Q: We are looking at launching some online programs at CE … and would like some information on any benchmarks you have on instructor pay.
Based on CE programs nationwide, and your UGC program, can you offer some thoughts on the following approaches to online pay?
1. Pay on a tiered basis for hours – fixed pay for a 10-hr, 20-hr and 30-hr class (where the class size is limited to 24)
2. Pay on a course/contact hour basis – fix the pay for each hour, and scale up as needed. This is the model used for on-campus classes today.
3. Pay on a per student basis (will vary with class size, max of 24)?
Any other guidelines about launching online programs will also be welcome!
A: 1.Fixed pay. For low enrollment classes, you get hit hard financially. For higher enrollments, the instructor is expected to “work for free” (same pay for 34 students as for 10 students).
2.Contact hour basis. This makes little or no sense in the continuing education world. Am not clear on how this is different from Fixed Pay based on X Contact Hours.
3.Per student. This is the best approach. It rewards the teacher for more students, it does not hurt you as much for fewer students. Here’s a few issues to think about:
-Minimum pay and Cancelled classes. With any of the above, I am assuming you will cancel low enrollment classes. This gets dicey if you want to run a low enrollment class but the teacher pay is so low the teacher cannot afford to teach it. You will need to figure this out.
-Max of 34. This is not a good policy. If you get a winner/hit, you are just hurting yourself, the students you turn away, etc. Just don’t deal with this now, don’t put it in writing, and just work with it as it happens. If you get 36 registrations, doing a class for 2, or cancelling the two people, just doesn’t make sense. There’s no evidence that higher enrollment online classes have less student satisfaction or achievement. In fact, our data suggests higher registrations (50 or so) actually have slightly higher satisfaction.
-Development time. Are you paying for that? Not suggesting you pay for it, just suggesting it takes an average of 120 hours to build a course. It has to be figured somewhere.
-Ownership. Does the teacher own the course, or Bellevue? (see above)
-Our formula is a minimum of $500 per offering (they teach 4 offerings a year) to give them a minimum, no pay for development, they own the course, 30% up to $2,000 for a one month course; than 10% over that.
-Never pay anybody by the hour. There’s no control. There’s no limit.
-Start to move away from thinking about hours, “contact hours” and all that. In the online world, they make no sense. I understand your institution is stuck in the last century with hours, which make sense in the F2F world, and you have to make up “contact hours” and all that, but just understand they are made-up or phony numbers, and your pricing, teacher pay and other financial numbers have to be figured on non-hourly basis or you will get killed financially at some point.