Gauging Institutional Capacity for an OPM Contract

Before seriously considering an OPM partnership—a contract that will lock the institution into a new or expanded online market for postsecondary education, often with serious financial implications for the institution—a college should assess its own circumstances, outline its goals in considering the partnership, and establish basic requirements.

When partnering with any vendor, the college should have a clear understanding of what its goals are for the partnership. The college should consider why it is looking for support and what it wants its programs to look like as a result of the partnership. If the goal is to diversify the college’s revenue stream by starting new graduate programs, a well-designed OPM contract approached with due diligence might be a reasonable choice. It is important to note that starting up a new, online undergraduate degree can be tricky to accomplish well with OPMs because of the stronger support (and, therefore, increased costs) that undergraduate students typically need and the lower price point (and much lower loan limits) for these students. If the college is looking to support its faculty in the pivot online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, hiring instructional designers to develop new offerings or partnering with a technical assistance organization to improve the quality of online offerings might be a better option. A good instructional designer can help a college understand how to support faculty in using the existing learning management system (LMS) to support remote teaching, explore different synchronous and asynchronous teaching methods, consider how to assess student learning authentically in an online environment while minimizing cheating, and think about other ways to improve instruction at a distance. Before approaching any OPM, the college should have a clear understanding of what services it needs and what organization or individual could best provide them.

A first-order question for a college thinking about using online education as a growth strategy or a quick source of cash, rather than those who are just trying to make sure their students are getting a quality education in the time of COVID-19, should be where it sees market potential. As more and more colleges move their programs online, including community colleges that offer a low price point and brand-name mega-institutions that have already enrolled huge numbers of students online, the competition for online students has grown fierce.¹ A college considering entering that marketplace must be realistic in setting expectations for enrollment—and should assess whether the costs required to enter into an OPM partnership or otherwise establish an online-learning presence are merited, based on those realistic estimates and based on other, less-rosy scenarios. If a program would have to multiply in size or rapidly hit large enrollment numbers in order to be cost-effective, it is likely not a good fit for the institution.

An OPM can help to provide the up-front technology required to transition a brick-and-mortar program to online education. But the college itself needs to have the financial wherewithal to stand up new programs, often in a new modality, and to ensure the program meets its standards for quality, including providing services to students that may not be included in the OPM contract. Recent history is littered with the permanently closed campuses of colleges that sought to get out of a dire financial situation by entering the online marketplace and growing tuition revenue without the necessary financial stability to follow through.² Does the college have the financial stability to maintain quality online programs, and to sustain a loss if the partnership does not pan out or enrollment goals are not met?

As in any business partnership, colleges also need to consider the reputation and circumstances of the companies with which they are considering establishing relationships. Before an institution puts its reputation on the line by partnering with another company, it must ensure that the OPM is a good fit. In particular, it should examine whether the OPM’s model and market fit with the institution’s own profile; whether the OPM has the financial viability to pay whatever up-front costs it is promising to pay, or if it may go broke trying and leave the school without a contractor; and whether the OPM has a positive history and reputation in working with other institutions, or whether it has failures in its past.

One of the biggest questions will be the terms of the partnership as it relates to the role of the institution versus the role of the OPM. OPM contracts can fall across a wide spectrum of control, from managing the technology to handling the instruction. The institution should consider key roles it will maintain. For example, while the OPM should provide support in converting in-person courses to online, faculty should retain a strong role in ensuring the course includes comprehensive and rigorous content. Teaching and assessment are core responsibilities of a college and core to the governance model that underpins most institutions’ leadership models.³ But some OPMs have undermined that relationship. For instance, The Century Foundation found that the University of North Dakota’s contract with Pearson requires that the institution request any curriculum changes of Pearson, which evaluates the anticipated effect of those changes on enrollment and subordinates UND faculty judgment to the OPM’s assessment.⁴