Cost of Delivering Courses via Distance Education, The

NACTA Journal, Jun 2005 by Sterns, James, Wysocki, Allen, Comer, Dorothy A, Fairchild, Gary, Thornsbury, Suzanne

Abstract

From 1998 to 2002, the faculty of the Food and Resource Economics Department, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Florida taught 212 courses on campus and an additional 19 courses via distance technologies. Using data from these experiences, the authors estimate the average additional costs associated with distance education as compared to on-campus courses to be $16,631 per-course and $1,661 per-student-taught. Data limitations are discussed and caveats concerning conclusions about the specific costs of distance education are provided. Within the context of these limitations and caveats, the authors do substantiate several general findings: courses taught via distance are more costly to an academic unit than courses taught on-campus, both in terms of per-course taught and per-student-taught; estimates of costs will vary, depending on assumptions made about what costs should be included in the analysis; and, quantifying the costs of distance education ultimately must be evaluated within the broader context of potential benefits and trade-offs across departmental and college program priorities.

Introduction

In the late 1990s, the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS), Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS), University of Florida (UF) instituted several degree programs to be delivered via distance education. The original intent was to offer a Master of Agriculture (MAG) through CALS with three areas of specialization. These areas were in agricultural education, agribusiness and horticulture. The target audiences for these programs included extension agents and place-bound individuals working in agricultural industries. Because degree programs are offered through departments, the Food and Resource Economics Department (FRED) assumed the responsibility for the MAG agribusiness specialization. Distance education technologies proposed for these programs included videoconferencing, web-based interactive course sites, Internet chat rooms and email, videotapes and course materials bundled in CD-ROM "packets."

During that same time period, the State Legislature authorized funding for IFAS to establish the Indian River Research and Education Center (IRREC) satellite campus in Ft. Pierce, FL, a site approximately 240 miles from the main campus. FRED hired four faculty members to teach live courses to students at the IRREC and to deliver these courses to other sites throughout Florida via distance technologies. These distance courses initially were for the Master of Agriculture degree, while distance courses for an undergraduate minor in agribusiness management were added over time to serve students pursuing CALS bachelor degrees at several satellite campuses.

FRED faculty and CALS administrators have had to address a range of development and implementation issues since these programs were initiated, including the determination of course and degree equivalents, curricula design and costs of delivery. Though all of these are important and inter-related, the primary purpose of this paper is to analyze the costs of delivery of distance education courses and the possible resource-allocation implications of these costs for departmental and college planning. The continuing trends in reduced federal and state funding for higher education in general, and Colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources in particular, provide further impetus for this paper, as reductions in budgets are forcing administrators and faculty to examine the costs and benefits of all program activities.

Background and Methods

Researchers have analyzed core planning and implementation issues related to CALS' efforts at instituting its distance education programs (Martin and Cheek, 2004; Telg and Cheek, 1998; Comer et al., 1996), and other researchers have examined the development of specific UF distance education programs in horticulture and natural resource conservation (Klock-Moore et al, 2000; Linehan et al., 2000). Though insightful, this literature does not comprehensively address specific cost issues associated with distance education.

Other researchers have provided suggestions for how to estimate the costs of distance education technologies and programs. For example, Taylor, et al. (2001) provide an example of estimating the costs of distance education in the Texas A&M university system. Their cost estimates, calculated on a cost-persemester-hour basis, summed operating, administrative and other direct costs. Similarly, Sharratt (1993) calculated the break-even points and returns on investments for different modes of delivery, and Rumble (2001) outlined the various types of costs to be considered when analyzing the benefits and costs of distance education programs.

Drawing from these examples, the authors of this paper developed a framework for conducting an expost analysis of the costs associated with the development and implementation of FRED's distance education courses that were taught from 1998 to 2002. The specific objectives for this analysis were to (a) identify course demographics and the cost of traditional oncampus course delivery, and (b) identify the additional costs (or savings) of delivering a FRED course via distance education both from the IRREC and from the main campus in Gainesville.