Another important thing we find institutions are not doing well, if at all, is following up on prospective student inquiries. In fact, we shop all of the programs of our competitors on a regular basis. It isn't uncommon for us to make an inquiry to a competitive program and never get a call back, or never get the material in the mail that we requested. Students who are seeking online education and are working professionals are also individuals who expect high levels of responsiveness and they expect those responses almost instantly. Successful institutions are those that have systems in place for regular communication with prospects and we firmly believe that communication also needs to be in person and not just online. A well-defined communication plan is important.

IMS Global: Does Compass Knowledge Group support hybrid programs as well as those which are strictly offered online?

GP: We support both. We take an approach to look at the curriculum and understand the audience and design the program accordingly. The curriculum dictates. Secondly, we'll determine what best meets the needs of those professionals. If there's a need for individuals to occasionally come together face-to-face in order to achieve a certain learning objective or competency, then we consider that important. But we don't recommend bringing them together just because that's just what faculty are used to. It should be driven by the learning objectives of that program and the curriculum. The doctorate in pharmacy program that we work with at UF, for example, has face-to-face requirements. We're seeing more and more in the literature that says working professionals like to come together occasionally. We've done some surveys around that. We have a program right now that we just completed an assessment for and face-to-face meeting will be a requirement in that program because the content is heavily built around teams. The technology is just not quite good enough yet for the kind of work that they're going to be doing that will allow them to do it all at a distance.

IMS Global: One of the takeaways from what you've been saying appears to be that every online offering is different and must be customized to the unique needs of a particular audience, faculty, and institutional culture. Would you agree with that?

GP: Yes, generally. There are certain critical factors that we asses to put together a composite that will give us an indication that a certain program has a high prospect for success. There are factors around scalability and structure that we think are critical so we approach it from the perspective of what our experience tells us and what some benchmarks in the industry are predictors of success. But clearly, structure it around the curriculum and institutional culture. Even the marketing message needs to be structured around the institution's culture. We currently support 18 programs for eight knowledge partners and no two of those programs are structured exactly alike.

IMS Global: In terms of the development of distance learning during the past decade, what letter grade would you give higher education?

GP: I think I would give the for-profits right now an A. They have been the true marketplace leaders in online education. The corporate market has also been a leader in online education. And the traditional higher education market right now is probably a C or C+, but rapidly moving up. What we know about this working professional audience is, given a choice, if they can get the certification and degree programs they want from traditional, marquee-based institutions, they're going to choose brand. They would like to have more choice in the marketplace and more and more institutions are moving in that direction. The limitations faculty have had around not being as technologically savvy has limited institutions to some degree, but I see a lot of incentive in the traditional institutions to understand the value and necessity of making online education available to the working professional audience. I think we're at a tipping point for online education and the growth is going to come from more traditional institutions.