I am often asked about the kind of institutions that are similar to RRU and have struggled to name any in the past – so we have reverted to looking a local universities or on-line universities. Not a very sophisticated approach – so let’s think about this a bot more carefully.
Royal Roads U. is a special purpose university with an applied professional mandate, it charges premium tuition, is largely graduate and is small and unranked internationally. An attempt to search around these parameters is difficult if not impossible but I would point to a few comparators that might be at least worth thinking about.
Bond University – Australia
4,000 students, 35% international, 35% graduate, rated #1 in Australia, very accelerated degrees at u/g or grad, 3 point starts per year, “academics from the real world”, private, u/g tuition for a degree $107K, MBA $57K
Schools:
Business
Law
Property Design and Management
Health Science, Sport and Medicine
Communication, Creative and Media
Humanities and International Science
Social Science
Hotel and Tourism Management
MCI – Austria
3200 students, 13 bachelors programs, 12 masters, 170 faculty, 918 external faculty, #1 school in Austria, tuition int. $7,300 /semester $44K u/g, 29K grad.
biotech, business, communication, IT, social work, non-profit, tourism, engineering, mechatronics,
Koc Universitesi, Turkey
Tuition $66K (int) u/g, 32 u/g programs, 18 masters, 25 PhD. small somewhat traditional liberal arts mindset.
admin science and economics, sciences, social science and humanities, engineering, law, medicine, nursing, business, health science.
Trident University International, California
Completely on-line, mainly grad, 6,000 students, private for-profit, military friendly, u/g cost tuition $45K
business, HR, leadership, health science, homeland security, health admin, computer science, IT management, education, PhD business or health science, EdD.
Walsh College – Michigan
Private non-profit, 6 u/g degrees, 9 masters, only last two years of u/g, tuition $460 US /CH, grad $770US /CH = u/g degree completion (60CR) = $34K and grad (36CR) = $34K
business admin, accounting, finance, marketing, taxation, IT leadership.
Fielding Graduate University – California
1046 students, graduate only blended programs, tuition masters US$4950 / semester = $25K PhD approximately double per year $100K
leadership and organizational change, psychology, educational leadership.
University of the Rockies – Colorado
“transform lives and inspire others”, private for-profit, founded 1998, 1400 students, on-line or on-campus, masters tuition US$857 /CR = $36K – PhD approx. $80K
psych, human services, human development, organizational development and leadership, education, international leadership (masters and PhD)
My conclusion from this quick survey – most schools with a similar mandates are picking similar programs with similar price points. Given the student numbers at some of these smaller schools I worry regarding their ability to survive.
The second part of this post is about competition and this is something that is really quite worrying.
As I mentioned in another post, almost every university has mention of blended learning and professional learning somewhere in their strategic plans. Flexible learning is the talk of the town at UBC. Graduate certificates are cropping up at many institutions as they try to compete with the for-profit sector that was an early entrant into this space. Mid-career adult learners are the new student as traditional entrance demographics are on the decline. On top of this students are more discerning (87% of prospects say they do not trust university web sites (from the EAB) and they are getting more price sensitive.
As if this is not depressing enough, we are clearly all chasing the same thing … Masters degree conferrals, which saw a tremendous growth over the last few years have now flattened indicating a potentially saturated market. International enrolment has tanked in the US, Canada has benefited from that decline but the long term outlook is flat or declining as international sending countries not only look to repatriate their own students but boost their international enrolment through a proliferation of courses taught in English.
Even in new fields, the competition is intense. 117 new masters degrees in data science and analytics were launched in the US in 2017 from just 5 in 2011 (EAB). I can only imagine how many more are in the pipeline.
All of this makes strategic planning somewhat more interesting ……