Q: I would like to take advantage of some of the free consulting services provided to LERN members and need help getting started. Specifically, input on instructor compensation. So that you can best match me with someone on your staff, I feel that it is important to provide a little information to let you know who we are as a program. We are located in a small town, with a population of just 9,000. Student enrollment at our 4 year university is 3,900. In our first year, we enrolled 350 adults and 80 youth in our program, and we have had a little over 580 registrations.
Whatever help you and your staff could provide would be greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing from you.
A: 1) Instructor compensation- The basic way that LERN recommends looking at instructor compensation is as part of the overall financial format for courses. Basically there are two categories of expenses related to providing a course, promotion and production. Promotion is the cost of printing and mailing a brochure or other costs related to getting the word out. Production costs are the actual costs of providing the course. Production costs are made up primarily of instructor compensation, class supplies/texts/materials/equipment and facility rental (if any). Promotion costs should range between 10% and 15% of income. For contract training, where there is little or no promotion, the promotion cost would be negligible. Production costs for courses should range between 35% and 40% of income. This means that promotion and production costs (which are essentially instructor compensation) should not exceed 50-55% of your income for open enrollment courses or 40-45% of income for contract training events.
Of course every program has unique variables that come into play when paying instructors so if this information doesn’t help answer your question, please let me know and we can set up a time to talk about it more in-depth.