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Revamping Adult Education
Thursday, January 19, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time
Adult education is booming, and university administrators are increasingly attracted to the opportunity that continuing-education divisions offer to increase enrollment at little cost. But the competition for students is getting stiffer as for-profit colleges and distance-education providers go after the same market, and some established programs are out of date.
A few years ago, Northeastern University's continuing-education division was stagnant, with an enrollment of only half of what it had been in 1980. Now, thanks to a major overhaul that included slashing 34 programs that were languishing and adding 46 new ones, the past two years have seen enrollment climb nearly 20 percent and tuition revenue jump 21 percent.
What must universities do to make their continuing-education programs viable? How much involvement by full-time faculty members is desirable, and how can administrators get professors interested? What are the costs -- financial and otherwise -- of remaking a program as quickly as Northeastern has?
» On the Fast Track (1/20/2006)
Peter J. Stokes is executive vice president of Eduventures Inc., an independent research company based in Boston.
Erin Strout (Moderator):
Welcome, everybody -- my name is Erin Strout and I'm a reporter for The Chronicle's Money & Management section. I'd like to thank Peter Stokes, executive vice president of Eduventures Inc., for being our guest today. As continuing education programs become more important to colleges and universities, there are many issues administrators are grappling with. Peter, would you like to start off with a few introductory comments? Or just get started with some questions?
Erin Strout (Moderator):
Ok, I think we'll dive into some questions.
Question from Don Mikkelson, Chapman University College Modesto, CA:
Several years ago, I presented at a Life-Long Learning Conference in Charleston, SC. I was amazed by the numerous types of "continuing-education" structures that existed at the various universities and colleges represented at the conference. Even the names, that seem to describe the topic we are discussing, vary widely - extended education, continuing education, life-long learning, adult education, adult learning, alternative education etc. My question is: Has there been, or is there now a trend toward standardization of these diverse structures within IHE's, is the variety of structures expanding, or are the dynamics of this phenomenon remaining relatively stable?
Peter J. Stokes:
This is an interesting question to start with, because it highlights that the adult learner market has undergone dramatic change over the decades. Terms like "extension" were once associated with agriculture programs, for example. And "continuing education" once meant exclusively non-credit offerings. Nowadays the term is used in some contexts to refer loosely to all forms of adult education. The schools I work with continue to debate about the importance and value of name changes to their schools, divisions, units and so on. I think Northeastern's recent name change, which foregrounds "professional" education over "continuing" education is an example of the attention to this issue. So I would say that the transformation of the language we use to talk about this market is still on-going. Old terms fall away or are repurposed and new ones gain more power. But it's a work-in-progress. There is no one right name, of course - then everyone would simply have the same name.
Question from Laurie Albert, Nichols Collge, small private college:
We have an existing online program which has been updated to reflect the needs of today's online students. How do you recommend we best market our business programs? Is it better to stay within our geographic region or go global? Have you found mass marketing to be useful for anyone other than the large for profits?
Peter J. Stokes:
This is a great set of questions. The answers, unfortunately, can be rather complex. First, we have to look at the program in the online context. There are well over one hundred online MBA programs out there. So it's a competitively intense market on a national and local scale. So you want to think about what it is that makes - or could potentially make - a Nichols online business program different. Is it your brand strength in the local area? Your relationships with the local business community? The quality of your faculty? Then you need to think about price competition and whether you want to be a low-cost provider competing with public institutions. In your case, I would suspect not. You also have to ask what's going to attract students to your program? Do your students have certain characteristics that you can identify to assist you in targeting prospects. In sum, you would want to analyze a variety of factors about what in the business world we refer to as "the three C's" - the company (or "college" in this case), the competition, and the customers. Based on that analysis, you may find that there are opportunities locally, but also in certain niche markets nationally.
Question from Liz Heenan, La Salle University:
What is the right mix of credit-bearing programs vs. non-credit/professional development programming in successful Continuing Education units?
Peter J. Stokes:
The right mix is going to vary institution to institution, based on a variety of factors: whether it's public or private, its mission, its scale. Some of the schools that we work with are exclusively non-credit, but that's a minority of schools. The continuing education units at other schools - including the entire UC system - may be prevented from offering degrees (though they can offer credit courses that articulate with degree programs). In general, there has been increasing drift toward degrees, because they generate more revenue and surplus. Still, if we look at the 60+ schools we work with in a continuing and professional education context in aggregate, roughly a third of their enrollments are non-credit.
