"Semester Online": Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Northwes

10 Universities to Form Semester Online Consortium - NYTimes.com

Starting next fall, 10 prominent universities, including Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Northwestern, will form a consortium called Semester Online, offering about 30 online courses to both their students — for whom the classes will be covered by their regular tuition — and to students elsewhere who would have to apply and be accepted and pay tuition of more than $4,000 a course.

For many of the participating schools, which include Brandeis, Emory, Notre Dame, the University of Rochester, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest, Semester Online offerings will be their first undergraduate for-credit online courses, and the first to offer credit to students from outside the universities.

 

They're going to severely limit the number of folks who might be interested in these courses due to "sticker shock". $4,000/course is highway robbery.

 

The sticker price for full-time tuition at a top private university like Duke or Northwestern is around $40,000 per year. Presumably a full-time student takes around 8 - 10 semester courses per year, which would work out to around $4,000 - $5,000 per course. By that standard, $4,000 for an online course is reasonable.

Now in practice, most students at top private universities don't pay the full sticker price; they get discounts in the form of scholarships, work-study grants, etc. These discounts would apply to the online classes as well. So most students, at least at the consortium universities, are not going to be paying the full $4,000 per course.

These points are acknowledged in the Semester Online FAQs:

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They don't appear to be concerned about reaching a mass audience. Course sections are capped at 20 students, and admissions requirements will be enforced. Specific requirements have not been announced, but all of the schools in the consortium are relatively selective, so it seems likely that admission to the online courses will be selective too. So you might not be able to get in, even if you can afford it.

 

$4000 per course is not out-of-line with the tuition these institutions are charging. Despite the obvious benefit to those students enrolled at these schools, I could see these courses serving as a mechanism for making applicants to these institutions more competitive. If someone is applying to Notre Dame (GO IRISH) and h/she has already completed a few ND courses through this program - would it not give that person an advantage over another applicant with no such experience?

I, for one, would spend that kind of money for one of my kids to have an advantage in the application process. Worst case scenario - if one of my daughters went this route and was not able to get into the school she would have transfer credits from a Top-tier university.