You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
What do you think of the online program management industry?
Before you answer this question, please take a moment to peruse 2U’s newly released Framework for OPM Transparency.
The framework covers six main areas: 1) university oversight and accountability, 2) marketplace openness, 3) access, 4) affordability, 5) quality and 6) outcomes.
Within these six areas, 2U commits to disclose -- and calls on its competitors in the OPM ecosystem to reveal -- information and summary statistics across the following 16 variables:
- Standard contractual terms related to academic oversight and decision-making control with nonprofit partners
- Comprehensive list of partners and offerings
- Complete list of the services contractually provided
- Aggregate annual investment in partner programs
- Aggregate number of students enrolled
- Total advertising and digital marketing spend as a percentage of tuition generated
- Percentages of enrolled students by gender, race, age and geographic location, as well as data on enrollment by active-duty military and veterans
- Percentage of degree programs priced at or below their comparable campus-based program
- Average price, by discipline, of degree programs
- Average price of nondegree offering
- Total investment in student scholarships
- Hour requirements for synchronous, asynchronous and in-person clinical or immersive work in degree programs
- Attendance rates
- Student satisfaction ratings (e.g., Likert or Net Promoter Scores)
- Retention, graduation and, where applicable, employment outcomes and licensure-passage rates
- Time to completion by offering
What should we make of this 2U Framework for OPM Transparency?
Before offering some critical ideas, it is appropriate to give 2U credit for committing to publish these data in the form of the company’s promised inaugural Transparency Report in 2020. The company deserves credit for spurring the entire OPM industry to adopt policies of greater transparency.
The question is, will these actions by 2U change anyone’s mind about OPMs? I’m doubtful that the answer to this question will be yes.
The reality is that the OPM industry is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the academic community.
It is difficult to overstate the damage to the reputation of an OPM model built on revenue sharing and long-term contracts from publications such as Kevin Carey’s "The Creeping Capitalist Takeover of Higher Education" and the recent “Dear Colleges: Take Control of Your Online Courses” from the Century Foundation. (See Phil Hill’s and 2U’s David Sutphen’s responses to the Century report.)
Skeptics of the OPM model of nonprofit/for-profit partnerships are likely to object to the aggregate and descriptive nature of the data that the 2U framework proposes to disclose. Summary statistics on institutional and student outcomes at the institutional or portfolio level tell one part of the story. However, summary statistics do not allow any disaggregation of outcomes -- and hence detailed analysis -- at the level of individual programs or groups of learners.
Even if all of these objections were to be addressed, the problem remains that the Framework for OPM Transparency that 2U is putting forth is likely to be viewed by the academic community as an effort to gain competitive advantage -- rather than a tool for unbiased and scholarly analysis.
This last objection may, indeed, be unfair to 2U. The motives of 2U in releasing its Framework for OPM Transparency may be commendable. 2U is responding to calls for greater openness in the online program management industry.
If OPM skeptics are unlikely to be persuaded to modify their beliefs by 2U’s actions, what then might?
Recognizing that many in the academic community will never be comfortable with the OPM industry, there is room to carve out a space for independent, unbiased, data-driven and scholarly analysis of the nonprofit/for-profit partnerships in online education.
Research on the OPM industry, including the adoption of any frameworks for openness and transparency that are likely to be adopted across companies and viewed as legitimate by academics, must be independent of any single OPM player.
It is important to acknowledge that, to date, the higher education sector has done too little to create the conditions necessary for independent and scholarly analysis of the growth of nonprofit/for-profit online educational partnerships. Colleges and universities have not yet stepped up to prioritize, and find funding for, research directed at unpacking trends related to the OPM industry.
The lack of independent scholarship around OPMs may be, in large part, a function of the challenges of studying this industry. Schools are reluctant to release granular data on OPM contracts, as well as financial and student outcomes. The contracts between universities and OPM companies make it difficult -- if not impossible -- for either party to share data.
Creating the sort of data sets of anonymized institutional, company and learner data that would be necessary to study outcomes related to OPM partnerships will be difficult. The development of an infrastructure to study OPMs will require buy-in from across the university and company landscape.
This OPM research infrastructure, however, can only be created from inside of academia. The OPM companies are critical and necessary partners, but they can’t drive or conduct research on themselves. What the OPM companies can do is support the development of this research infrastructure -- through both funding and by making data that can be anonymized -- available to independent researchers.
Taking the lead on creating the conditions for independent, unbiased and data-driven scholarship on the OPM industry would constitute real leadership among the OPM corporate community.
At the very least, it is possible to hope that 2U’s willingness to put forth its Framework for OPM Transparency will have the effect of opening up a much-needed conversation about scholarship around nonprofit/for-profit partnerships in the online learning space.
