Via eCornell, here’s a story in TMCnet about massive growth in UMass’ online learning program. What I’m interested in, though, is whether this growth leads to profit. It’s great to bring money into the institution, but it would be even better if some of that money stayed in the institution after paying for the program’s costs. While the article isn’t clear, it seems to say that profitability is even more impressive in these programs than revenues. Here’s what they say:
More than 90 percent of the revenues are retained by the UMass campuses to support education and research programs.
If I read this correctly, then UMass is seeing a 90% profit margin on $14 million in revenues. That’s pretty outrageous.
If anybody has any info on e-learning profitability for higher ed programs, please share it in the comments section for this post.
