Carrie Jane Williamson has been named Associate Superintendent for the Department of Catholic Education at the Diocese of Savannah. Williamson began her work as Assistant Superintendent for the Office of Catholic Schools in July 2013 and has served with dedication and commitment in Catholic education since 2002.

Effective July 1, 2019, Williamson has assumed additional responsibilities in the Office of Catholic Schools. Serving as an extension of the Superintendent of Catholic Schools, Williamson will provide leadership, direction, and supervision for the continued efficient operational and academic management of Catholic schools. The Associate Superintendent is the primary administrator for Catholic elementary and secondary educational institutes that are under the direct authority of the Diocese of Savannah and the Office of the Bishop.

As she has throughout her term as Assistant Superintendent, Williamson will act as thought-partner, problem-solver, and change-agent to internal and external stakeholders with an unwavering commitment to getting the job done. She will be responsible for creating and modeling a culture of high expectations and providing ongoing support and oversight to school building leaders in their work to form disciples of Jesus Christ.

Williamson commented that she will continue to serve as an educational leader and model to all stakeholders in accomplishing the mission of the Diocese of Savannah Department of Catholic Education Office of Catholic Schools. I look forward to the challenge of serving our community.

With Bachelors degrees in Business, Williamson has earned two Masters degrees in Middles School Math and Language Arts Education and Educational Administration. Her love for Catholic education and willingness to answer the call to the vocation of Catholic education is evident in her collaboration and determination to lead others in achieving the mission.

Michelle Kroll is Director Of Catholic Education & Superintendent Of Catholic Schools.

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Associate Superintendent for the Department of Catholic Education named - Southern Cross

Merck and Klick HealthVersed on HPV

Young people aged 15-24 are notoriously hard to reach. But because they account for nearly half of the 14 million new HPV infections each year, Merck knew it needed an original and unexpected way to talk with them. Most of the time, HPV clears on its own. But if it doesnt, it can lead to certain cancers and diseases.

The campaigns objective is to raise awareness around the potential cancer-causing effects of HPV and inform a generation how to protect themselves.

The Versed on HPV effort forgoes the usual brochures, banners and PSAs, instead curating original art, music and events, all with a strong message: HPV can lead to certain cancers protect yourself by talking to your doctor.

Inspired by a streetwear marketing approach rather than a typical healthcare playbook, the campaign relies exclusively on Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. Instead of billboards, it uses hand-painted murals and campus walls. Its not on the radio, but at music festivals. And to show how little most people in the target audience know about it, it used a YouTube series of man on the street videos.

The campaign kicked off a massive mural in Brooklyn. And in a pop-up stunt at the tail-end of New York Fashion Week, it featured models in Versed on HPV gear.

In just a year, the campaign delivered 3.8 million Snapchat swipe ups, 374 million Instagram impressions, 276 million YouTube video views and 4.9 million unique visitors to its website. It reached 133% of its awareness-raising goal.

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Gold | Disease Education Campaign, 2019 - MM&M Awards - MM&M - Medical Marketing and Media

However, since 2017, none of these decisions have been reviewed by the agency with oversight of accreditations, the NSW Education Standards Authority, its director of teaching standards Lyn Kirkby told a parliamentary inquiry this week.

If teachers treated students the way they're treated by NESA, they would be sacked.

"Unfortunately we had a problem with our online system and applications then moved offline and so during the whole of 2017 and 2018 and to this day ... we've been doing a lot of compliance checks rather than quality checks," Ms Kirkby told the inquiry into measurement and outcome-based funding in NSW schools.

Ms Kirkby said the system "will be moving back online shortly" and NESA will resume doing random quality checks on decisions by the thousands of individual principals and school bodies.

She said NESA will also go back and randomly audit decisions made in the past three years.

John Quessy, secretary of the independent education union in NSW and the ACT, said that the lack of quality checks meant there was no real understanding of the minimum teaching standard that was being implemented across different schools and sectors.

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"It's fair to say that NESA for the past three years have done no monitoring for quality or consistency in the process," Mr Quessy said.

"Nobody knows what the standard is. What happens in school X for somebody to be able to satisfy the requirements, there's no evidence that that would satisfy requirements in school Y.

"You can compare it to something like the HSC; we have a panel who set the standard and train everyone else to mark at the standard and then check for consistency in marking every single night.

"If teachers treated students the way they're treated by NESA, they would be sacked."

A spokeswoman for NESA said that it is currently only checking whether applications comply with the requirements of the application process.

