Cost of Delivering Courses via Distance Education, The

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

In order to complete this analysis, the authors reviewed archival data on course demographics, and then contacted all FRED faculty members who had taught at least one course, at the graduate or undergraduate level, using distance technologies during the years 1998-2002. Each faculty member estimated the following: (a) time to prepare a new course or convert an existing course to be taught via distance education over and above the time required to prepare a course in a traditional classroom, (b) the cost of technical computer staff to design and develop course materials delivered via distance, (c) the cost of additional secretarial support staff needed to convert existing courses or to assist in creating new courses in a format suitable for distance delivery, (d) the cost to deliver the class via distance (e.g., telephone transmission fees, etc.), (e) the cost of paying site coordinators at remote delivery sites to backstop the technologies (e.g., run video streaming equipment), and (f) the extra time needed to deliver distance courses (e.g., increased use of emails and telephone) above traditional on-campus classes.

Results and Discussion

The first step in the analysis was to estimate a baseline of on-campus delivery costs for the department. This baseline data on course enrollments, faculty preparation time needed, etc. could then be used to calculate the marginal costs (i.e., additional costs) of using distance technologies.

Between fall 1998 and summer 2002, FRED faculty taught 212 courses on the main campus in Gainesville. Eighteen percent of the classes had fifteen students or less enrolled, 25% had class enrollments of 16 to 30 students, 27% had enrollments of 31 to 50 students, 28% had a class size that was more than 50 but no more than 100 students, and only 2% had more than 100 students in class. A total of 8,418 students were enrolled in these 212 courses. During this time, the average faculty salary in FRED was approximately $70,000 for a 12-month appointment. Multiplying this average salary by 1.3 to include "fringe" benefits yields an estimated average cost of $91,000/yr for a 100% teaching appointment. Using a standard of seven courses per year per 100% FTE of teaching, the authors estimated the average cost per on-campus course in faculty salary and benefits to be $13,000 ($91,000/7 = $13,000).

The authors converted this average cost for faculty time on a per-course basis to a per-student-taught basis, as enrollment figures during the 1998-2002 period differed considerably when comparing the courses taught on campus to those taught via distance technologies. Hence, for each of the 212 courses, a perstudent-taught cost estimate was calculated by dividing $13,000 by the course enrollment, resulting in an average per-student-taught faculty cost of $662 (Table 1).

This faculty salary cost should be viewed with caution because there were considerable differences in the per-student-taught cost estimate across different course enrollments. Courses with enrollments of 15 students or less have an estimated average faculty salary cost of $2,095 per student taught, whereas for a course with 157 students, the estimate is only $83 in faculty salary per student taught. This difference provides a good indication of the economies of size involved with teaching. Similarly, the standard deviation in faculty cost is highly variable, with it being greater with small enrollments relative to classes with large enrollments. In addition, it is important to recognize that these faculty salary figures are the fixed costs for a given course and do not include the cost of teaching assistants or any adjustments for variability in the preparation and teaching intensity of a given course (e.g., it was assumed that the "intensity" of teaching effort for a upper division course based on case-study discussions was identical to an introductory course taught primarily in a lecture format). While faculty salary costs are fixed costs, variability in the preparation and teaching intensity of a given course (e.g., classes are not all equally time consuming) is captured in the marginal analysis discussed below.