Online Learning Supports Financial Sustainability

Brad Rathgeber

Our primary goal has always been to expand opportunities for students — exposing students to classes and options beyond what can be offered on campus.  Over time we realized that online learning could be a part of a school’s long term financial sustainability, as well.
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Independent schools are pressed to increase their value propositions as tuitions rise.  For many years, schools have increased their perceived value has been to build buildings and increase program offerings.  Those new buildings and programs, however, usually require hiring more staff, particularly for teaching — new languages, new computer science offerings, more STEM, etc.

There is general acknowledgement across our industry that we have to continue to hire more people in our schools.  We can look back almost twenty years to 2000-2001, when schools had 5.5 students for every one full time equivalent employee. Today, it’s 4.5 to one. Back in 2000-2001, there were 9 students to every one FTE teacher.  Today, it’s 8 to one. The assumption has been that our schools have added more employees in administrative positions, not teaching positions in the last twenty years. That was true in the 1990s, but it hasn’t been the casein recent years.  We’ve added teachers, and often we’ve added teachers to teach smaller numbers of students.

Data source: NAIS DASL

As our partnerships with schools deepened, we learned that online education provided an innovative opportunity for schools to add programs: per student rather than per faculty.  This allowed schools to increase opportunities in more cost-effective ways and without making huge up-front investments in either spaces or people. also provided an opportunity to shift low-enrollment courses online to reduce costs without sacrificing the breadth and depth of their offerings.

​Consider this program expansion scenario from one of our schools.  This girls’ school in a tight market was looking to increase STEM opportunities for students, and considered two paths:  traditional staffing (Option #1) or an online partnerships (Option #2). They chose Option #2 to allow for greater depth to their program at a lower annual cost and no capital expenditures.

Ten years ago, there was a lot of thought in the independent school world that online learning could be used to create new revenue. Those predictions have not come true.  More importantly, however, independent schools can use online education to manage expenses, by adding value and increasing opportunities without having to add staff.

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For a deeper dive, explore some past blog posts or check out the professional development courses offered in partnership with the National Business Officers Association: 
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Blogs:​

• Blog posts: Should Your School Pay For an Online Course?; Does Everyone Know How the Budget Meets the Mission?; Independent School Finances

Courses with our partners at NBOA on the finances and operations of independent schools:

• Culture Meets Compliance, September 30 - October 18, 2019​​
• Essentials of the Business Office, September 30 - October 25, 2019
• Long-Range Financial Modeling, September 30 - October 18, 2019
• ​Budget Meets Mission, October 21 - November 8, 2019
• Measuring Financial Health with CFI,​ October 21 - November 8, 2019
• Stewarding Donor Dollars, October 21 - November 8, 2019