"In addition to checking process and policy compliance, NESA previously reviewed alignment of the evidence provided in applicationswith the proficient teacher standards," the spokeswoman told theHerald.

The spokeswoman said that NESA does not have any authority to overrule decisions made by principals and school bodies.

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Ms Kirkby also told the inquiry that NESA's quality checks going forward will not include any visits to schools to review teaching practices.

"What we're relying on is the judgement of senior teachers in the school who have been given the responsibility for making judgements about teachers' practice," she said.

Ms Kirkby said that the existing processes for teachers to achieve a voluntary highly accomplished or lead teacher accreditation, under which only 10 teachers received the accreditations last year, is also "of great concern to us".

"We're designing a new application process to support teachers, further to that there's been a lot of complexity across the system, duplication across the system," Ms Kirkby said.

President of the NSW Teachers Federation Maurie Mulheron said there are "teachers in every school who would be deserving of the recognition" but are not applying because the process is time-consuming and "onerous".

Education reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald

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Accreditation for NSW teachers not checked in three years, inquiry hears - Sydney Morning Herald

ETSUs program was ranked No. 20 and was one of only two Tennessee schools included in the top 25.

Primarily an online degree, the ETSU Ph.D. program is designed to prepare nurse scientists in developing a better knowledge of research methods, data analysis techniques, and developing analytical and leadership skills.

The program was created with working professionals in mind, offering the flexibility and convenience of online coursework and a limited number of on-campus meetings. A limited number of on-campus meetings and on-campus coursework are required.

Research is a component of the BSN, MSN, DNP and Ph.D. programs in nursing, said Dr. Myra Clark, associate dean and associate professor of graduate programs in the College of Nursing. The Ph.D.-prepared nurse learns and understands how to design and conduct independent research.

Additionally, many graduates complete courses in nursing education within their programs to prepare them for teaching roles upon graduation.

Program faculty members who are experts in their fields guide the students and engage in scholarship that enhances and supports students development as nurse scientists.

The ETSU College of Nursing Ph.D. program started in 2002 as a Doctor of Science in Nursing program. In 2007, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing recommended all research-focused terminal degrees be designated as Ph.D. programs. ETSU petitioned for a change in degree designation, and the change was approved. Since that time, 42 students have graduated, and 20 are enrolled in course work or dissertation.

Using the standards and benchmarks for Ph.D. in Nursing programs set forth by the AACN, the programs mission is to prepare nurse scientists who will conduct research in nursing and engage in scholarship that will improve health care and health care delivery systems.

Ph.D. students are mature adults, working in high-level professional positions, Clark said. To date, students are faculty members in universities or community colleges, academic administrators, nursing and health care administrators and nurses in advanced practice.

The rankings were released by Online College Plan, which was created to assist parents and students in learning about the options available and how to plan ahead for an online college education. Schools that met eligibility criteria were awarded points based on retention, graduate rate and affordability. For more information about the rankings, visit http://www.onlinecollegeplan.com/rankings/online-phd-nursing-education.

To learn more about ETSUs College of Nursing, visit http://www.etsu.edu/nursing.

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ETSU College of Nursing online PhD ranked 20th in country for nursing education - Johnson City Press (subscription)

MAX PADILLANew Health and Wellness team (from left to right) Erin Goodrich, Emily Wagner, Madeline Hope, Kevin Karackas and Barbara McCall will focus on violence prevention, holistic wellness and mental health, amongst other health topics.

The Office of Health and Wellness Education has recently expanded its staff from one full-time employee to four full-time employees and one part-time employee. This expansion will help the office further develop existing programs, as well as focus on new initiatives.

Previously, the office focused primarily on Green Dot trainings, running the MiddSafe program and offering education for students with alcohol and drug infractions.

Barbara McCall, the director of Health and Wellness Education, said this restructuring occurred as part of Workforce Planning.

I had been laying the groundwork through conversations and program tracking to increase the number of staff in the office for a number of years, she said. Every time I had to turn down an opportunity to facilitate a training or participate in an event, I logged it.

The new positions in the office include a violence prevention and advocacy specialist, an alcohol and other drug education specialist, the assistant director for the office.

The job descriptions for all of the health educators in the office were built around the existing programs and the unmet needs that students, faculty, and staff had expressed over the last five-six years, McCall said.

With the additional employee-power, the offices will take on new initiatives intended to promote health, prevent illness and reduce personal, campus and institution-wide health risks.

Before this expansion, McCall was solely responsible for running the office, and has been since she took on the practitioner-director position in 2013.

