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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 5, 2001

News Release

NEA Guidebook to Help Colleges Figure Costs of Online Learning

Washington, D.C. - Higher education instruction via the Internet is almost always more expensive than in-person instruction, according to the Leadership Manual for Association Leaders in Higher Education Units , a guidebook for calculating costs of online learning released by the National Education Association (NEA) this month.

The guidebook is based on research conducted by NEA and other organizations and concludes that for small courses, in-person instruction will always be less expensive than instruction via the Internet.

NEA wrote the guidebook after hearing from hundreds of members experiencing a shift to technology in course instruction as a way to save costs in their institutions.

"Online courses should not be thought of as automatic money savers," said NEA President Bob Chase. "Internet classes can provide a quality education provided there are small numbers in the class, extensive preparation for faculty and plenty of time for interaction with students. Those things don't come cheaply."

The report concludes that Internet instruction "might be helpful to students who need to time-shift their classes because of business or family commitment. It may also be helpful to students living in remote locations. However, [these online classes] should not be adopted 'to save money' since it is not likely to achieve that goal."

Teaching classes over the Internet can be less expensive, however, if there is a class with between 450 and 900 students enrolled and no other courses offered at the college or university to satisfy this same criteria. In this case, it makes sense to have more than one faculty member running the online course and responding to student emails in exchange for the tuition payments of such a large number of students.

The guidebook also contains worksheets for teachers and institutions to help figure the actual cost of running an online course. The formulas used in the worksheet are based on research conducted by NEA, as well as input from NEA members. To view parts of the guidebook, click on http://www.nea.org/he/lmchptr2.html.

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The National Education Association is the nation’s largest professional employee organization, representing 2.7 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support personnel, school administrators, retired educators, and students preparing to become teachers.