Colleges should respond to coronavirus by overhauling funding and online courses | Opinion

Thirteen years ago, in an Inquirer article, I asked: “Suppose an epidemic disrupts an entire county or city school district, forcing schools and area colleges to close indefinitely? Where would teachers and professors go to teach, and where would the students go to learn?” I further warned that “teachers are woefully undertrained in how to use the Internet in their jobs.”

Unfortunately, that 2007 wake-up call to my higher education colleagues went largely unheeded at most institutions. Senior higher education administrators instead invested and borrowed billions of dollars to build new dormitories and classrooms to sustain growth that never materialized.

The COVID-19 outbreak has negatively affected hundreds of thousands of college students. Nearly all institutions are in crisis mode, having closed dormitories and dining halls, suspended study abroad programs, canceled on-campus events (athletics, performances, commencement), and moved on-campus courses to hastily created online alternatives.

The financial toll on higher education institutions — and ultimately on students — will be historic and enormous. College leaders must now account for unexpected costs (e.g., refunds for unused room and/or board, student activity fees, tickets to canceled athletic events, cleaning services) and unexpected loss of revenue: significant reduction in state funding, lost tuition from nonreturning international students, lower investment returns on endowments, and fewer alumni able to make charitable donations.

Meanwhile, in the past 10 years, hundreds of colleges have built luxury residence halls using private investor dollars. These financial arrangements, however, require colleges to guarantee a high occupancy rate that generates the revenue to pay investor fees. Failure to open dorms this fall would be fiscally cataclysmic.

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Consequently, college students may face significant increases in college tuition this fall (perhaps 5%-10%), as well as increases in room and board, as colleges reforecast their 2020-21 budgets. Students whose families have been financially impacted are forced to confront alternatives, like transferring to a less costly institution, or moving back home and commuting to campus.

In my work with colleges, I am urging them to act immediately to reduce costs and protect revenue, such as by renegotiating contracts with third-party service providers (food, janitorial, etc.) while campuses are empty, auditing insurance plans, selling off unnecessary assets, and trimming administrative red tape.

Consolidating services and programs will be essential. Having 10 public universities in one state offering an online psychology bachelor’s degree, for example, no longer makes sense. Likewise, having 10 different colleges at the same university employing their own online course developers, marketing team, and tech support operation is not an effective use of scarce institutional resources.

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While we have witnessed great progress in the number of colleges offering online courses and online degree programs in recent years, colleges need to reexamine their online learning policies and procedures before this fall. Faculty should not be permitted to create their own “boutique” online courses, which are difficult to scale in a crisis, often don’t comply with federal regulations on “regular and substantive interaction between student and instructor,” typically lack media-enriched content or simulated labs, and rarely use adaptive assessments to measure meaningful outcomes.

Developing quality online courses does not come quick or cheap ($10,000 or more per course). Use of third-party online course providers, leasing online courses from other institutions, or forming online course consortiums can help bring down costs.

Future economic circumstances will change the role of college presidents from one of building more buildings, to advocating for the fundamental transformation of the institution both online and on campus. Nothing else will work.

Let’s hope the coronavirus is the final wake-up call for colleges to reexamine the preparedness to deliver online academics to all students.

Kenneth E. Hartman is the past president of Drexel University Online and current senior partner at Hartman and Associates LLC. kenhartman.com