McCalls role will now focus on institution-wide initiatives, such as the JED Foundation collaboration, a non-profit which partners with colleges to improve mental health, substance abuse and suicide prevention initiatives. She is also planning on expanding Health and Wellness Education to the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, various summer programs and in the Schools Abroad.

McCall said she is excited to promote health topics that Middlebury has not previously focused on, such as the importance of sleep and flu prevention.

A challenge that I think we are overcoming is a cultural and workforce shift to prioritize proactive, preventative work, McCall said. It is very easy to only focus on responding to problems as they arise, even though we know that providing early support, skill-building opportunities, and health information can help members of our community reach out earlier and more effectively for help.

In the past, the majority of the offices resources have been dedicated to Green Dot, a prevention-focused bystander education initiative, and MiddSafe, a student-operated crisis hotline.

We have developed some flagship programs, like Green Dot and MiddSafe, but know that theres plenty of room for additional programming to truly approach violence prevention holistically, McCall said.

Emily Wagner, the colleges first violence prevention and advocacy specialist, will start hosting events for students in October, which is Dating/Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Kareckas is focused on expanding the scope of wellness education. In his new role, Kareckas will work with students to create proactive initiatives to normalize substance-free activities. This differs from the offices former approach, which focused primarily on education for those who had already received an infraction for substance abuse.

New staff members were also brought on to focus on mental health, including Madeline Hope, the offices assistant director

We have heard loud and clear that students need mental health support beyond counseling services, McCall said Madeline Hopes new portfolio within her role as the assistant director is to engage programs and supports to do just this.

Hopes role will include shifting the scope of the suicide prevention program to include training for faculty in assisting students in distress. According to McCall, the goal for this new position include increasing stress-management programming, which will now occur throughout the whole year, as opposed to just during finals weeks.

Hope will also be involved in the Peer Support Training Skills program, a J-term workshop aimed at building student empathic listening skills to support friends who might be struggling with mental health challenges.

The final employee included in this expansion is Erin Goodrich, a full-time Middlebury employee who spends half her time with Health and Wellness and the other half with Student Activities. Goodrich will be supporting the office administratively by creating a new online education software program, as well as helping with general planning and support.

Overall, McCall hopes her offices expanded potential will help increase healthy living habits on campus and give students the resources they need.

Health is the capacity of individuals and communities to reach their potential, McCall said. Health promotion and prevention is essential to students community engagement, participation in immersive learning, and development of skills as global problem solvers in support of Middleburys mission.

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Health and Wellness Education Office expands staff, programming - Middlebury Campus

Learning with Experts has just completed its latest funding round above target, raising 800k with an impressive group of High Net Worth (HNW) Angels. The investment followed an investor showcase pitch to The Oxford Opportunity Network (OION), at Rathbones. New investors joining this round via OION include Rupert Pennant-Rea, Learning with Experts new chairman, former editor of The Economist and deputy governor of The Bank of England.

CEO/founder Elspeth Briscoe, formerly eBay, The Guardian, and Skype Mafia explained: The raise is enabling us to execute on our hiring plan, to scale our B2B, tech development and marketing teams and to hire new A-list tutors for our consumer product. We intend to drive the next education revolution beyond the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), with our unique approach to community-based, trusted, high-quality, global, interactive online learning.MOOCs have 80% dropout rates. Learning with Experts has 80% course completion rates.

MOOCs have 80% drop out rates. Learning with Experts has 80% course completion rates. Elspeth Biscoe, CEO/founder

Were seeing rapid growth both in the B2C and B2B sectors. We already have 55 experts teaching consumers, including Shane Connolly, florist and Royal Warrant holder, BBC Good Food and BBC Gardeners World Magazine, Paula Pryke OBE, Antiques Roadshow Experts, World Class Landscape Designers with many other household names in the pipeline. Business clients are also partnering at a pace, enabling us to offer serious accredited vocational qualifications including The Royal Horticultural Society Level 2 training, and courses from The Goldsmiths Centre, part of The Goldsmiths Company.

Pennant-Rea commented: I love the education space, and Im a great believer in lifelong learning, having just completed a GCSE in science aged 71. I believe Learning with Experts has the right combination of people and product, and will be capable of disrupting online adult vocational learning. Im excited to have joined at this stage.

