All: 

In FACT Executive Council yesterday, Provost Lavallee outlined the initial concepts of an online SUNY BA/BS degree. What follows are the points I captured, and then some questions for you regarding any strategy (or lack thereof) on your campus concerning online course development.

The Provost referenced the CUNY BA/BS model, and then stated that SUNY's approach would be like, but unlike, CUNY. I gathered that CUNY's approach is fundamentally similar to Empire State: a "design your own degree" approach fostered by an assigned faculty mentor.  David then shifted track in terms of describing the SUNY approach. 

A student would have a home campus. Oversight for the student's degree progress would be from the home campus department chair or advisor. The expectation would be that the student would take the majority of his/her courses (core and cognates) from the home campus online, and fill in gaps for Gen Ed and electives via excess capacity at other institutions that already have such offerings online. Campuses would determine the percentage of overall credits for the degree that must be taken from the home campus. Campuses enrolling these "outside" students in their courses would receive tuition for these enrollees.

There are some fundamental questions this plan poses:

The impetus to create such an online program would be at the campus level. What kinds of incentives would encourage a campus to build such programs?

The concept of "excess capacity" may or may not be based on actual statistics. In our case, we do reserve seats for our target audience- non-traditional students; the reality of the situation is that the majority of enrollments comes from our resident campus based students. Increasing the allocation of reserved seats in an online course to accommodate outside SUNY students would create a ripple effect, displacing our resident students, and therefore driving a need for more on-campus sections of such courses. Again, would there be a financial incentive to the offering campus to deal with this offset? 

An increase in online enrollment would drive the need for increased support services - tutoring, library, possibly counseling, and other services. Would the home campus or the offering campus provide these services?

Your input:

What other questions come to mind for you? 

Who ultimately makes decisions on your campus regarding not just offering online courses, but offering a complete degree program? Those with oversight should be engaged in this discussion if there are plans to move it forward.

thanks

Greg