Another thing that is important is to offer enrollment or admissions every term. When working professionals are ready to go to school, they're ready to go now. That's one of the things for-profit institutions have successfully done. They see an opportunity in the marketplace and they understand the working professional audience, so they offer admissions several times a year. And that's important. The more traditional institutions have had a tendency historically to admit students to programs once a year in the fall, or twice a year, but they have not necessarily offered admissions year-round and sometimes they haven't offered a curriculum in the summer. And that's a problem. Students who are working professionals, they work year-round and they are willing to go to school year-round.
We believe in a prescribed curriculum approach. I think the more traditional students on campus, the younger students, are used to taking a lot of electives and having lots of choices. And that works well when you have a lot of courses you can offer on campus. When you take it out to a large distance audience, however, then that's not a scalable model. An important thing is to prescribe the program and tell the students exactly what they need. Set it up in a way that they can complete it in a reasonable period of time. Provide the support they need to be successful and they will definitely graduate on time.
IMS Global: The statistics show that enrollment in campus-based programs is static or increasing at a small rate while distance learning is showing significant growth. Do you find that the audiences you're trying to reach, the working professionals, are they becoming more comfortable with the concept of online learning? How is the profile of the average online learner changing?
GP: We've seen incredible growth rates in the programs we support as well as the demand from more traditional institutions that want to be in this space. The non-traditional working professional adult student is really becoming the traditional student. As you said, the growth rate in online education, which is primarily to the working professional audience, is really where the growth in higher education is coming from. The growth rate for programs targeting the traditional 18- to 22-year-old campus-based student is flat. We expect that about one in 10 students in 2008 are going to be working professional students. Cost is important to them, but convenience is the number one most important thing to them. They need education that will fit into their lifestyles and their work styles. They need to know that this education is something that can translate into higher earning power or career advancement for them. Their employers are demanding more and more education of them and online education is a way to satisfy that demand.
IMS Global: You touched a moment ago on faculty. They have traditionally been reluctant in their adaptation of teaching online. Do you find that trend changing? Are they more willing to teach from a distance?
GP: One reason it's changing is because some of the older faculty are beginning to retire and institutions are attracting a newer, more technology savvy faculty to replace them. Certainly, the institutions themselves are driving this trend to move more courses online. I speak at a lot of conferences and one of the questions I often ask the audience is, "Why are you interested in online education? Why are you doing this?" A couple of years ago, the answer might have been because the president was asking them to do it. Today, the answer is, "We have no choice. We have to do this." Most institutions are either moving in this direction or planning for it. The for-profits like the University of Phoenix, they've been in this space now for quite some time and the traditional not-for-profits are very aware of that. Faculty are now more driven toward understanding this audience and providing curriculum and programs to serve them.