Jens Tholstrup, managing director, OION, commented: Congratulations to Learning With Experts on completing its current fundraising. This follows a very impressive pitch by Elspeth Briscoe at the OION Investor Showcase event held at Rathbones Head Office in May. We are delighted that Rupert Pennant-Rea has been appointed chairman following our introduction

Christine Hayes, editor in chief, BBC Good Food, said: For 30 years weve been showing Britain how to cook, making it easy to create good food every day. Our partnership with Learning with Experts facilitates an even closer relationship with our audience, allowing food enthusiasts across the world access to our knowledgeable, approachable food editors and the opportunity to interact and learn in a virtual classroom.

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Learning With Experts Raises 800k To Disrupt Online Education - Education Technology

The Duchess of Sussex has joined her husbandvia Skype for a meeting aboutfemale education in Malawi, greeted by songs as she told young women she is "incredibly proud" of their "vital" work.

The Duchess danced and clapped along to her musical welcome via on online video link toNalikule College of Education in Lilongwe.

She went on to pay tribute to the valuable and vital work thousands of women are undertaking to support schoolgirls through their education.

Meghan praised the advocates of theCampaign for Female Education via a video conferencelink from Johannesburg to the capital of Malawi.

The Duke, who was at the collegein person,introduced his wife and during the Skype call she joked about their four-month-old son, who has joined them on their 10-day tour of Africa, sayingArchies taking a nap.

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Duchess of Sussex reunites with Prince Harry to talk female education in Malawi - via Skype - Telegraph.co.uk

A live Internet class in one of five studios at the University of Illinois' Gies College of Business

Youve no doubt read the endless stories about the decline of the MBA. Those stories will tell you that interest in the degree by young professionals has been falling for years. Some give unjustified credence to claims that the degrees value is questionable and that schools are teaching antiquated ideas locked in the Industrial Age.

Truth is, applications to full-time, two-year MBA programs have declined for five consecutive years. More schools are shuttering their MBA offerings and actual enrollment in many more programs has fallen. But there is another surprising side to this story: MBA demand is also exploding.

Consider the University of Illinois Online MBA program at the Gies College of Business. Enrollment in Gies iMBA program has grown to more than 2,500 MBA degree-seeking students this fall from a debut cohort of just 114 students three and one-half years ago (see Gies iMBA: The Fastest Growing MBA On The Planet).

And in the two months since Boston Universitys Questrom School of Business announced a new online MBA program, nearly 600 applications are now in progress for the offering which will debut next fall. Even though the school only opened its application three weeks ago, 43 candidates have completed their apps. And that is without Questrom spending a penny marketing the program.

The secret at Illinois and BU? Its the price. The price tag on the Gies MBA is just $22,000, while the cost of the forthcoming online MBA at BU will be a mere $24,000. These programs are booming because they are highly affordable options that allow young professionalsmany of them already carrying undergraduate student debtto get an MBA without having to quit their jobs. And roughly half of the more than 2,500 students in the Gies program are getting some sponsorship from their employers, making the MBA even cheaper than the $22K price might indicate.

It underlines concerns that the more traditional two-year, on-campus programs have become way too expensive, far beyond the reach of many would-be students after a quarter of a century of MBA tuition increases that have outpaced the rate of inflation.

Were selling a Tesla for the price of a Hyundai, insists Jeffrey Brown, dean of the Gies College of Business. While thats clearly an exaggeration, Gies is delivering significant higher educational value for the $22,000 it charges for the degree and that is why demand has exploded, even in the absence of a ranking because Brown has so far decided against putting the program into online MBA rankings.

Brown wont provide any concrete clues about his iMBA enrollment goals, maintaining that growth is dependent on the quality of the applicant pool. The program is now cash positive, he says, though the school is a long way from recouping its investment. We could get up to 3,000 or 5,000 steady state or the worlds population, he says. Its all dependent on quality. We dont need to grow. Its already financially viable.

Over at Boston University, which is partnering with edX, the education platform founded at Harvard and MIT, administrators see similar upside to their offering. The MBA is still one of the most if not the most coveted degrees out there, says Questrom Dean Susan Fournier. There are still a lot of quality people out there who wish they could get this crediential.

In fact, the most requested degree at edX, says Fournier, is the MBA.There have been 10,000 inquiries for an MBA before we partnered with them. Thats 10,000 latent requests for the degree at an affordable price.

BU is hoping to tap into that pent-up demand for its inaugural Online MBA cohort. About 37% of the potential applicants who have begun filling out Questroms lead form for the program have come directly from edXs database.

No less impressive is the quality of the students signing up for these low-cost MBA options. We thought we would see older, working professionals from great companies that we dont typically see outside the Northeast, says JP Matychak, associate dean of student experience and services at Questrom. And that has been true. After Massachusetts, the second largest source (of applicant interest) is coming from California and the tech field.

