Future of college-New York magazine article

[Caracal]

[quote author=marshwiggle link=topic=1371.msg31364#msg31364 date=1590435863
Consider what someone above called "cattle-call" courses; i.e. huge lectures with tons of students. These courses are effectively cheap to teach, since one faculty stipend is split among potentially hundreds of students. (TA grading, etc., scales by the number of students if things aren't auto-graded.) Sometimes these courses are even taught by part-time faculty, who are paid even less. These courses effectively subsidize small upper year courses.
Suppose tution is $10000 per year, and each student takes 10 courses. Each course "pays" $1000 per student, but if there are 100 students in the class then that one course effectively brings in $100k but probably only costs about $10k to teach (less if the instructor is part time.)  On the other hand, a 4th year course with 10 students only brings in $10k. If there are less than 10 students, it loses money.

So if an online course can teach 1000 students with one instructor, then it saves money. If the same course can be used at multiple institutions, it gets even cheaper.  If the institution can "buy" that online course for less than $100 per student, they save money, and if the company produces the online course for say, $80 per student they can make 80k for that one course.

(Reminder: All kinds of institutions use the same introductory textbooks, and many include assignments and exams. If lecture delivery is the only "in-house" part of the delivery, it's not a big deal to change that.)

These huge introductory courses, which are similar to those offered at hundreds of other institutions, are the "low-hanging fruit" which online education will most readily displace. It's not about replacing the entire degree; it's about identifying the parts that are easy to deliver at similar quality but lower cost.

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I doubt you could do either with this idea. First of all, I doubt there's really that much money to be saved or made here. I can tell you right now that 80 bucks per student per course would not be cheaper than an adjunct. Start thinking like 30 bucks a student. Even there, I wonder what extra costs might result. Is this company going to provide teaching assistants too? Or are students just on their own? If so, you probably are going to have to spend more money on tutoring help. The money starts melting away real quick.

Then there's the other part of the equation. What if a student thinks the answer is wrong? Do they write this company? If they don't like the response, do they go complain to the dean? What about accommodations? Dealing with instructors is a pain, but at least they work for the school.