A damning report from the Century Foundation calls into question the continuing use of for-profit companies to deliver online courses in public institutions, referring to the companies as “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” Authors Stephanie Hall and Taela Dudley described the contracts between public universities and “online program managers” (OPMs) such as 2U, Academic Partnerships, Bisk, Wiley and Pearson “bad deals made with for-profit actors.” The foundation is a self-described “progressive, nonpartisan think tank.”
The findings in the report were based on an analysis of 79 contracts between public institutions and third-party OPMs, which the foundation obtained through state public records requests. The article includes a link to most of those contracts.
The new work is a follow-on to a study published two years ago on these same partnerships, which found that “more often than not, more than half of the programs’ tuition revenue goes straight to the contractors.”