But one surprise is that nearly half of the applicants already have a masters or PhD degree, he adds. We are seeing the backend of the rise of the specialty masters programs. These are people who want to move into leadership roles but who dont want to spend $120,000 and come back to campus. That was a shock to me.

The big takeaway? The demand for these low-cost MBA options show that the MBA is very much alive and well. Sticker shock on the price of the traditional MBA experiences may be having far more impact on the business than anything else.

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Where MBA Demand Is Exploding - Forbes

The new Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety badge is available as a standalone qualification

A Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety (CR-IS) badge has been developed by Digital Schools Award NI to help schools keep pupils safe online.

The badge is backed by tech companies HP, Microsoft and RM Education, with support from ICT in schools network C2K, and the Department for Education.

You might also like: First nurseries in Scotland receive Digital School status

CR-IS will be available to all schools that demonstrate a strategic approach to cyber-resilience and internet safety.

Digital Schools Awards validator, Dr Victor McNair, said: Schools are ideally placed to provide progressive and relevant activities that help pupils build enduring and adaptable cyber-resilient skills.

Teachers will instantly recognise the language used in the self-review framework and they will benefit from the local and national resources provided to help them develop classroom activities, partnerships and professional learning opportunities.

Schools are ideally placed to provide progressive and relevant activities that help pupils build enduring and adaptable cyber-resilient skills. Dr Victor McNair, Digital Schools Awards

Karen Irwin,UICT co-ordinator at Ballyclare Primary School, said, Pupils are very much at the heart of our internet planning and strategy and we encourage an open dialogue between pupils, teachers and parents.

Our Digital Leaders group which meets weekly is represented by pupils from each year group and together we work on creative projects and ideas to help everyone stay one step ahead in an ever-changing cyberworld.

You might also like: Welsh government pledges 50m to expand Hwb edtech programme

The Digital Schools Awards programme launched in Northern Ireland in 2015 and has been completed by over 70 nursery, primary and secondary schools.

The programme is free for all schools to participate. For more information and to register for the new CR-IS badge, visit http://www.digitalschoolsawards.co.uk

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Digital Schools Awards help pupils in Northern Ireland stay safe online - Education Technology

Boosters of online higher education have long held out the lofty promise that it would bring down the spiraling cost of college while also widening its reach.

But a little-known industry of for-profit middlemen, which is skimming off as much as 80% of the proceeds and has U.S. revenues of $1 billion annually, may be thwarting the innovative potential of online education.

Known as online program managers, these companies have been hired largely to connect universities with customers who want graduate degrees. Such students are seen as a source of much-needed revenue at a time when drops in state funding and declining undergraduate enrollment have squeezed higher education budgets.

Hiring these online program managers is quicker and easier for public and private nonprofit universities than building and marketing their own online graduate education programs. But in exchange, the institutions are giving up what is often a large share of the money the programs bring in.

Experts say this is likely keeping prices for students higher than they would be if the universities didnt have to pay such a large share of revenue.

The profit incentive is just something that needs to be monitored in these kinds of arrangements, said Stephanie Hall, a fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive New York City think tank. It warrants scrutiny figuring out who is setting the price, who is taking what percentage of that money and doing what with it in return.

While attention is often paid to for-profit universities and colleges whose students sometimes end up with worthless degrees or no degrees at all, this other kind of profit-driven business has more quietly inserted itself into higher education.

The OPM industry started in earnest about 15 years ago, as more public and nonprofit colleges were looking to ramp up their online programming, and educational technology companies saw a business opportunity in helping them.

In the years since, the industry has expanded and evolved, but the arrangements between colleges and OPMs in their most traditional form still widely in use today look something like this: OPMs market the programs, recruit students, counsel them through the admissions process, enroll them, provide the software and tech support needed for the programs to function and even help instructors design online-friendly courses.

Though the faculty teach the courses and the universities control admission standards and confer the graduates degrees, much of the work of building and managing the courses is done by the companies.

And theyre paid handsomely. Online program managers take anywhere between 30% and 80% of the revenue the online degree programs bring into the schools, according to an analysis by Eduventures Research, a division of ACT/NRCCUA. At programs run by 2U TWOU, -2.40% , an industry leader, the average tuition is between $70,000 and $75,000, according to company data from June 2018. Historically, OPMs have also locked universities into contracts that can hover around 10 years.

