For Colleges, Outsourcing the Virtual Future Is a Bad Idea

More colleges are looking to online programs for financial health these days—and even survival—as demographic changes are leading fewer students to seek traditional campus experiences.But as many academic leaders look around for help going online, they often can’t find experts at their own institutions with the experience and skills to build a virtual campus, or to run the sophisticated marketing efforts it takes to attract students around the country and around the world. That’s why OPMs—online program managers, commercial vendors with expertise in launching and delivering digital programs—eagerly bounded in.Thomas D'Aunno’s experience is typical of those who go the OPM route. When D’Aunno, director of the Master in Health Administration and Health Policy & Management Program at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, was hunting for the best way to launch a new online degree, he quickly discovered all the things he didn’t know about the logistics of running an online program. “The question was which OPM we were going to work with,” he says, “not whether we were going to work with one.” Now in its first semester, D'Aunno’s new online master’s, not only reached its initial enrollment goal, but it’s also going very well. Not incidentally, he’s learned what it takes.