Moving Mountains: Lessons from #UPCEASOLAR 2026

Carrie O'Donnell
Founder & Chair

I have had a week to ruminate on #UPCEASOLAR, my favorite conference every year because it’s a convening and community of like-minded leaders who have dedicated their careers to advancing higher education in the digital age. Here are my key takeaways and ruminations:

#1

The COLOs (Chief Online Learning Officers), supported by their teams and partners like Alchemy, can move mountains and are well-positioned to accelerate change and innovation in the notoriously slow-moving higher ed world. The members of this community brought vision and passion to the conference— and an eagerness to collaborate as we navigate today’s chaotic and challenging higher ed environment.

#2

Online will continue to grow (which probably seems obvious for the COLO community). Demand for online courses often exceeds supply. This ranges from residential students who want to take a course online to entire programs. As a result, many of the institutions represented at the conference are planning online growth and finding ways to approve new programs more rapidly. And they’re striving to find better ways to support Online at their institutions.

#3

Given that traditional-aged undergraduate and graduate enrollments will continue to decline for the foreseeable future, growth in higher ed will be driven by providing career-aligned learning for the 43-46 million adults with “some college, no degree” (SCND). Related to this, there are significant labor shortages across fields ranging from healthcare to education to advanced manufacturing. Serving the SCND population requires a shift in focus from traditional degrees to new formats and new credentials: providing workforce-aligned learning experiences up front, and enabling learners to stack these and other prior learning into degrees.

#4

Institutions are increasingly strategic in their relationships with external partners. This includes a shift away from relying heavily on OPMs (online program management companies) and toward partnering with companies, like Alchemy, that provide infrastructure support for a DIY (do-it-yourself) environment plus surge capacity. Institutions are also rethinking workforce partnerships to be less transactional (create a program for a local employer) and more strategic: curricula infused with experiential learning, internships and apprenticeships, and research support to help close critical workforce gaps.

#5

Growing and scaling online learning requires a portfolio mindset, one that uses data and the insights it produces to drive policy and establish a common language and set of expectations. For example, data from evaluating a course portfolio against institutional standards can spark a dialogue and common language among academic leaders, support staff, and faculty, ultimately resulting in student-centric decision-making across the campus.

What struck me most, walking away from SOLAR this year, wasn’t any single session— it was the sense that this community isn’t waiting for permission to reinvent higher ed. They’re already doing it, one program, one partnership, one data point at a time. I left energized, and grateful to be doing this work alongside them.