For 99 cents you can download a song on iTunes rather than shell out $15 for the entire CD. Maybe it’s time higher education also started using new technologies to shrink the cost of a college degree, says Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota’s governor.
“Instead of paying thousands of dollars,” he has said, why not $199 for “iCollege”?
A goofy name? Sure. But when the Republican governor pitched his iCollege idea on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart in June, he joined a growing debate about the Web’s potential to cut college costs.
Online courses have made college more convenient for millions of students. But here’s the rarely noted flip side: Online students may pay more than face-to-face ones. Sometimes a lot more.
Colleges defend the jacked-up prices as necessary to start, support, and develop rapidly expanding online programs. Other experts are dubious, arguing that colleges charge more for a simple reason: They can. The debate is gaining urgency as tuition continues to swell—and as new, radically cheaper options emerge on the margins of academe.
“Students are frustrated, extremely frustrated,” says Stephen Kouba Jr., president of the Student Senate at North Carolina State University, where annual tuition went up $900 this year. “Why does this cost more money? Why? What extra benefit are we getting?”
At N.C. State, one source of student frustration is the $531 premium that undergraduates sometimes must pay if they mix face-to-face and online courses, as they often do. That surcharge isn’t unusual. Students in the largest college at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee pay a fee of $275 for every online course. The University of Nebraska’s in-state students typically pay 15 to 20 percent more for online courses. At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, part-time M.B.A. students pay $750 per credit online, compared with as low as $620 on campus.
IN THE RIGHT COLUMN: More on Online Learning
BROWSE THE FULL ISSUE: News, Commentary, and Data
BUY A COPY: Digital and Print Editions at the Chronicle Store
When 182 colleges were surveyed last year, nearly half said tuition for online courses was often higher than for campus-based ones, according to a report by the Campus Computing Project and the technology cooperative WCET.
It’s a complicated picture that’s difficult to generalize about, because other aspects of online pricing can work in students’ favor. For example, online students from out of state may be getting a significant discount at colleges that don’t force them to pay the full nonresident surcharge. And colleges may waive some campus fees for distance-education students.
But many colleges seem to be using online programs as a way to make money in the short term to subsidize other activities, like campus-based classes, research, or the football coach’s salary, says Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector, a think tank in Washington.
“Colleges have an obligation to do everything they can to keep costs down for students,” says Mr. Carey, a regular contributor to The Chronicle. “I think it is irresponsible for colleges to charge students more for access to technology that ought to result in students’ paying less.”
Some students are already finding ways to pay less. Carson Romme, 34, is a real-estate agent from Minnesota who went back to finish his bachelor’s degree in marketing. He earned part of that degree through a company, StraighterLine, which offers students the option of taking unlimited online courses for $99 a month, plus $39 for every course started.
The for-profit company has generated buzz among education-technology observers and scorn from traditionalists. StraighterLine costs so little because it looks nothing like a university: It focuses on general-education classes. It lets students pay by monthly subscription. It doesn’t employ a traditional faculty.
Instead, students work at their own pace through online course materials created by the publishing company McGraw-Hill. They have instant access to tutors. Then, since StraighterLine isn’t accredited, the students transfer their credits. Several nonprofit and for-profit “partner colleges” have agreed to accept the company’s credits directly.
“It doesn’t matter if you take freshman English from a community college or from Harvard,” says Mr. Romme. “They’re essentially the same course. ... It was just a matter of cost, and how efficient it was as far as my time.”
He managed to knock off three StraighterLine classes in three months. He was willing to pay more for other courses he needed, which he took online from Brigham Young, Colorado State, and Louisiana State Universities. Mr. Romme cobbled it all into a bachelor’s degree from Excelsior College, a nonprofit, distance-learning institution based in New York.
Some people predict that more options of StraighterLine’s ilk will emerge. That’s an unappealing prospect to critics. Peg Wherry, director of online and distance learning at Montana State University, sees StraighterLine as a mechanical, vanilla-for-everybody model that leaves no room for improvisation or responding to current events.
“People serious about higher education would call that StraighterLine model impoverished,” Ms. Wherry says. “The premise has to be that the quality of an online course should be the same as the quality of a campus-based course.”
The issue of quality is often invoked by administrators defending online prices. Virtual programs can’t be priced significantly cheaper, not if you want to maintain quality, Ms. Wherry argues. Instruction is the big expense. And the cost of those instructors should not go down.
Then there’s continuing technology support. Online courses require more of it, says Laura Pedrick, special assistant to the provost at Milwaukee. Her university’s distance-education fee pays for things like IT support staff, infrastructure, and course redesign. Professors get stipends to move face-to-face courses online. That can involve a total reconception of how a course functions.
“A really high-quality online course is a wonderful learning experience,” Ms. Pedrick says. “But to get there, you can’t simply take your face-to-face course and directly push the content into your course-management system.”
A recent report about the University of North Carolina system gives some ammunition to the online-is-more-expensive camp. It found that distance courses cost more to develop, because of the staff support needed. But it also found that delivering courses costs the same in both modes.
Taking online courses can save students money in ways not reflected in the sticker price, notes Thomas K. Miller III, vice provost for distance education and learning-technology applications at North Carolina State. That’s because tuition is only part of the cost of attendance. Online classes can make financial sense for a student who might otherwise have to take time off work to commute to campus, find parking, and sit in class.
Another cost complication: Sometimes online programs are run by continuing-education units that must support themselves, so they price courses based on what it costs to offer them.
By contrast, colleges tend toward “postage stamp” pricing for on-campus courses, says Russell C. Poulin, deputy director at WCET. Just as you pay a flat rate to mail a letter across the street or across the country, on-campus tuition tends to be the same regardless of your program’s actual cost.
Online prices are sometimes inflated by factors that have more to do with organizational politics than with costs.
Early on, colleges needed to dangle incentives to entice professors to participate in online programs. “Unfortunately, they now expect it,” Ms. Wherry says with a chuckle.
In Milwaukee’s College of Letters and Science, for example, roughly 25 percent of the distance-education fee flows back to departments for expenses not directly related to online education, such as copy paper, travel, and faculty book purchases.
A college’s administration may collect excess revenue from self-supporting programs, Ms. Wherry adds. “A lot of people in my line of work call it ‘the black hole,’” she says when asked where the money goes. “We don’t know. It becomes part of the institution’s operating budget.”
Also, state support may be tied to enrollment, so setting up a competing online system that draws students away from on-campus courses could lead to less public money.
When the subject of discounting online programs came up on a distance-education e-mail list, Albert E. Powell Jr., director of learning technologies for continuing education at Colorado State University, fired off an e-mail questioning why any college would consider pricing an online program below residential tuition.
“You are announcing to the faculty and the public that your online program ‘isn’t as good’ as the campus program—which your faculty probably already believe,” he wrote. “Pricing below campus will only fan those flames with the faculty. Moreover, pricing lower will immediately attract your campus students, at which point your online program will rightfully be accused of stealing students away from the campus program—which is a kiss of death. Don’t even consider going there.”
But even some traditional distance educators believe that online education could be priced more cheaply.
How? One path is the master-course system. Experts can design high-quality core materials for an online class, which are then used by multiple instructors. Today, even for staples like freshman composition, professors often design and teach their own online versions.
“There are more-efficient ways to work in the online world that could result in savings to students,” says Pamela K. Quinn, provost of the distance-learning arm of the Dallas County Community College District. “But most institutions at this point are not doing that yet. It’s change—and a lot of institutions don’t want to change. To do it more economically changes the role of faculty. And most faculty like their role.”
