4 days ago
The OPM Mirage: How Online Program Managers Are Eroding Higher Education From Within
Close-up of a mortarboard and degree certificate put on the table. Education stock photo
As an educator, I am inundated with daily ads for Georgetown's Professional Masters Programs. They are extensive and they are expensive. They are designed for mid-career professionals looking for training either in their present field or beginning a new one. There are four areas of study. 'Business and Management' has the most degree options, including 'Higher Ed Administration', 'Project Management', and 'Supply Change Management' among others. Technology and Security' has degree offerings in 'Cybersecurity Risk Management' and 'Emergency and Disaster Management' Other areas include Marketing and Communications and Real Estate. Students at Georgetown can access the courses on-line, on-campus or through something called 'executive format.' They all cost around $50,000 and take 2-5 years to complete.
I don't know if I could have put together a more thorough and comprehensive list of offerings of training to address the needs of administrative and management professionals in the 21st century. Yet, as Georgetown University aggressively expands its professional master's degrees through OPM giants like 2U, it's worth asking: Are students get what they pay for for on-line programs managed by OPM's
OPMs are often presented as mutual collaborators, sharing risk with universities to launch online programs. But this ignores their extractive financial models. OPMs typically take 50–60% of tuition revenue in exchange for upfront marketing and tech investments—a deal that siphons resources away from educational quality. As Ryan Craig notes in Forbe's article "Mastercrash", this revenue-sharing creates perverse incentives: OPMs prioritize enrollment growth over student outcomes. Many of the degrees are in lower paying non-profit professions where the ROI is limited. As reported by Lisa Bannon and Andrea Fuller in a 2021 WSJ article , universities like USC face lawsuits alleging their $115,000 online social work master's—bankrolled by 2U—misled students about career prospects.
When OPMs control recruitment, curriculum, and delivery, universities abdicate their educational mission. As I wrote in "The Master's Degree Ripoff", many programs—especially in emerging fields like data science—are designed by OPMs to maximize enrollments.
Some OPMs may be expanding access to non-traditional learners, but not without significant cost. These companies target precisely the students most susceptible to debt traps: working adults seeking career advancement. As Marc Bousquet argues in "The Great Master's Degree Swindle", OPMs exploit the "credential arms race," pushing degrees with dubious ROI. In Kevin Carey's article in the Huff Post, The Capitalist Takeover of College, institutions like Walden University (run by OPM Adtalem), graduate from low-value programs and face loan default rates up to 20% .
As Lauren Coffey notes in Inside Higher Ed, on-line college enrollment continues to decline to pre-pandemic levels. Universities have begun to reclaim their on-line course as Arizona State and Southern New Hampshire have done. Regulatory enforcement of the 50% rule and prosecuting deceptive marketing—are essential.
It is hard to hold the OPM's accountable, for they are providing what the colleges are seeking: Using their brand to extract as much tuition revenue as possible at the lowest cost without a high focus on the expected ROI.
Universities are trading their academic reputation for short-term revenue. These on-line masters programs are clearly quite distinct from their traditional masters degrees. Colleges with strong name recognition use this to be able to charge similar tuition and fees for on-line programs as traditional brick-and-mortar courses, at a fraction of the cost. Until schools break this Faustian bargain, the higher education 'ripoff' will continue.
