Southern New Hampshire University Flourishes With Online Programs
Gabriel Kahn of Slate reports that Southern New Hampshire University has dramatically expanded its student body and revenue through an active online learning program.
The Amazon of Higher Education
Five years ago, Southern New Hampshire University was a 2,000-student private school struggling against declining enrollment, poor name recognition, and teetering finances.
Today, it’s the Amazon.com of higher education. The school’s burgeoning online division has 180 different programs with an enrollment of 34,000. Students are referred to as “customers.” It undercuts competitors on tuition. And it deploys data analytics for everything from anticipating future demand to figuring out which students are most likely to stumble.
“We are super-focused on customer service, which is a phrase that most universities can’t even use,” says Paul LeBlanc, SNHU’s president.
The near demise and subsequent rebirth of SNHU offers a glimpse into the crisis facing American higher education. More than a third of American colleges and universities have deteriorating finances, according to a 2012 report. While more Americans find that a college degree is their only ticket to the middle class, fewer institutions are able to provide it at a reasonable cost.
When LeBlanc took over in 2003, SNHU was struggling. It had poor name recognition and fewer students could afford its rising tuition. When the recession hit, enrollment dipped and it looked as though the school would have to make cuts to stay afloat. LeBlanc, who previously had run an even smaller institution, 300-student Marlboro College in Vermont, thought SNHU’s one hope might be its fledgling online division.
He had long been friends with Clay Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor and author of the groundbreaking book The Innovator’s Dilemma, which examines the impacts of disruptive technologies on traditional industries. LeBlanc made Christensen an SNHU trustee and consulted extensively with him about embracing online education as a way to escape what seemed like certain decline.
In 2009, instead of cutting, LeBlanc asked the board to double down on the online division. He argued that rapid growth in online could quickly produce new revenues that could save the main campus in Manchester, N.H. “It was a big-gulp moment,” he says.
Comments
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO is conducting a huge television advert about on-line coursework. I don’t know if these adds are nation-wide.
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is heavily advertising during prime time on cable about their on-line courses.
These are the cracks that will invalidate resident students and their extreme costs for mostly dead-end majors, like humanities, english, art, music, and many other majors at resident Universities.
STEM is dead on arrival. Jobs in science (excluding some few advanced chemistry (PhD only), physics (PhD only, government only), and mathematics (high school teachers only) are very few. Technology, usually Computer “Science”, and Biotechnology are warm. Engineering in all of its variants is HOT!
The entireties of Liberal Arts, Music, Business, etc. are DOA. Yes, for $100,000 in student loans, these students might get a job as school teachers if they can gain certification (what a joke!).