Dollars and Degrees – Continued Focus on Cost and Price of Digital Learning

For today’s post we are happy to welcome members of the WCET Steering Committee to discuss the efforts of the Digital Learning Economics working group. The Steering Committee forms working groups each year to address critical issues in digital learning.

In 2024, the focus is on helping digital learning leaders engage effectively in budget and funding discussions within their institutions.This initiative, sparked by round table discussions in October 2023, aims to ensure that financial decisions are grounded in a comprehensive understanding of higher education’s digital learning landscape and align with institutional missions and goals.

In this post, the working group explores challenges in this area, shares insights from past research, and invites you to contribute your experiences and strategies for navigating the economics of digital learning.

Enjoy the read,
Lindsey Downs, WCET

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Each year, the WCET Steering Committee members form working groups to explore some of the most important issues in digital learning. The 2024 WCET Steering Committee Digital Learning Economics working group aims to empower digital learning leaders to participate in the budget or funding conversations at their respective colleges or universities. We hope that resulting decisions will be made based on a sound understanding of higher education digital learning and data in accordance with the institution’s mission, vision, and goals. This project was born from in-person October 2023 round table discussions that identified ROI and the value of higher education as topics of importance. This is familiar territory for our community; in 2017, WCET published a report on the cost and price of distance education based on a national survey. Recently, Robert Kelchen, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, mused, “I may be a bit biased about the value of understanding higher-education finance given the course that I teach, so take it from The Chronicle’s most recent Trends Report: If people do not understand the types of conversations that are happening — and how to influence them — they may be in for a rude awakening” (2024).

The collective experience of the steering committee identified these problems related to digital learning economics:

• There is a lack of a healthy economic model for digital learning allocation through higher education institution budgets, especially as different governance models exist at different institutions.
• The higher education bubble may have already burst. Will the availability of digital learning continue to be a differentiator for schools, or will student support services (which cost more) become more important to our students?
• How should institutions define digital learning cost data? What is being paid for? Who is paying for it? How do we, as a profession, even define the cost of distance education? Or the revenue?

What to Expect from Our Working Group

The Steering Committee Working Group will continue to develop other resources and articles throughout the rest of the year. As WCET begins to analyze and report on data from a new survey regarding the cost and price of distance education, we hope to offer additional institutional examples for calculating the cost of digital learning and highlight how we, as Higher Education leaders, can best communicate that information to institutional leadership.

In the meantime, we would like to hear your stories and experiences about how your institution thinks about the cost of digital learning and uses that information to communicate its institutional value. Share your insights with us.

• Do you have a way to calculate digital learning’s cost (and price)? If so, are you willing to share your process with us?
• How your institution handles digital learning revenue. Does it stay in a centralized distance education department? Does it revert back to the academic department offering the course? Or does it become a part of the institution’s general revenue?
• How do you communicate the value of digital learning to your campus leadership?
• What role does digital learning play in strategic discussions at your institution? Are digital learning leaders “at the table” where strategic finance decisions are being made?

We’re looking forward to continuing our work in this area and sharing what we learn with the WCET and higher education community.

References

Kelchin, R. (2024, March 13). Are colleges really on the brink? The Chronicle. Are Colleges Really on the Brink? (chronicle.com)

– Post authored collaboratively by the Digital Learning Economics Steering Committee Working Group, Erika Swain and Missy Lacour.