In a June 30, 2010 news item in the Wired Campus Section of Chronicle of Higher Education, Marc Parry wrote: “One university’s decision to close its central distance Education office has stirred a national debate over the best way to operate online programs.”
Continuing he remarked, “Under a restructuring of Texas A&M University at College Station, individual colleges will now manage online learning. And tuition paid for those programs will flow directly through those colleges.”
That last phrase captures at least half if not most of the debate. The various colleges want their piece of the revenue pie, if not the whole pie; however, they still expect the university to pick up all the infrastructure costs. The other major portion of the debate is control of the courses offered.
I have seen this debate played out at two different universities. The primary arguments for centralization that I have seen are: 1) A centralized office is more likely to be more economical for the university in terms of equipment and software costs. Bundling the hardware and software needs, the university is more likely to get better pricing and usage discounts from its vendors. Working with fewer vendors usually provides quicker and better service. 2) A centralized platform and centralized course management system is more student friendly. In situations where students may have to or want to take courses from different colleges (e.g. general education requirements), it is much easier for the students to have to learn only one platform. 3) A centralized office is more likely to avoid scheduling conflicts and more widely publicize the whole range of offerings. 4) Expenses are paid from one checkbook. A particular college can’t decide to skip payment of a particular bill (e.g. extra storage or bandwidth to cover usage, upgraded software and new or upgraded servers to handle the new software, or extra personnel to cover programming needs, course design assistance, and help desk features) and thereby curtail or eliminate online learning for that college. 5) It is easier to plan and provide for redundancy requirements, e.g.,( if one college is not using enough bandwidth all the time to warrant the expense of that extra bandwidth, there is the possibility of time-sharing among the colleges). If one server goes down, it is easier and quicker to off-load the work to other servers. Just ask students what they think of your program if they experience a week, a day, or even an hour of down time waiting for you to restore service.
In addition to the revenue argument, other major arguments for a decentralized approach are control of course content and faculty assignments. The various colleges want to make sure the assigned faculties are qualified to teach a given course and that the assigned faculties include all the “appropriate content” and none of the “inappropriate content.”
These are good arguments both for and against a centralized approach. With as much intellectual genius that exists in our institutions, it seems as if we should be able to design a workable hybrid approach. Such an approach would allow the separate colleges to participate in some of the revenue intake, still have some control over individual courses and faculty, and yet makes the whole process economically feasible for the university and accessible to both internal and external audiences of students.
Along with the revenue and expense questions, “To whom are the online courses targeted?” If the target of the online courses is only currently enrolled campus-based students, a decentralized approach may work. If the targeted audience includes a wider audience focusing on part or primarily on external students, a centralized or partially centralized approach makes more sense. External students not familiar with the university structure will be put off with what they view as a runaround, going from college to college to get what they need or want, and they will go to another university they view as more convenient. Internal students may complain about the “runaround” but they will negotiate the winding path to reach their desired goals. To make the online programs economically feasible, it makes more sense to make the intended audience as wide as possible. As in any compromise, both sides will not get everything they want and will have to give up something. That is the nature of compromise. Each university will have to decide what its negotiable items are.
By's Musings 
Posted on July 1, 2010
0