For years, the decision to launch a new online program rested largely on instinct and institutional appetite. But as competition intensifies and budgets tighten, universities can no longer afford to guess. The programs that succeed are increasingly the ones backed by rigorous market analysis, conservative enrollment modeling, and a clear-eyed view of the costs involved.

So when a department wants to build or expand an online program, how should an institution decide whether it is actually worth funding?

On this episode of Signals in Higher Ed, host Darin Francis sits down with Fritz Andover, Director of Online Program Support Services at the University of Minnesota, to unpack how that decision really gets made. Andover walks through the process his office uses across all five campuses, from the first conversation with a department chair to the financial modeling that determines whether a program can stand on its own. He explains why he deliberately discounts his own enrollment projections, how his team structures funding to carry programs through the lean early years, and what it takes to knit teaching capacity together across a large public university system.

Key takeaways from the conversation…

Successful online program decisions start with defensible market research and intentionally conservative enrollment projections, not optimism. Andover discounts his own numbers to avoid building a case on a rosy picture.
Andover's office structures support as a two-year, loan-style investment, carrying programs through the ramp-up period before enrollment revenue can offset launch and marketing costs, then stepping back as the program repays the investment over roughly five years. He calls it a booster-rocket model.
The "distributed" mandate goes beyond online launches. Part of the work is connecting teaching capacity across campuses so students can complete a program from different locations, online or in person, without administrative friction, a use of scale smaller institutions cannot replicate.

Fritz Andover is the Director of Online Program Support Services at the University of Minnesota, where his office works across all five campuses to evaluate market opportunity, model enrollment scenarios, and help academic units secure funding for new and expanded programs. He brings an unusually broad background to the role, having started as a history PhD student at Washington University in St. Louis before moving into educational technology, spending nearly a decade working directly with faculty at Macalester College, earning a doctorate in higher education policy and administration at Minnesota, and working at a small online program management firm before returning to the university system. That combination of faculty-side experience, institutional research, and OPM market work shapes how he approaches program decisions today.