There have been several very public failures of online degree programs in the past 12 months, and several others that were not so public as well.  As an observer of online higher education, I think it is safe to say that programs are closing almost as quickly as they are being launched.  The fact is traditional institutions seem to have a lot of trouble figuring out how to make a new online division successful.  In the process of trying to determine the equation for success, these colleges often spend large sums of money only to eventually close the online programs entirely.  This pattern begs the question, ‘why does this happen?’.  I think that there are several answers to this question, all of which center around a common theme: traditional institutions simply do not approach online education correctly.  The following are some flaws in approach that lead to online program failures.

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In this industry you will find many people who say, “If a lead doesn’t convert within a certain window of time,” it is not a quality lead. They might also allude to the phone number being wrong or email being bad as a sign of a lead not worth working. I would say that this view as it pertains to quality is narrow and unrealistic.

We work in an industry where the student is non-traditional, many times not immediately ready for school and frankly a bit unsure if they want to commit to a life change at all. So the phone might be their cousin’s, and the email their friends. What does this; or rather what are they as students, saying to us? They are saying that we need to rethink our definition of quality and change the methodology that we use in working with our leads. We need to meet the student where they are and be willing to take them with us to where they, deep down, want to go.
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My girlfriend and I get calls constantly; not because we’re popular but because we own credit cards, we applied for the super savers card at the local grocery store, we subscribe to magazines, we’ve ordered something online, etc. Our information has been distributed and sold to the highest bidding corporation whose aim is to sell us a product or service we don’t necessarily need, or more importantly something we don’t necessarily want. As a society we have dealt with this for years and now we don’t answer the phone if we don’t recognize the name on the caller ID, we hang up the minute we hear someone introduce themselves as “Jim from ABC company…,” we ignore anyone who sounds like they’re trying to sell us something. It’s become ingrained in our behavior as an automatic response to just say “not interested” or to simply hang up the phone. Even when they get us to hear them out, do we really listen? As admissions counselors, this is the cultural environment in which we have to work and the stigma we’re trying to overcome.
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What’s going on in enrollment these days? Those of us that work in and around the business of enrolling non-traditional students have started to notice some trends that just don’t make sense. More and more schools have entered the online and non traditional student education space, and the competition for the same students has become increasingly fierce. This competition has led to strong arm recruiting tactics, dishonesty through omission, outright lying and artificially manufactured urgency. Sadly the ones who suffer are the people who are earnestly looking for an educational solution.

Too many institutions have lost sight of the fact that if you take care of you take care of your students, the students will take care of your institution. It boils down to simple math. If the average cost per acquisition is between $1,000 and $2,000 and a first course costs anywhere from $500-2000, then most institutions will not realize any tuition revenue until the second and sometimes even the third course. If you are forcing students in to class, don’t be surprised to see them drop out of class.

The one common theme among students that persist in class is this, they are comfortable with the decision that they are making. The choice to go to school boils down to a student deciding to get over his or her fears about finding the time, paying for school and most importantly the fear of failure. No amount of arm twisting is going to change these fears. The admissions rep can only usher the prospective student to a place where he or she can make the decision on their own. When a student drops because they didn’t have the right expectations, the admissions rep is 100% to blame. The golden rule applies to enrollment as well, take care of you students and they will take care of your institution.

In the competitive job market, where job security is more of a privilege than a guarantee, employees are increasingly turning to higher education in their quests to find professional stability. During the past three decades, participation in adult-centered educational programs has risen steadily, creating a competitive environment among today’s learning institutions. Whereas reputation had often been the key to an individual’s choice of schools, traditional universities are now facing the challenges created by adult-centered institutions.

Today’s traditional universities often find themselves over-subscribed and unable to accommodate the vastly growing number of traditional student applications. In addition, the high demand for adult-centered programs has pushed the traditional institutions to compete in the nontraditional marketplace. To meet this high demand and provide educational opportunities for both traditional and non-traditional students, universities are using various means of advertising to inform the public of the unique programs they (universities) have developed.
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