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Several Texas colleges are using private recruiters for online classes

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More than 100,000 students have been recruited to online classes in Texas since 2007.

Several Texas public universities have turned to private companies to help enroll thousands more students — not for classes on campus, but online.

Some state leaders want to explore expanding that model. They see potential to educate more Texans at lower cost.

But others worry a massive online expansion could hurt academic quality, while sending millions of tuition dollars to for-profit ventures.

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“I would always have concerns about the quality in those circumstances,” said Peter Hugill, a geography professor at Texas A&M University and an officer with the American Association of University Professors. “What you’re risking doing is substantially lowering the quality of the overall education.”

With state universities under the gun to cut costs while enrolling and graduating more students, the discussion often turns to online education.

Gov. Rick Perry has challenged colleges to offer a $10,000 bachelor’s degree, with distance learning playing a role. The chairman of the University of Texas System board of regents has suggested boosting UT-Austin’s enrollment by about 18,000 undergraduates and slashing tuition charges — a goal that would likely require online classes.

A UT System task force is studying how to serve more students online.

Jeff Sandefer, the Austin oilman, educator and Perry donor whose higher education proposals have sparked controversy at UT and A&M, has warned of a coming “tsunami” that will change the economics of education and how it’s delivered.

For-profit companies stand to benefit.

Share of tuition

With names like Academic Partnerships, 2tor and Embanet, these companies pledge to dramatically increase student rolls — often in fields like nursing, business and education — in exchange for a share of the university’s tuition revenues.

What makes this model different from, say, the for-profit University of Phoenix is that the nonprofit colleges provide the instruction and award the degrees.

100,000 recruited

Take Academic Partnerships, created by Dallas entrepreneur Randy Best. In less than four years, it has recruited more than 100,000 students into online programs. Clients include UT-Arlington, Texas A&M-Commerce, Lamar University in Beaumont and Arizona State University.

Professors at those colleges teach the classes and control the content. Academic Partnerships markets the program, recruits students and provides the online platform. The company receives 50 percent to 80 percent of tuition costs, based upon a review of several contracts.

Hugill, the A&M professor, asked, “How the heck are you going to make money at the university if a private company’s skimming that much money off the top?”

The answer is volume. Plus, colleges still receive state funding, application fees and the like for every student they enroll. Officials at UTA and Lamar University also said they’ve renegotiated their contracts to keep a bigger share of the tuition.

Are online classes cheaper than traditional ones? Are they better? It’s hard to generalize.

Experts say online classes tend to have a lot of upfront costs but can be cheaper in the long run. Quality depends on whether the professors work to customize the class for an online format.

The names of some online education companies and their executives have surfaced during recent debates on the mission of the state’s top universities. Perry and some UT and Texas A&M regents have pressed campuses to enroll more students, reduce expenses and put more emphasis on teaching.

Concerns

Some proposals worry alumni, faculty and students about preserving educational quality at the state’s flagship schools.

UTA offered its first online courses more than a dozen years ago, to serve more students — like those working, raising families or serving in the military. Three years ago, UTA signed up with Academic Partnerships to help with education and nursing online programs.

The company has helped UTA increase its nursing program from 1,900 students to more than 6,600 in just two years.

“Our experience with them has been nothing but outstanding,” said Michael K. Moore, a UTA senior vice provost, who also teaches political science on campus and online.

He stressed the professors and curriculum are “100 percent ours.” A separate spinoff company, Instructional Connections, provides online teaching assistants, but they’re hired subject to UTA’s approval.

UTA student Ha Nguyen, 33, is earning her bachelor’s nursing degree online through Academic Partnerships. She was skeptical at first. Would the online classes be watered down? (No.) Could she learn without having professors lecture in person? (Yes.) Now she’s a fan of the program, though she said it’s not for everyone.

“You’ve got to be really self-disciplined and very motivated to get through the program,” she said. The on-campus program lasts two years, while the online one is compressed into 15 months. Like traditional students, she does clinical rounds in a hospital setting to get hands-on experience.

The bachelor’s of science degree in nursing through Academic Partnerships costs $16,332, about $1,400 less than what a student in the traditional on-campus program would pay.

The approach hasn’t always received warm welcomes.

In Ohio, the University of Toledo and Cuyahoga Community College dropped plans to partner with Academic Partnerships because of faculty opposition, according to news reports.

Toledo professors feared the partnership with the company, then known as Higher Ed Holdings, would “commodify students and curriculum in a way that violated the university mission,” Inside Higher Ed wrote in 2009.

At Arkansas State University, one professor called the arrangement a “scam,” saying the university had chosen “quantity over quality.”

In those cases, though, professors also objected because they felt they had been left out of the process. Officials interviewed at UTA and Lamar said that’s not the case and that their faculty have been on board.

Academic Partnerships has approached other universities, including UT-Pan American and UT-El Paso, administrators there say. They’re considering such partnerships but haven’t committed to anything.

Quality vs. profit

UT-Austin officials are interested in learning more about these companies but believe a nonprofit model better suits their needs, said Gretchen Ritter, a vice provost who oversees efforts to improve the campus’ online learning.

“Questions have been raised about partnering with for-profit partners regarding the impact that the for-profit model has on educational quality and outcomes (in terms of overly aggressive marketing, lower completion rates, etc.) that I think should make us cautious,” Ritter wrote in an eMail.

UTA officials say they haven’t encountered those problems, noting their online nursing students perform just as well as those on campus.

Whether universities work with for-profit companies or not, some observers say online education and other new approaches will only gain traction, and colleges must adapt.

Sandefer said, “You have to be a Luddite to cling to the idea that outdated lectures, delivered to hundreds of bored students in impersonal lecture halls, results in much useful learning in the 21st century.”

Key players

As Texas explores ways to make state universities more efficient and accessible, one consistent theme that has emerged is online education, including a new model in by which universities team up with private companies. Here are some of the people involved and a timeline of the efforts:

Randy Best: Dallas entrepreneur and founder of Academic Partnerships (formerly Higher Ed Holdings), a company that helps state universities build online enrollments in specific fields, such as business, education and nursing. He also launched a global chain of for-profit universities.

Wallace Hall: Dallas businessman appointed to the UT System Board of Regents in February. He heads a regents’ task force on blended and online learning.

John Katzman: Founder and CEO of 2tor, a company that helps public and private universities deliver online classes around the world. He also founded The Princeton Review, a college admissions test preparation company.

Gene Powell: Chairman of the UT System Board of Regents.

Jeff Sandefer: Austin oilman, founder of a nonprofit business school and Perry donor who proposed controversial “breakthrough solutions” to make universities more productive and affordable. The ideas include awarding teacher bonuses based on student ratings and giving students vouchers to attend public or private colleges.

Richard Vedder: Director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a Washington think tank, and a senior fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. He argues American universities have become less productive and strayed from their teaching mission, and believes for-profit and online education can help bring needed change.

Copyright (c) 2011, The Dallas Morning News. Visit the Dallas Morning News online at http://www.dallasnews.com/ [5]. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.