Simmons University’s Decision to Launch Online Undergrad Program with 2U

Simmons University is a private urban institution in Boston, focused on women’s undergraduate programs and coeducational graduate programs. The school is well-known for their online graduate programs, several of which they are doing in partnership with Online Program Management (OPM) partner 2U – nursing, social work, public health, and behavioral analysis.

Last week Simmons announced its plans for Fall 2020 and beyond in response to COVID disruptions. In an open letter from President Helen Drinan:

The OPM Angle for Phases 3 and 4

To me this story is quite interesting, despite the lack of coverage beyond press releases and small blurbs. We have a school known for online graduate programs applying that model to undergraduate programs with short notice, and we have an expanded OPM partnership into undergraduate levels (outside of the sweet spot of masters programs). One of the pre-COVID questions around the OPM market was whether schools benefit from these partnerships in terms of building up their own capabilities for online education, and with COVID we add the question of how quickly schools can expand quality online programs that go beyond the over-reliance on Zoom for remote teaching. In the terms of our graphic, how quickly can schools transition to Phases 3 and 4.

The new model at Simmons has 2U rapidly redesigning 300 undergraduate courses along with the Simmons faculty. It is not clear yet if Simmons will have face-to-face offerings this fall, but if it does, the online and face-to-face programs will work in parallel as they will beyond this year. This online pivot is meant not only to manage the transition but also to target a new academic offering that could grow the Simmons undergraduate enrollment in the long term.

There are some important details that are not described in the press releases or the Simmons website. In particular – what is the business model of this deal (revenue share or fee-for-service or some mix), and what is the expected tuition level? This announcement seems to be the most aggressive, or most obvious, usage of an OPM partnership as the centerpiece of an institution’s plans for the fall term, but it is premature to analyze it yet. At least until we find out more details, and until we get updates on both enrollment results and course design results.

Simmons Scenario Planning

But it is worth understanding why Simmons’ leadership made this decision. In an interview with Simmons President Helen Drinan, she described the thought process that university leadership used to arrive at this new option. In her view, this approach became the obvious choice after considering several scenarios.

The first scenario is the status quo – what Simmons is offering today, based on emergency remote teaching often through live video conferencing. This option was immediately rejected, as the current online undergraduate courses do not represent what faculty intended, in terms of learning experiences, and student would (rightly) not want to pay for continued education in this manner. Simmons cannot sustain the status quo and rejected this option.

This led to the question of bringing all students back on campus for the fall. For undergraduate enrollment of nearly 1,800 students, this option has to assume that COVID-19 has been largely mitigated, which is unrealistic. This scenario was rejected.

Simmons then worked with architects to determine how many students could the university safely house in residence halls and in classes, using reasonable social distancing methods. Being in Boston, many of their students live in off-campus apartments or are commuters, which provides options. The analysis by architects showed that this alternative is not financially viable – currently Simmons cannot expect to be able to afford to house just a small number of students, thus rejecting this scenario.

As Simmons looked at online offerings for all undergraduates, the school did not believe it could develop the quality of online courses needed over the next four months on its own. This is when the school looked at the OPM model with 2U used in several of their graduate programs.

A key attribute of Simmons’ student body helps make this online-with-2U option viable for the university. Many of their undergraduate students are in nursing or similar professional-type programs. As Drinan explained, these students are purposeful in their academic plans – they know the degree they want, they have clear objectives. For this type of student (in contrast with a more liberal arts, general educational or figure-out-details-later type), Simmons’ leadership believes that the incoming class can handle one semester or one year online with options to move to face-to-face for the remainder of the program. For sophomores and above, these students have already had much of the campus experience and can also handle one semester or even year online, with the same faculty they already know.

The further away you get from this type of purposeful student, the more difficult this option becomes. Students in a less professional or directed degree plans place higher values on the college experience – parties, games, etc. For full-time first-time students, this is a difficult trade-off, and Simmons is not basing their approach on that student type (no pejorative intent for that description).

Risk Management and Opportunity?

At the same time, 2U leadership helped convince Simmons leadership that this online offering is also an opportunity. Undergraduate nursing and public health programs are in demand, and Simmons has an opportunity to expand their target undergraduate population to include students who have no capabilities or plans to live in a campus environment. Those who are looking for educational outcomes without the college experience bells and whistles.

It was this combination of rapid development of online course designs that meet Simmons’ quality objectives and the opportunity of future expansion that led the Simmons leadership to choose this expanded partnership with 2U as the approach starting in Fall 2020.

The plan is for tuition for the online offering to be lower than face-to-face tuition, but the school has not finalized the details. It is likely to be in the 10 – 40% lower-than-residential range, which is in the same range as UF Online’s reduced tuition, where online is 75% of the tuition level of residential, to cite a pre-COVID example.

Risk of Getting the Job Done

I asked both 2U CEO Chip Paucek, in a separate interview, and President Drinan about the risk they face with simple execution. The ability to have these courses ready and faculty ready to teach in this course design in less than four months. Both Paucek and Drinan had the same answer, that due to their history of working together, both organizations have already begun the development even before finalizing contract details.

Paucek cited another key factor that makes this transition feasible – 2U’s introduction of Studio in a Box, which was developed as part of the London School of Economics (LSE) agreement (the other undergraduate partnership in the company’s set of programs). This offering is a combination of remote video production toolkit and software along with support services.

Caution

Before extrapolating this model beyond Simmons in particular, it is worth noting that this is for a private, high-tuition school where typical undergraduate tuition and fees are estimated at $63k – $67k before financial aid (and assuming room & board). For access-oriented institutions with lower tuition, it’s not clear that this model could work – the finances for both the school and the OPM partner would be hard to justify the investment. Likewise, the Simmons student body likely has fewer equity issues of students not having reliable access to broadband Internet. This is not to say that Simmons has no issues, but rather to caution about extrapolation assumptions. Treat this as a new model to understand and learn from, not as a solution for others without careful analysis.

We will keep watching this online undergraduate program to gather details – on tuition and business model, and on the results in terms of student enrollment and ability to deliver the courses in time for the fall, as well as student and faculty experiences during the term.

Update 5/13: 422 was mentioned as the incoming class size, which was not clear; I changed description to most recent IPEDS listing of total undergraduate enrollment of roughly 1,800.

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