CBT: The College Brain Trust

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Public and private colleges across the nation are turning to online education as a way of increasing enrollment beyond their traditional service areas. While the competition for students is escalating, College Brain Trust believes that there is still opportunity for California community colleges to expand their out-of-state enrollments through online programs. The key to success at this time is to develop and implement a comprehensive strategic plan for expansion of your online program to these new markets.

CBT will assist community colleges in building enrollments through online education using a customizable four-step process that is designed to help you meet your individual goals. Instead of applying cookie-cutter solutions, our recommendations are based your unique situation and your desired outcomes. Our experience-based approach includes the following steps:

1. Identify desired outcomes and key benchmarks. CBT will work with college leaders to develop a clear set of measureable outcomes for the project and identify how the project fits into the college’s mission. An important component of this first stage would be the consideration of shared governance issues and stakeholder buy-in. A business plan, which includes projected revenue streams, a project budget, and potential ROI, will also be an important part of this stage.
2. Assess your college’s current online program. CBT’s development plan will depend on the current online capacity of the college. CBT will evaluate your college’s online offerings, success rates of students, technological capacity, student services, and contractual issues such as load policies.
3. Identification of targeted online classes or programs. CBT will identify which of your courses or programs have the greatest opportunity to attract out-of-state students. This will depend on the college’s strengths, its ability to expand its online courses, the target audience, and the demand in the marketplace for those online classes. CBT can also assist your college in creation of a development plan to expand your online offerings in the targeted disciplines.
4. Develop a plan to deliver distance education to out-of-state students. The final step is to develop a plan to deliver online courses to out-of-state students. CBT’s approach is built around identifying the requirements of a quality-based program, including the technical, instructional, and student service components, and then creating an implementation plan to reach those goals. This would include a marketing plan that would reach targeted audiences throughout the United States.