A return on investment force multiplier of an entrepreneurial administrative organization for professional studies

Abstract

Scaling a maturing fee-based administrative organization, delivering professional programs to working professional adult learners, to maximize return on investment, required a fully aligned and synchronized, and, naturally derived and time-phased three-pronged approach: (1) being open to multiple mediums of increasing band-width delivery, (2) creatively visualizing, and performing a detailed job enrichment and enlargement analysis supporting backfill at the lowest levels, and (3) finding synergistic cross-university collaborations for efficiency gains and cost containment. Over a seventeen year period, mediums of delivery evolved to support an ever increasing breadth of potential professional working adult learner participants. Dating back to 1998, the origin of the currently known Center for Professional Studies in Technology and Applied Research (ProSTAR), the medium of delivery originated as a weekend program, evolving through four natural distance delivery derivations. With mediums of distance delivery as the foundation, there evolved a natural derivation for effectively compensating participating faculty and their academic departments. Corporate budget constraints coupled with continually evolving market forces, required a competitive posture supporting continued expansion, while controlling cost growth. This dual approach of increasing gross revenue through student enrollments, while simultaneously exercising pro-active cost containment formed the premise and requirement for strategically aligned collaborations. This paper will examine a seventeen year history of distance delivery mediums and their corresponding models for faculty and academic department compensation models. In addition, this paper will reflect the cost savings from an exhaustively performed and executed detailed job enrichment and enlargement analysis of members of a professional organization serving the needs of professional working adult learners. Finally, this paper will discuss the synergistic results to-date of the single largest distance learning cross-college collaboration in the history of this tier 1 research university.