Ensuring Quality in an OPM Partnership

Critically, an institution must ensure that its online programs meet its own standards for quality and that students are receiving a valuable postsecondary education. Analysts from Moody’s have warned that online education, particularly in partnership with OPMs, could lead to “brand dilution,” and is particularly dependent on the institution’s quality.¹

Accrediting agencies are required under federal regulations to approve any contracts related to outsourcing more than 25 percent of a program, including to an OPM.² However, accrediting agencies have historically done so with varying degrees of rigor.³ And new regulations that took effect on July 1, 2020, will now permit accreditors to defer decisions on such contracts to their staff rather than the full commission of the agency, as well as require them to make speedier decisions.⁴ Thus, accreditor reviews of OPM contracts are likely to be at least as perfunctory as they have been in the past, if not more so.⁵ Moreover, OPMs fall largely outside the sphere of current federal oversight, and are largely unexamined by the Education Department.

Colleges are therefore, in effect, the only real check on the quality of the OPMs they contract with. And they will continue to bear responsibility for the quality of the education they provide. The questions in this brief are designed to help the institution assure quality. They complement other suggestions in this document related to faculty involvement in developing courses, as well as regarding the key roles of the institution as opposed to the roles of the OPM in establishing a partnership.

The institution should carefully vet the OPM to ensure it is qualified and experienced enough, and meets the institution’s standards for, a corporate partnership. As experts from Moody’s have noted, a “lack of published research on the success rates of OPMs and the outcomes, financial or educational, that universities have had from such engagements….makes it more difficult for universities to make an informed decision on whether to engage third parties, which ones, and on what kind of contract.”⁶ The college should investigate past programs (both current and no longer operating, if applicable) to assess the OPM’s track record and ask about institutions’ experiences with the OPM. The OPM should be able to provide its own, verifiable information on customer satisfaction, as well as student success in the programs. And the institution should ask OPMs about their executives’ pasts, as well; many OPM executives are former executives of notorious for-profit colleges like Kaplan, University of Phoenix, and Career Education Corporation, all schools with long histories of abuses.⁷

Faculty involvement in assessing the OPM and its programs is critical. The institution should invite faculty into the process of considering the partnership and ensure that the institution’s instructors are comfortable with the level of rigor the OPM provides—before any contract is signed. Course audits of other courses offered by the OPM could be helpful in deciding whether to partner with the company. Faculty should also be engaged in developing new courses and establishing online programs; involved in the curriculum development; and should serve as evaluators of the course prior to launching it with students.