Question from Melanie Erickson, New College of California:
What kinds of success do you see for universities that want to offer corporate education programs (non-degree) as a means of generating both revenue and interest in their longer-term degree/certificate offerings?
Peter J. Stokes:
We've done research on the characteristics that employer organizations look for in third-party education and training providers. Corporations outsource about $13 billion of training a year, and by our estimate colleges and universities have only a $670 million share of that. The challenge is that corporations what customization and they want applied learning. It's difficult for many schools to adjust their offerings to meet these needs. Nevertheless, a number of schools are finding success - the key is often a matter of moving from a print marketing approach to an on ground "feet on the street" sales approach.
Question from Bill Sayre, College of Santa Fe:
My instititution can't afford $250K in market research. Any advice?
Peter J. Stokes:
Great question. There are a couple of things to think about with respect to price. First, how much are you already spending on research? Some of these costs may be invisible to you. Do you have staff conducting competitive scans of other schools' web sites, and so on? Second, what are the costs associated with doing no research whatsoever? What is your program success rate? Research can support "cost avoidance" by helping you to avoid poor investment decisions. Finally, what kind of return can you get on your research spending? If the return is three, five, ten times the cost, then it makes sense to find the money from somewhere. Of course $250,000 is not the entry price for conducting research. You can better leverage resources in-house, or you can make much more modest investments in outsourcing. Start small and see what kind of return you get.
Question from Winnie Sowder, Drexel University:
For-profits and distance-education providers offer great flexibility and have increased access to education for many adult learners. The quality of these programs has fallen under scrutiny, especially by proponents of bricks and mortar education. I feel that in the age of ubiquitous technology, universities will have to offer quality online programs to remain competitive and increase enrollments. Many in academe do not find these programs to be comparable in quality. Still, enrollment numbers speak for themselves and if universities are going to compete, they must consider what they are offering online. I noticed that Northeastern offers online courses. I’d like to know what percentage of their recent increase in enrollments can be attributed to online course offerings. Many adult learners are on board with online programs and it appears that the challenge lies in getting faculty to embrace these programs. Do you have any data on faculty opinion regarding online programs? I believe universities must embrace new technologies and reconsider their course delivery methods. In order to do so, they must have faculty support.
Peter J. Stokes:
Let me try to address the growth question in a general fashion. Overall, higher ed enrollments grow about 2-3% per year. By contrast, continuing and professional education units appear to be growing - on average - about 5% per year, according to some of the benchmarking research we've done. Now if we look at online growth, it's about 25% year over year across higher education. So clearly, a sizable portion of growth is coming from the online sector. One of the key challenges to seizing those growth opportunities, however, can be motivating faculty to deliver these courses and programs. I'm afraid that fight may be with us for awhile as we move from the early-adopters among faculty to the followers. You might also be interested in visiting a web site called No Significant Difference, which compiles research on the quality of online programs.
Question from Joe Ugras, La Salle University:
What should be the relationship between the newly formed Continuing Ed units or Colleges and the traditional unit's administrative structure?
Peter J. Stokes:
There are strengths and limitations to any model, so it's difficult to be prescriptive about it in some definitive way. As adult learners become more important - becuase they are becoming more numerous and because units that serve them generate more cash - we see a drift toward these units wanting more autonomy to overcome some of the speedbumps to growth (like motivating faculty to come along, for instance). But autonomy has its downsides, too. You can cut students off from centralized resources. In some schools these organizational issues are handled with considerable aplomb. At other institutions, its like adjuticating a divorce proceeding. Unfortunately, the answer is, it depends. But we've done some benchmarking research on these issues and in fact it appears that its proper that we have a variety of options for our diverse institutions.
Question from Annette, Penn State Univ:
Do you have any suggestions for forming faculty collaborations? Do faculty expect incentives, and if so, what type of incentives assist with motivating faculty to work with non-traditional students and alternative programs?
Peter J. Stokes:
We did a benchmarking analysis looking at these issues from one angle. One of the schools we work with was having a problem where faculty were misinforming students about summer session, leading them to believe they couldn't get credit for those courses, and so on. So we conducted some research and developed a mini-change management how-to that looked identifying the shared interests of the academic departments and the continuing education units. That study focused on opportunities to develop effective channels of communication and protocols for input across departmental lines. I think the example that is cited in the Chronicle's piece on Northeastern is a good one. Buy-in is critical. People need a seat at the table.
