Baseline Analytics Group delivers institution-specific market intelligence built on federal public data, establishing where demand exists in your markets, which institutions you actually compete with, and what is driving the enrollment outcomes your institution is experiencing.
Every analytical decision traces to published research in higher education economics, industrial organization, and spatial demography. No proprietary black boxes.
Our analysis draws on institutional, federal, demographic, and labor market data, assembled and interpreted without proprietary databases, vendor frameworks, or black-box methodologies. What you receive is the data, the method, and an independent read of what both say about your institution.
Founded by a higher education professional with direct experience across enrollment management, academic affairs, financial aid, and registrar operations. We understand the decisions our analysis informs.
Four distinct engagements, each addressing a different dimension of institutional market intelligence. All grounded in data, all built for the decisions leadership actually has to make.
Program-by-program competitive landscape mapping across all four market dimensions. Who is actually competing for your students, in which markets, and at what intensity.
Forward-looking opportunity identification and strategic synthesis. Where demand exists that the institution is not serving, which markets are growing, which programs to defend, grow, monitor, or exit.
Competitive context layered against the institution's own application, admit, yield, and melt data by program. Connects the external market picture to internal pipeline performance.
Program-level exposure mapping under the Student Tuition and Transparency System. Substitution restriction risk and earnings risk stratification by program with timeline implications.
A structured methodology for understanding the market in which an institution operates, from the definition of competitive boundaries to the measurement of demand and the identification of strategic opportunity.
Defining the competitive market. Program offerings, award levels, geographic reach, and delivery modality each create distinct competitive environments. Adult learners do not compete in the same market as traditional undergraduates. Online programs operate in a fundamentally different geographic space than ground-based instruction. These boundaries are established empirically, not assumed.
Identifying which institutions operate in the same markets, how concentrated those markets are, and which competitors are genuinely expanding supply versus simply growing enrollment. Competitive intensity analysis follows established industrial organization methodology adapted to higher education, with explicit treatment of supply-constrained institutions.
Measuring demand in your market, current and projected. This requires correcting for supply constraints and student mobility patterns, and integrating demographic trend data at the appropriate geographic resolution. The projection tells you where the pool is going. The measurement tells you where your institution stands within it.
Translating market structure and demand measurement into strategic clarity. Where is demand growing that the institution is not capturing? Where is competitive pressure intensifying? What does the enrollment trajectory imply about financial exposure? The output is a coherent account of an institution's market position and the decisions that follow from it.
Nathan Grawe was one of the first to notice what was coming. In Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education (2018), he wrote that "administrators and policymakers were heading toward the heart of a demographic tempest without a map or a compass." He was right. The tempest arrived. And most institutions are still navigating it the same way they were when he wrote those words.
The enrollment cliff is not a warning anymore. It is a present condition. Headcounts are moving. Program portfolios built for a different student population are straining under a different one. The federal policy environment is accelerating the pressure. The Student Tuition and Transparency System (STATS) rule, finalized in July 2026, extends earnings accountability to nearly every program eligible for Title IV funding. Programs that cannot demonstrate an earnings premium face Direct Loan ineligibility. Institutions whose failing programs represent more than half of their Title IV revenue face something worse. The demographic contraction and the regulatory reckoning are arriving at the same time, and most institutions may not be positioned well for either.
Institutions that have not mapped their exposure adequately are not just unprepared. They are making decisions that will compound the problem.
Baseline Analytics Group was founded by a practitioner who spent a career inside enrollment management and academic affairs, where the distance between good data and bad decisions is measured in tuition revenue, retention rates, and in some cases, institutional survival. That work touched every corner of the institution, from academic advising and financial aid to registrar operations. Every analytical choice we make today carries the weight of having been on the other side of those decisions.
That is what Baseline Analytics Group was built to address. A framework grounded in the published research in higher education economics, industrial organization, and spatial demography. Methodological decisions that trace to the literature. Thresholds that have an empirical basis.
We operate independently. Just the data, the method, and the work to provide you a map and a compass.
If you are working through an enrollment challenge, or concerned about your institution's risk exposure, or want to understand whether the intelligence framework applies to your situation, we are glad to talk through it. Tell us about your institution, the question you are trying to answer, and the decision that depends on it.
manuel@baselineanalyticsgroup.com