Gold in your Backyard: The Value of Continuing Education Units in Strategy Development

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a clear shift in how institutions are formulating their online education strategies. Traditional public and private institutions are increasingly centralizing strategic decision making related to online programs in their presidents’ and provosts’ offices, as opposed to allowing individual academic units to develop strategies on their own.

This shift, in itself, is not surprising. After all, there are economies of scale, scope and strategic alignment at stake. What strikes me as odd is many of these institutions have thriving continuing education (CE), professional studies and/or other post-traditional divisions (ones serving primarily non-first-time, non-full-time students), but aren’t bringing the leaders of these divisions to the online strategy discussion table.

Post-traditional units have long been recognized as the pioneering innovators of higher education. The identification of new markets, creation of cutting-edge programs and development of state-of-the-art engagement and teaching methods are but a few of their many contributions.

For decades, online education has thrived in institutional units focused on serving working adults.  University of Maryland University College, Penn State World Campus, Brandman University and Drexel University Online are just a few examples of pioneering online learning providers to emerge from traditional public and private universities. Nonetheless, it seems some institutions may be ignoring this treasure trove of expertise and knowledge as they begin to formulate their institution-wide approaches to online education.

Over the last year, at least a dozen prominent universities have created new vice president-level positions to oversee online learning. In some cases, the person selected to fill the role had prior experience operating an online learning division or institution. However, many did not. Moreover, I’ve spoken with a number of post-traditional program leaders who have expressed concern about their universities’ approaches to formulating an online learning strategy. Many are concerned these strategies are based largely on institutions’ experiences with traditional campus-based students taking individual online courses, and ignore insights derived from providing online degree programs and serving working adults.

Whatever the case may be, presidents and provosts would be wise to tap into the expertise of their post-traditional units on issues of innovation, technology and online learning behavior. They may discover they have online strategy gold sitting right in their backyard.