Southern Cross University

SCU Wanted to Reach More Students

The university had built a reputation of quality education within Australia but knew to continue building on that reputation in the digital era. It needed to provide students with the opportunity to get the same quality education virtually.

Enter Keypath. In late 2014, Southern Cross University and Keypath created SCU Online by forging a partnership with five goals in mind:
     1. Become a significant provider of online postgraduate programs.
     2. Grow revenue – especially outside its traditional footprint.
     3. Improve the quality of its online provision.
     4. Expand its presence in the postgraduate space.
     5. Offer new programs to market at speed and scale.

How Keypath Enabled SCU Online

Students could enroll in the partnership’s initial offering, a new online MBA program, within just five weeks of when SCU and Keypath signed the contract. And enroll they did – the first intake reached 207 percent of the original target. That initial momentum has continued, as the partnership has launched nine successful postgraduate programs over the first two years.

Each of these programs has the strength of Keypath’s proven online program management (OPM) services behind it, better known as KeypathEDGE. For SCU, the partnership means assurance that its venture into online education is backed by market research, executed by an expert OPM team, and managed comprehensively.

Keypath provides the capital investment needed to get online programs off the ground and, utilizing its KeypathEDGE platform, develops data-informed, student-outcome focused programs along with highly targeted go-to-market strategies. Through the KeypathEDGE Development and Design process, Keypath ensures the purposeful design of individual programs that meet the audience needs and skills-gap opportunities initially identified at the start of the partnership. The KeypathEDGE platform also includes an end-to-end marketing and recruitment approach, identifying and recruiting high-quality students for its programs.

These services are all delivered by an Australian-only OPM operations team. This local, personalized delivery model means SCU enjoys the benefits of an in-house team (an open, constructive, and solution-focused partnership without the hassle of negotiating with various third parties or subcontractors) and avoids the growing pains of building a fledgling online program from the ground up. Keypath provides speedy implementation at scale, providing flexibility and agility that are unmatched anywhere else in the region.

SCU Online Exceeds Expectations

Today, SCU’s postgraduate online program portfolio is unmatched anywhere in the region. Keypath’s marketing efforts have recruited students from all over Australia, including in-state capitals where other institutions have had a long history of online success.

SCU Online has been instrumental in growing the university’s presence across the globe. Altogether, more than 50% of SCU Online students – up to 80% for some programs – attend courses from outside SCU’s designated ‘footprint.’ 

SCU and Keypath have exceeded expectations in the other four main drivers outlined by the university at the onset of the partnership: to grow revenue, to improve the quality of their online offerings, to expand their presence in the postgraduate space, and to bring new programs to market at speed and scale.

The partnership has exceeded expectations across the board.

• The university surpassed annual enrollment targets for all courses in the first and second year of offering
• Enrollments in the MBA program went from less than 90 students to about 300 students after the first year of Keypath marketing and recruitment management
• The brand-new Master of Healthcare Leadership program not only exceeded year one enrollment targets by 340%, but saw a 95% pass rate – the highest of any course at SCU
• The university’s first-ever engineering offering, an online Master of Engineering Management program, enrolled 120 new students in its first full year
• SCU Online has enrolled students from 31 different countries