Using ROI for Strategic Planning of Online Education

Published in association with  
While higher education has rarely employed ROI methodology―focusing more on balancing its revenue streams, such as federal, state, and local appropriations, tuition, and endowments with its costs―the rapid growth of online education and the history of how it has evolved, with its potential for institutional transformation and as a major source of revenue, as well as its need for substantial and long-term investment, makes the use of ROI an imperative. This book both demonstrates how ROI is a critical tool for strategic planning and outlines the process for determining ROI.

The book’s expert contributors lay the foundation for developing new practices to meet the compelling challenges of online education and identify new models that offer the potential for transforming the educational system, meeting new workforce demands, and ultimately improving the economy.

The opening chapters of the book explore the dimensions of ROI as a strategic planning process, offering guiding principles as well as methods of measurement and progress tracking, and demonstrate the impact of ROI across the institution.

The book identifies the role of previously overlooked constituents―such as online professionals as critical partners for developing institutional strategy and institutional stakeholders for vital input on inclusivity, diversity, and equity―and their increasingly important role in impacting the ROI of online programs.

Subsequent chapters offer a range of approaches to ROI reflecting the strategic priorities and types of return institutions seek from their investment in online programming, whether they be increased profits or surpluses via reduced expenses or increased operating efficiencies or the development of increased brand awareness for their programs. They also address the growing competitive environment of recent commercial entrants and online program managers (OPMs). The contributors offer best practices for setting goals and identifying benchmarks for increasing and measuring payback, including the creation of cross-functional ROI teams from across an institution; and further address the advantages and disadvantages of universities partnering with external providers, or even other colleges and universities, to provide online programs with them and for them.  

This book offers presidents and senior administrators, faculty engaged in shared governance, online learning administrators, and stakeholders representing student, community and employer interests with a rigorous process for developing an online strategy.

Kathleen S. Ives, D.M. has worked in the non-profit, higher education, workforce development and corporate arenas. She currently serves as Senior Vice President, Engagement for University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA). Additionally she serves as Senior Staff member for the National Laboratory for Education Transformation (NLET) as well as Director of Higher Education Transformation; Strategic Advisor for Packback, an AI-powered education technology company; Senior Advisor/Senior Instructional Designer for Hillstock and Associates, an e-learning consulting firm. She also holds the position of Senior Affiliate Faculty at Wentworth Institute of Technology. Ives is co-editor and chapter author of the recent book Leading the eLearning Transformation of Higher Education: Leadership Strategies for the Next Generation  and a chapter author for the book Learning at the Speed of Light: How Education Got to Now among other articles and publications.  Previously as CEO of the Online Learning Consortium’s (OLC), she led OLC to become a self-sustaining member association. She has degrees in communication, communication management, and organizational leadership from the University of California at Davis, the University of Southern California, Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, and the University of Phoenix-Online, respectively.

Deborah M. Seymour, Ph.D. is owner and principal of Higher Education Innovation Consulting, LLC. Her career has traversed the public, for-profit, and non-profit/association sectors of higher education. Seymour has written extensively on higher education policy and competency-based education. She has taught in both the City University of New York (CUNY) and University of California (UC) systems, as well as specializing in online program development at Laureate Education, Inc. More recently, Seymour was Chief Academic Innovation Officer at the American Council on Education (ACE) and Vice President of Programs and Research at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB). She holds degrees in mass communication, business management, and theoretical linguistics from Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate School & University Center, respectively. Among Seymour’s most recent publications are “Opportunities for Innovation with Competencies as Currency,” coauthored with Deborah Everhart, in Career Ready Education Through Experiential Learning; “Impact of a Pandemic: Will Higher Education Be Disrupted Permanently? A US and International Perspective,” in Higher Education Digest; and “Education and Innovation: Don’t Lose Sight of the End Game,” posted to the online AGB blog.