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Stephen Schiffman
Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at Olin and Babson Colleges
What are the key business issues institutions are trying to solve in sustaining and growing their online programs? What “value-adding” attributes of online education are as perceived not just by individual learners but more generally by customers and markets? These are some of the topics explored in the report “Business Issues in Online Education” (forthcoming in Elements of Quality Online Education: Engaging Communities, Volume 6 in the Sloan-C series) funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and based on my conversations this past year with over 50 interviewees at 25 online programs at eleven prominent not-for-profit higher learning institutions.
Here is a synopsis of mutual areas of institutional concern:
1) Setting tuition and fee levels. There does not appear to be agreement yet across (and even within some) institutions as to what tuition for online courses should be compared to face-to-face courses. Many are charging a premium through special fees, and work is progressing on setting e-tuition rates.
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2) Rationalizing work flow and funds flow. Institutions are building models to engineer the maze of support and delivery activities for online education, defining or redefining roles and mechanisms for funding the groups that perform those activities, including student and academic services, recruitment and marketing.
3) Generating revenue and funding. Many of the institutions were recipients of grants in the early days, either external or internal grants intended to initiate or grow online education. These institutions are looking for ways to make up for the loss of those initial grants.
4) Marketing. Marketing includes the set of business activities ranging from understanding customer needs, to selecting and shaping the product and services to meet those needs, to communicating with the target audience. I found widely varied approaches and levels of spending around marketing. Organization of and approaches to marketing vary from “informal” to “centralized” to “integrated.”
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Welcome to New Programs Listed in the Sloan-C Catalog
Florida State University
*Bachelor of Science in Nursing
*Master of Science in Educational Leadership/Administration
*Master of Science in Information Studies
*Master of Science in Science Education
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