This is the first post in a blog series titled "Hunting for Elephants in the Room". For more context on this series, the introductory post can be found here. Each post seeks to identify and discuss the sometimes uncomfortable questions about how longstanding higher education assumptions and practices may change over the next decade.
Post-pandemic, residential student demand for online learning has increased dramatically. Studies from organizations like Anthology, Hanover and Champlain College have found that growing numbers of students want a hybrid experience that blends online and in-person coursework. A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article summed this up well: “Virtual courses used to be an exception. Now, they’re an expectation.”
This rising demand signals a need for colleges to challenge the assumptions they have used to build their instructional model for residential students.
In past decades, students often viewed online learning as a less desirable alternative to traditional, in-person instruction. Their ideal college experience was entirely on campus. When prospective and current students expected that 100% of courses be taught on-campus, the opportunities to partner with other institutions were limited. Beyond narrow agreements with nearby schools, courses needed to be delivered on-campus by a student’s “home institution.”
But now, many students are not only willing, but demanding, to take a portion of their courses online, erasing the prior geographic constraints on academic partnerships. Colleges that recognize and act on this transformation can affordably broaden and strengthen their academic portfolios by collaborating online.
This is already happening on over 115 campuses through a Program Sharing model developed by Rize. Participating campuses are sharing online curricula to offer over 600 majors, minors and concentrations in areas like Cybersecurity and Digital Marketing. These institutions are preserving the best parts of their face-to-face community while leveraging online classes to increase access to high-value degrees and decrease their average cost of instruction. And students are loving it; it’s a win-win.
This emergent, hybrid modality could be an incredible tailwind for small colleges with limited resources.
However, conversations about new models of undergraduate instruction are often met with an undercurrent of resistance. This should be expected. Campus leaders must reexamine deeply ingrained, centuries-old norms in order to address the elephant in the room: should colleges still teach all of their residential students in-person and with their own faculty?
At Rize, we believe institutions that confront this elephant and challenge their fundamental assumptions about residential education will outperform. We think institutions should embrace partnerships as a way to complement core distinctives. But even actively reaffirming why partnerships do not fit your institution is better than leaving the elephant unaddressed.
Over the last 5 years, I’ve sat in hundreds of meetings with faculty and staff who have thoughtfully collaborated on addressing the program sharing elephant.
One of the most common and understandable themes of concern is identity. What does it mean to confer a degree from College A if some of the courses are delivered by College B? Can a college maintain standards of quality and rigor if they share courses? Could program sharing erode the identity or ethos of an institution?
To ground the identity conversation, the most productive conversations I have experienced focus on mission.
Oversimplifying, the mission of most institutions is to deliver the best post-graduate outcomes for students. This is almost never confined to career outcomes, but career outcomes are often a critical part of the conversation. Beyond career outcomes, there are typically institution-specific elements of the mission like educating the whole person. Importantly, these mission statements are typically silent on how these outcomes should be met. They do not specify an instructional modality.
With an emphasis on career outcomes, most conversations lead to the conclusion that academic partnerships have the potential to support a college’s mission. Especially in the context of Rize’s model, the shared programs under consideration were specifically selected to widen access to great career pathways. They strengthen the college’s existing mission given how important a student’s major is to their post-graduate outcomes.
But taken to its extreme, too much sharing could erode the part of the mission that is intricately tied to the residential experience and the mentorship that campus faculty and staff provide. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, almost every conversation leads to the conclusion that program sharing must be implemented with guardrails.
For example, Rize works with a faith-based institution in the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities. The college's mission includes developing and sending servant leaders to advance the Kingdom of God.
So a program sharing partnership with a faith-based institution might incorporate several guardrails to maintain identity in support of mission:
In fact, with the right guardrails in place, institutions with scarce resources see that partnerships can help them invest more of their budget into areas that reflect and reinforce their identity. For example, the cost savings on developing a new program might be reinvested into scholarships, community events or career services.
It can be tempting to believe you have to create every component of a product, but if you work backwards from a mission to create the best outcomes, it’s rare that 100% vertical integration is best (100% vertical integration is when a company owns all stages of its production process rather than incorporating external contractors or suppliers). Especially for smaller organizations, you can only do so many things well on your own. Collaborating with external institutions in areas that are not your core competency can actually preserve your focus and resources for the places where they are best spent.
If the mission is to deliver value, how that value is delivered should be flexible within certain parameters.
In every evaluation I’ve been a part of, the willingness to challenge longstanding assumptions and voice disagreement about potential new models leads to a better outcome. New partnership models have potential, but done poorly, they can present risks that are as serious as compromising identity. An open conversation allows colleges to proactively create solutions that identify and address potential challenges.
In several cases, I’ve heard faculty and staff conclude that a decision to exclude shared online programs would actually counter an institutional identity focused on student outcomes and access.
While there is no one right answer, institutions that intently explore the value and drawbacks of partnerships will find themselves better prepared to navigate the future than institutions that assume the next decade will look like the last 100 years.