Even though the companies are often taking the bulk of the tuition revenue the degree programs pull in, the firms still arent profitable in many cases. Thats because as the companies add more programs, they need to shell out large sums to ramp them up, said Brett Knoblauch, an equity research analyst at Berenberg Capital Markets, who follows companies like 2U. It takes a few years for the programs to turn profitable, he said.

The challenges of this rapid expansion strategy were laid bare this summer, when Chip Paucek, chief executive officer of 2U, told investors on a call that the company would slow down its rate of launches after 2019 to support our path to profitability.

The July call also offered a sign that colleges may be pushing back on sharing so much revenue. 2U has historically given colleges only the opportunity to partner through a traditional revenue share, in which it offers its full suite of services in exchange for a cut of the tuition. But Paucek told investors on the call it will soon give at least one school, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the opportunity to use a fee-for-service model for some programs.

Nick Hammerschlag, president of Entangled Group, an education consulting and investment firm, suspects that shift may be a recognition on the companys part that asking universities and colleges to give up a large share of the programs revenue may make it harder for 2U to hold on to its partners once they reach the end of their agreements.

Companies that offer revenue share arrangements make significant investments in the programs they help to launch up front, Hammerschlag said, but they also get an extraordinary deal on the back end. I think people realized that ultimately they didnt need to give up as much opportunity.

For many reasons, graduate programs make up a particularly attractive market both for these companies and for universities looking to shore up their bottom lines, said Kevin Carey, vice president for education policy and knowledge management at the think tank New America.

One is that theres no limit to how much the federal government will lend to graduate students to pay for school they can borrow up to the entire cost of a program. In addition, graduate students needs are smaller, and likely cheaper to address than those of undergraduates who need more intensive advising and other services, he said.

They just want an education and credential that will help their career, said Carey, who has written critically about the relationship between colleges and OPMs. Its a simpler, more profitable market that also has an unlimited source of debt financing courtesy of the federal government.

Theres no definitive data on how colleges relationships with these companies affect the cost of the programs which include MBAs, masters in public health, masters in social work and more to students. But basic math suggests that having to hand over so much of the tuition to someone else may make it challenging for colleges to provide the programs to students as cheaply as possible.

And though the colleges are still technically responsible for setting the prices of the programs, a recently published review of some of these contracts by Hall and her colleagues at The Century Foundation found that, in at least some cases, the OPMs do play a role.

Her review found a wide swath of approaches to price setting and revealed that its been common for OPMs to insist that a school price its program no higher than on-campus offerings, while also requiring that the price be market-competitive.

In addition, Hall and her team found that in the case of one OPM-university partnership to build a coding bootcamp, the contract explicitly provided the OPM with veto power over the programs price. In another contract between an OPM and a school offering a masters in social work, reviewed by Hall and her colleagues, theres a provision specifying that the company might recommend a revised tuition fee based on market research.

You have a third party that needs to make a profit off this, said Brendan Cantwell, an associate professor of educational administration at Michigan State University. Just the cost associated with the revenue share and for the university to make some revenue to cover its costs its probably at a high or a higher price.

Whether working with an OPM will drive up the price of a degree program for students is one of the many factors universities consider when assessing whether to enter into an agreement with one of these companies, said Deborah Seymour, owner and principal at Higher Education Innovation Consulting, LLC.

No institution that brings in an OPM is naive enough to think that some of the cost of using an outside vendor wont have an impact on the cost to students, she said.

2Us July call with investors signaled that the company may have some influence over the price of its programs though the tuition decision ultimately rests with the university offering the program, Jemila Campbell, a 2U spokeswoman, noted in an email. The company reset its growth expectations for the third time in several months in part because of pressure from increased competition, as more colleges launch online programs in some cases, at a cheaper price point than those 2U offers.

Weve got some really good plans in tow to attack one of the things that we think is an important component, which is tuition cost, Paucek told investors, saying he would reveal the plans at the companys investor day in November.

The company also announced a partnership in August with the University of London and the London School of Economics and Political Science to offer a Bachelor of Science degree in data science and business analytics for $25,000. Thats substantially less than overseas undergraduates pay to attend the London School of Economics in person.

Institutions that work with OPMs and try to keep their programs affordable could actually lose out on students, according to Dennis Gephardt, an analyst in Moodys public finance group, which covers nonprofit higher education institutions. Thats because an OPM that works with one university may also partner with others offering the same program, but at a higher price. That means the company may be incentivized to push the programs offered by the school from which theyll get more money.