Question from Maureen Moriarty, Salve Regina University:
Is revenue sharing with departments that support continuing education programs common practice?
Peter J. Stokes:
It depends on the organizational structure of the unit. If it's a standalone college, then sharing is rare. If the continuing ed unit is really a marketing department serving the distinct academic departments, then yes, it's common. We recently undertook a financial benchmarking investigation to look at ratios of income lines as a percent of total income, and ratios of expense lines as a percent of total expense, as well as profit ratios, turnback, reserves. We're trying to help schools develop these comparable data sets so they have models to start with when structuring their own financial mechanisms.
Erin Strout (Moderator):
We have just about 30 minutes left, so if you have a question please send it now.
Question from Tracey Hebert , Rochester College:
Do you have a recommendation for administrators in calculating a reinvestment ratio for marketing/advertising from total revenues?
Peter J. Stokes:
We've done benchmarking work looking at marketing budgets as a percent of tuition, and we've focused on trying to identify rates of return by marketing channel. Unfortunately, very few schools track their expenditures in such a way as to facilitate that analysis. For example, if the continuing ed unit is primarily a marketing division supporting academic departments, it may be able to tell us how many leads it generates. But because those leads are then handed off to the academic departments - and never seen again in some cases - it's impossible for units of that type to calculate a conversion rate. They simply don't know who's converting. So having the right infrastructure and data sharing protocols is key. Once those are in place, it's possible to create some of that data, but when you have a small number of schools capable of doing that analysis it's risky to extrapolate a "best practice" - there are two many variables for the data to necessarily be statistically significant. It's an effort that take time and iterative investigations.
Question from Jim Hagarman, Drexel University, Goodwin College of Prof. Studies:
Northeastern has outsourced lots of traditional work- demand assessment, marketing, call center, advising. Is outsourcing a necessary part of the efficiency of CE Program incubation or was it part of the deal with the University in order to move forward?
Peter J. Stokes:
Many schools we work with outsource certain functions: lead generation, call centers, research. I would not say that outsourcing is ever "necessary" be definition. It depends upon the competencies you have in house, and the benefits you can potentially realize by outsourcing that activity - is the outsourcer more expert than your staff, for example? Many of the questions here are seeming to try to drive toward one right way of doing things, but of course there are many ways of getting things done - even if some are objectively more right than others. In my experience talking with administrators, more and more are looking to outsource non-core functions. If you have effective internal management of those outsourced suppliers, that can work very well. But it doesn't work without effort or oversight. And it's often a good idea to work with multiple vendors - in the lead generation area, let's say - so that you can measure the relative return you're getting from each. It's always risky to put all of your eggs in one basket.
Question from Mary Beth Lakin, American Council on Education:
I'd like to get your take on a recent Chronicle article on higher education in 2015: Daniel Yankelovich wrote that higher education must become more responsive to trends in changing life cycles, especially work/postsecondary attendance patterns for the 18-30 age group, and career transitions/personal goals of the 55-75 age group. How do you think colleges and universities could do a better job? Where are the gaps?
Peter J. Stokes:
I recently had the opportunity to provide testimony to Secretary Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education, and my remarks focused on the adult learner market and what higher education could do to better respond to their needs. Among those, I would include: more flexible course, certification, and degree formats; more flexible financial aid; more advocacy on behalf of adult learners generally and the institutional units that serve them. I also highlighted two areas in particular: distance learning and corporate training. Universities are getting better and better at online learning and are even - I believe - starting to win back share from the for-profits who had more early success in a number of cases. However, universities still aren't doing enough to serve the adult embedded in a job. And to do that better, universities are going to have to establish new jobs focusing on new competencies to better "sell" the benefits of higher education to employers - especially relative to commercial training.
Question from Bryan Woodhouse, Concordia University Wisconsin:
As mentioned earlier in this discussion, corporations want education that is applicable and tailored to their business. Some see certificate programs as a partial answer to this. Corporations are more apt to pay for a handful of courses as opposed to an entire degree program. Does research show that enrollments for certificate programs are climbing?
