Program feasibility

Know what would need to be true before you launch a new program.

New program ideas often begin with enthusiasm, an employer’s interest, or a perceived gap in the market. Provost Lab tests those ideas against demand, competition, labor signals, financial assumptions, curricular alignment, and institutional fit before resources are committed.

Not only “Can we launch this?” but “Should we launch this here, now?”

A program that succeeds at one institution can struggle at another with a different mission, region, or student population. Feasibility in Provost Lab begins with your institutional profile and the comparators you select, so the evidence is read against your situation rather than a national average.

Provost Lab comparator search listing every institution reporting completions in the program, with filters for sector, state, and Carnegie class, beside a curated list showing one institution’s program details — **Leader-selected comparators.** Filter every institution that reports completions in the field by sector, state, and Carnegie class, then build a curated list. Each comparator’s tuition, credits, length, delivery, and admissions are researched and cited.

Questions a feasibility study answers

Is there credible student, employer, and labor-market demand?
Who else offers similar programs, and which comparators matter most in our context?
What would it take to compete, differentiate, and sustain the program?
What would need to be true financially, and how sensitive is the result to each assumption?
Which emerging roles connect to this opportunity?
How well would the proposed curriculum align with the knowledge and skills those roles require?
What curricular adjustments would strengthen that alignment?
What synergies or cannibalization risks exist with our current programs?
Does this fit our mission, identity, and strategic direction?

Chart and table of five occupations related to a proposed program, plotted by number employed and median wage — **Market signal strength.** The occupations a proposed program prepares students for, plotted by employment and median wage, from Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

From labor signals to curriculum.

Provost Lab maps a proposed program to the occupations it prepares students for, then examines the knowledge and skills those roles demand. Where the proposed curriculum falls short, it suggests adjustments, including courses, concentrations, and experiential components, that would strengthen the program’s alignment with the roles employers are hiring for.

Every feasibility study can also be read against your existing portfolio, so a promising new program is weighed against what it might draw away from the programs you already offer.

What would need to be true financially.

The financial model projects revenue and costs from two years before launch through year five. Each input, from cohort size to faculty lines, records the assumption behind it, so a study shows not only whether the numbers work but what they depend on.

Provost Lab financial model showing projected revenue and costs by year, with five-year net and break-even year — **Revenue and costs.** A graduate program modeled from pre-launch through year five, with the break-even year and five-year net shown at the top.

When the market moves faster than the codes.

Some of the most promising program ideas do not fit neatly into existing CIP and SOC categories. Interdisciplinary concepts, new professional roles, and fast-moving fields often appear in employer language years before federal classifications catch up.

Exploratory feasibility is built for those cases. Instead of relying on a code that does not yet exist, it examines emerging roles, adjacent markets, related skills, and evolving employer language, so leaders can still ask disciplined questions about demand, fit, curriculum, competition, and strategic value.

See feasibility in action.

Bring a program idea you are weighing, and we will walk through it in the demonstration environment.

Request a demo