Kevin Kinser, a professor of education at Pennsylvania State University who directed a project that involved secret shopping for online degree programs offered through OPMs, said that in that secret shopping, a request for information from one program was answered with information for another program instead.

Because they have multiple clients, theyre looking to try to put as many virtual bodies in the classroom as they can, Kinser said of OPMs. From their business model perspective it might not matter what programs those bodies go into, because it all goes to the bottom line.

Kinsers example is just one of many ways the companies incentives arent totally aligned with those of the colleges. That can be a big problem for schools, which are turning to graduate degrees as a way to bring in revenue amid declining undergraduate enrollment.

Gephardt, of Moodys, said hes skeptical that online graduate degree programs offered through an OPM could provide a net revenue salvation that would compensate for other deep revenue challenges.

As Seymour noted: For every dollar that flows to the OPM, thats a dollar less in revenue that can be spent on other aspects that the institution may need. Over time, is the investment in the work that the OPM is doing and the revenue that online programs will bring in worth the offset?

Howard Lurie, principal analyst at Eduventures Research, puts it more bluntly: The companies have done well. The schools? It depends, he said.

The arrangements also threaten more than the bottom line. If a school works with an OPM, it may be under pressure to grow a program very quickly to recoup the revenue its turning over to the company, said Joshua Kim, director of digital learning initiatives at Dartmouth College.

In some cases, the companies also require that the programs maintain a certain number of students to keep operating, according to a 2017 review of contracts between OPMs and public universities by The Century Foundation. Growing a degree program as quickly as possible may be in conflict with providing a quality educational opportunity, Kim said.

On a call with investors in May, 2Us Paucek acknowledged the tension between growth and quality. At the time, the company lowered its revenue guidance for the fiscal year in large part because the schools it partners with were becoming more selective, he said.

It has become clear in the rearview mirror that we were prioritizing growth a bit too much based on the feeling on feeling the need to be past expectations, Paucek said on the call.

Amid growing scrutiny of the online program management industry, 2U later announced that, beginning next year, it would disclose more information about its partnerships with universities, including contractual terms relating to academic oversight as well as the nature of its financial relationships.

Providing greater transparency around our partnerships is the right thing to do and will foster a more constructive dialogue about the value of OPMs, Paucek said in a statement.

Other online program managers have been accused of going too far to enroll students. A 2013 whistleblower lawsuit filed by former employees against HotChalk alleged the company violated a federal law against providing performance-based bonuses to college recruiters. In the suit, the employees claimed representatives from the company would push students to sign up for courses by offering free iPads and textbooks. If students didnt meet the colleges admissions requirements, company representatives gave them the chance to explain away any bad grades, the suit alleged.

The company, along with the school it partnered with, Concordia University-Portland, paid $1 million to settle the lawsuit in 2015 and acknowledged no wrongdoing.

At George Mason University, which recently struck a 10-year deal with Wiley & Sons to offer masters programs in business, health systems management and other areas, some faculty have expressed concern that this drive for growth could result in predatory recruiting behavior. GMU is one of a number of schools across the country that have faced challenges from faculty advocacy groups over these partnerships.

A 2017 fact sheet on the GMU-Wiley partnership touted Wileys ability to take advantage of tracking tools and analytics to better reach prospective students. The company also uses a proprietary, consultative approach to recruit students and ensure theyre a right fit for the program, according to the fact sheet.

The company also plays a role by providing extensive market analysis of the tuition students will ultimately be charged for the program though GMU and its trustees maintain final control over the price. The result is that the price for online courses may be higher than the in-state on-campus price, according to the fact sheet.

Theres a place for it and I think it can be of high quality and meaningful to the student, Bethany Letiecq, an associate professor and president of the schools advocacy chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said of online education. But these programs make me very nervous because theyre profit-driven and they seem to be more about the shareholders than the students.

Ashley Frost, who earned a masters in health administration through a George Washington University-2U program, learned of the companys involvement only after she was admitted.

Before I got into the program, I knew nothing about it, she said of 2U. It was my understanding that everything was George Washington University. I didnt understand that it was another program that this was all going through.

Nonetheless, she was satisfied with her experience. I would imagine that it takes a lot of burden off of the school to try to create and manage that, she said of the deals between companies like 2U and colleges.

Thanks in part to the programs technology, Frost said, she felt connected to her fellow students throughout the time she was completing her degree, even though they all lived in different areas of the country. And the program did for Frost exactly what she expected: furnished her with a masters degree that she needed to move up into a new position. But it was costly.

As a member of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, Frost had access to the GI Bill to pay for her courses. She used up that money (about $23,000 per year) and then some, acquiring her masters degree and winding up with about $15,000 in debt.

