New Adjunct-Focused Venture Wins Approval to Offer Courses

A new for-profit education organization, designed to give more academic and financial control to the adjunct instructors who teach its online courses, has just won approval from the state of Vermont to operate.

The Vermont State Board of Education’s approval of Oplerno (the company’s name stands for “open learning organization”) means that its courses can qualify for credit at colleges and universities, at the institutions’ discretion.

Robert Skiff, the entrepreneur behind Oplerno, says he plans to begin offering the first classes within three weeks and to offer as many as 100 by the end of 2014. Already, he says, more than 80 faculty members have signed up to develop classes in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences.

Under the Oplerno model, tuition per course would run from about $500 to $1,500, with a maximum of 25 students per class. Instructors will design—and own—the content and set the price of the course, within those parameters. The instructors would then earn 80 percent to 90 percent of the revenue the class generates.