Peter J. Stokes:
We're actually undertaking an investigation of this very question later this year. Hopefully the Chronicle will invite us all back and we can discuss the results. What we want to create is a kind "certificate index" by industry. What industries and occupations value certificates most highly, and what new emerging professional positions require new combinations of disciplines to appropriate train individuals for those jobs? I look forward to seeing the answers. Many people are asking this same question.
Question from Howard Davis, Southern New Hampshire University:
We all repeat the adult education is where it's at mantra, but do you have examples of CE divisions building out new financial/org/pedagogical/technology integration models? Is CE really shifting the academic paradigm, or are we merely pouring new wine into old skins?
Peter J. Stokes:
For many years, I think CE was regarded a place where risky projects could be safely "thrown over the wall." Then - lo! - it turned out that flexible course formats (six weeks, nine weeks, weekend seminars, etc.) and online delivery (of courses and degrees) worked. Furthermore, cash got very tight over the last five years and CE has a history of covering its own costs and generating a surplus. So the perception - justifiably - is that CE is doing something right. Something entrepreneurial and responsive to the market. That said, it still shares 99% of the same genetic material with its colleagues in the "day school." But I think the innovation is real. And in many respects I think adult education is the future of higher education. Education is not going to be a four-year remove from society. Education is increasingly going to be embedded in the lives of working professionals and other individuals who want to continuously enrich their lives and challenge their intellects.
Question from John Batey, University of Indianapolis:
What seem to be the most successful strategies in increasing engagement and retention among adult learners in for-credit continuing education programs?
Peter J. Stokes:
From what students tell us, it's about scheduling, flexibility, location, faculty quality, and price. Many schools are making an effort to upgrade their student services, though students themselves rarely highlight this as an area that's very important to them. Perhaps they simply expect high service to begin with - it's hard to say. But students are very pragmatic. It has to work for them. And I think schools need to get better at "customer relationship management" or CRM, to effectively triage those students at risk of dropping out. And that's where services for students become critical. Proactively phoning students their third week in a course to see if all is going well. That kind of thing can net a few problem cases.
Question from Bridget Baldwin, Champlain College:
What are your views on national recruiting through use of lead generators? Is this a viable use of marketing dollars?
Peter J. Stokes:
Many of the schools we work with outsource lead generation and they all have good things to say about it, though not very many of them have been doing it for very long. And of course everyone is worried about the esclating prices per lead. In our marketing benchmark research we've seen that online leads can be quite cost effective. But again, it's wise to work with multiple vendors. By putting them in competition, you can identify the better providers.
Question from Tut Bailey, Penn State University:
According to the most recent Sloan Consortium study "Growing by Degrees," online enrollment increased from 1.98 million in 2003 to 2.35 million in 2004. While this provides a snapshot of the distance-education market of continuing education from an enrollment standpoint, is there a definitive idea on the number of students that are taking courses exclusively online or as part of a "blended" resident and distance-education curriculum?
Peter J. Stokes:
We're very friendly with the folks at Sloan and we share research results with them because the work we do is complementary. We do measure enrollments in fully-online programs, which Sloan does not. By our count there were 1.2 million students in fully online programs in 2005 and that number is growing by about 30,000 students a month. Hybrid education is something we see more commonly in a corporate context, though research we've done among prospective students in business, health, IT, and education shows that many future students are interested in considering hybrid delivery of programs.
Question from Dale Petry, SUNY Canton:
There has been some discussion regarding Continuing Education departments acting as marketing entities for Academic Programs. This implies a fairly strong link between Continuing Education and Academic Departments. Are there very many schools that continue to have primarily stand alone CE departments?
Peter J. Stokes:
About a third of the schools we work with are what we would classify as "standalone" - though that sample (about 63 schools today) is not necessarily representative of all 450+ continuing education units out there. We work with many of the largest schools, so that skews the make up of our group a bit relative to the whole market.
Erin Strout (Moderator):
Unfortunately we've run out of time. Thank you all for the many great questions. And thanks especially to Peter for his great answers.
Peter J. Stokes:
It's been a pleasure chatting with everyone today. I regret that we don't have more time to go deeper on those "it depends" answers. The answers are often there, but a more in-depth in-take is required to get at the right answer. In any case, I do believe that providers of adult learning are changing higher education for the better in many important and lasting ways. We look forward to continuing to support that work.