The school discloses 2Us role in its online degrees to prospective students on its website, said Stacey DiLorenzo, executive dean of external relations for GWs Milken Institute School of Public Health, which runs the MHA program.

DiLorenzo added that the Milken Institute maintains complete control over curriculum, admissions standards and tuition decisions, in addition to other aspects of the program.

Tuition for the online program and the campus-based program is the same and so is the quality, she said in an emailed statement.

Proponents of these partnerships argue that the companies motivations track with the students and schools best interests. If students and universities arent satisfied, the degree programs wont continue to operate, the business will stop growing and the company will ultimately make less money, Paucek said in a May interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The notion inherently that my tax status means that I cant be mission-aligned with the university? Its just wrong, he said.

And indeed, colleges can reap benefits by working with these companies. Building an online degree program from scratch requires infrastructure and marketing expertise that universities often lack. For example, 2U is the third-largest advertiser on LinkedIn, Paucek said in the interview a capacity thats hard for any single school to match.

More broadly, universities on their own often just dont have the resources and know-how to launch and make these programs profitable on their own, said Knoblauch of Berenberg Capital Markets. As of June 2018, universities that partner with 2U earned about $6 million to $7 million on average per year from those programs, according to the company.

Higher education is abysmal as a business, said Jeff Seaman, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group, which tracks online education.

In some cases, college leaders are under pressure from boards of trustees or other stakeholders to meet certain revenue goals so quickly that they dont have much choice but to bring in an OPM because they just dont have the time to develop the capacity internally, said Seymour of Higher Education Innovation Consulting.

In addition, the companies offer a smooth technological experience that, some faculty say, makes it possible for them to put more emphasis on meaningful interactions with their students. Pam Baker, the division director of special education and disability research at GMU, is one of those faculty members. (GMU connected Baker with MarketWatch in response to an inquiry about its partnership with Wiley.)

Baker began exploring a partnership with Wiley in 2016 to take some of the courses her division already had online to the next level, she said. It offers an autism spectrum disorders graduate certificate, a graduate certificate in applied behavioral analysis and a masters of special education through the Wiley partnership.

The 24/7 tech support provided by the company as well as the structure of the courses, which require faculty to essentially preload much of their content before the course begins, are among the ways Baker said working with Wiley has helped to smooth out the technology experience for students.

If I were to show you the pre-Wiley version of the course that I teach and show you the Wiley version of the course that I teach same course objectives, same syllabus the Wiley version is an upscale version, Baker said. It is more engaging, it is more consistent. Thats important, she added, because in my book if you cant make the technology invisible for the student, then they cant concentrate.

Baker said she doesnt believe those benefits have come at the expense of students needs. Though Wiley helps with recruiting, the department maintains control over admissions standards, and Baker said she hasnt felt any pressure to let more students in.

Were not going to compromise quality for anything, she said. Were very committed to that.

Nonetheless, some colleges are reconsidering whether it makes more sense to build that infrastructure in-house. Increasingly, public universities, which are facing state funding challenges, are becoming more hesitant to work with outside corporate partners and share valuable revenue, according to an Eduventures Research report.

Southern Methodist University, a private institution that works with 2U and other companies to offer online masters degree programs, is switching to an online degree operation thats run fully in-house.

Officials have been happy with 2Us work, said Larenda Mielke, associate provost for SMU Global and Online, but realize there are benefits to having the school offer the programs itself without having to rely on an outside partner.

For one thing, having that intellectual property within the university means that if a contract with an OPM ends, the program can continue to move forward. Its sort of like renting a house versus buying a house, Mielke said. And, of course, the school will also be able to keep all the revenue.

But for the program to be successful, SMU in many ways needs to mirror the approach of the for-profit OPM industry.

Mielkes team has explored search engine optimization and geotargeting to get the schools message to the prospective students most likely to respond to it those living in Texas and other areas with large populations of SMU alumni, such as Southern California. And to figure out which programs to offer, the university is starting with the needs of the market instead of simply its own capabilities, Mielke said. In addition, shes focused on metrics like internal rate of return and product mix.

I think about it in the same way as if Im running a business, honestly, she said.

Shares of 2U have been down 62% this year to date, compared to a 16% increase for the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.30% and a 19% gain for the S&P 500 Index SPX, -0.24%

This story about online higher education was produced in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechingers higher education newsletter.

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Online courses could help make college affordable, but this $1 billion industry is standing in the way - MarketWatch