predict enrollment likelihood and program fit, allowing us to apply value-based bidding models that prioritize audiences and channels most likely to reach students who will succeed in individual programs. We also use AI to improve our understanding of demand. For example, we’re piloting an AI-powered tool for M.B.A. programs that analyzes trends across consumer sentiment, market demand, competitive activity and AI search visibility.
AI also accelerates work that historically required enormous manual effort, allowing teams to spend more time on strategy and less on production. And it improves accuracy, ensuring consistent representation of our partners’ programs.
Beyond marketing, we apply AI across the enrollment cycle to recommend next-best actions for the enrollment team and personalize onboarding for new students.
The organizations that are adapting strategically are using AI to strengthen the systems behind marketing and enrollment. The ones that struggle tend to treat it as a set of experiments around the edges. This integrated approach is central to 2U’s marketing strategy.
