SU online program to expand
The Southern University System will soon start offering more fully online academic programs to attract more students and to raise tuition revenues, Southern System President Ronald Mason Jr. said.
The new online project is a revenue-sharing partnership with a for-profit corporation that specializes in delivering online degree programs for historically black colleges and universities, called HBCUs.
Mason said the project — gotosouthernuniversity.com — will help Southern attract more out-of-state and older, nontraditional students who are currently the niche of more expensive for-profit universities like the University of Phoenix.
The Southern University System has contracted with Florida-based Education Online Services Corporation, or EOServe, to deliver the online degree programs using the existing offerings and faculty from the Southern campuses in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Shreveport. Mason previously teamed with EOServe, when he was president of Jackson State University.
But Mason said the new partnership will be more comprehensive than the one he helped do in Mississippi.
“We want to develop Southern University as the online HBCU brand,” Mason said. “We are a (university) system, and we can offer more courses. We’re looking at something a little broader and a little more aggressive here.”
Mason also is hoping the new project helps Southern solve its financial woes. The Baton Rouge campus recently declared a financial emergency, called exigency.
“We think it’s going to help a great deal,” Mason said, adding that he anticipates the project will eventually generate “several million dollars” annually. “We’re not putting anything up front, and we’re going to share in the revenues.”
Mason said the academic rigor of the programs will not be diminished because the current faculty will still lead the accredited academic degree programs — online or in the classroom.
“Keeping students in the program is how they make money,” Mason said, so academic quality is critical.
But state Commissioner of Higher Education Jim Purcell said he has some concern about where Southern might be placing its emphasis.
“I have stated publicly that public institutions should place a high priority on educating Louisianans for the Louisiana economy,” Purcell said in an email response. “In other states, these initiatives have attracted many out-of-state students who never set foot on campus.”
He said online programs should focus on educating place-bound students within Louisiana.
Purcell said universities should not assume that such initiatives will lead to more state funding through the higher education funding formula. Purcell said he expects the Louisiana Board of Regents will consider developing a specific policy to address state funding for out-of-state students using distance education.
EOServe President Benjamin Chavis did not respond to multiple interview requests over three days.
Mason said he hopes the first online students are former Southern students who did not graduate, so that there will be a strong, in-state focus. But EOServe will handle most of the student recruiting through its “online marketing network,” he said.
The goal is to start rolling out a few online degree programs in January, Mason said, and slowly add more. The first academic programs are bachelor’s degrees in early childhood development, criminal justice and general studies. The general studies degree has concentrations in business, humanities, natural sciences, political science, social sciences and African-American studies.
Mason said the online programs will charge all students the more expensive out-of-state tuition. Southern’s main Baton Rouge campus currently charges out-of-state students about $6,540 per year, compared to roughly $5,130 for those from Louisiana.
The timing for additional degree program rollouts will depend largely on Southern getting its admissions and financial aid offices upgraded enough to handle the extra workload of processing the new students and their finances, Mason said. “It’s more of the understructure,” he said.
But all of the changes are being integrated into Southern’s ongoing academic reorganization process, he said.