M3: Mini-Marketing Analysis
Designing and implementing a new educational program is a great way to improve a school’s status and reach a new population of students. It is also a hugely complex multidisciplinary project that carries potential risk as well as reward. From a business standpoint, this endeavor can lead to a significant increase in revenue but also carries risk and the financial loss can reflect poorly on the school and waste valuable resources which could have been otherwise useful to existing departments which may be operating within a narrow margin between success and failure.
One area in education which has seen steady growth with now projection of a fulfilled need for more than a decade, possibly because most projections don’t go beyond 10-12 years, is in the field of nursing. Nursing is currently the highest paying degree at the 2 year level. Many nurses need to advance to the BSN, and MSN level to increase their credibility to advance to leadership positions and to qualify for access into higher levels of nursing practice to the PhD. The American Association of Nurse Practitioners called for an effort to get all Nurse Practitioners to the doctoral level, by 2015.
There are 66 approved nursing schools in Texas but the demand for nurses continues to increase and filling that need has been difficult. Estimates identify a 15% increase (with slight variance generally above that estimate dependent upon the source) is needed and no single school can turn out enough students to meet that need (TXBON,2018). Nearly 690,000 nurses are projected to leave the labor force through 2024, through retirement and other reasons, with additional nursing job openings putting net nurse vacancies at an estimated 1.2 million, according to statistics provided by the American Nurses Association (ANA). This means that the potential for successfully starting up a program does indeed exist.
Nursing is a broadly diverse category ranging from certificate nurses up to the PhD level administrator, researcher, or advanced nurse practitioner. A popular bridging program at many colleges is the RN to BSN program. Such programs can take an AND/ASN nurse to the BSN level in 2 years. Certificate nurses would take longer since they do not possess a two year degree and would lack requisite courses though they may in fact possess formidable experience as nurses. Dept. of Labor and statistics: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm
Employment of registered nurses is projected to grow 15 percent nationally from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations. The Texas growth rate has been double that at just over 30%. Growth will occur for a number of reasons, including an increased emphasis on preventive care; growing rates of chronic conditions, such as diabetes and obesity; and demand for healthcare services from the baby-boom population, as they live longer and more active lives. Online RN-BSN programs in Texas generally offer tuition considerably cheaper than this university. To be competitive tuition should include all administrative and lab fees in an effort to market a no hidden costs policy.
A new nursing program can provide an avenue for a presence in the community and partnerships with healthcare organizations. If open to distance students the partnership can cross to other colleges and healthcare organizations as well providing expansion and support to this program and others. This of course means that the program should not just be approved at the state level but also affiliated with national organizations in nursing. Such cooperativity can add to the college’s marketing without allocating resources strictly to a marketing strategy.
When confronted with the myriad of expenses associated with a college program it is evident that the support costs of the program could far exceed the money received in tuition. This is generally why colleges offer many different programs and use personnel across the program lines rather than dedicating many of the jobs only to a single program. The accounting and registration personnel for example generally are going to be employed centrally by the college rather that exclusively by the nursing department. The ability to have departments centralized or at least connected and servicing all the programs or at least sharing the projects saves money and reduces the ebb and flow that would otherwise be seen as events particular to a single department would cycle throughout the years.
To save on startup costs, funds should be allocated for replacement of furniture, hardware and software to programs within the school which are already in the black. Their furniture and equipment should be repurposed to the nursing program until sufficient success has been noted, any special needs have be legitimately identified and financial projections for dedicated replacement have been formulated and approved.
Initially the hiring of instructor staff, both full time and part time would be a major cost. Nursing faculty in Texas must have at least a Masters in Nursing (MSN). While the average nurse’s salary is over $70K, nurses with an MSN or higher generally get significantly more. It would be customary that the dean possess a Doctorate in Nursing. The student ratio of instructors to students is currently mandated at 10 to 1(Texas NC SARA, n.d.). The ratio can be maintained and supplemented with part time faculty since that ratio is only necessary during practical and clinical situations. Part time MSNs are still, not cheap.
Tuition proposed in this scenario is higher than average. For a new school that can be detrimental to recruiting. One way to make the program more marketable is to make the tuition rate all-inclusive that is, there will be not lab, technology, course or other miscellaneous fees applied. The student will know the cost reliably up front throughout the program.
Online course development can be a considerable undertaking in any new program. Since nursing programs are accredited to national and state standards a school must pay close attention to course development. The instructor staff can be highly valuable as content experts, but may lack the sophisticated working knowledge necessary to put out a professionally produced media based lesson. For this reason professional web developers and writers should be used in the process. These professionals would most likely be contracted for startup, improvement and maintenance rather than serve as full time employees. A small group of core specialists in Information Technology, and management would likely be needed for real time events to ensure no loss of web-based modalities are lost for any significant time.
Faculty office requirements can be expensive during a startup. In an established school repurposing existing office equipment and furnishings with items currently in storage can save money. If stored items are not sufficiently available then accelerating replacement by using existing stock from another department closer to the anticipated replacement cycle could still provide a cheaper, stop-gap measure to conserve funding and minimize initial expenditures. Items repurposed in this manner should be completely serviceable and reasonably aesthetic. They should not look in dire need of replacement. Percentages for replacement over a period of could spread the necessary expenditure over the course of semesters or years. Complete replacement in a given area should be the normal procedure so the entire program’s facilities at least look appropriately matched in any given space. Public and VIP areas should be given priority.
Student support services are important and include things such as counseling, advisement and assessment. Funding for these programs is available through additional means such as state and federal programs. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics NCES (Ginder, 2015) the cost of such programs only cost about 5% of the tuition and for brevity have been reflected as such in the enclosure.
There are many additional cost to consider. Some of the cost are quite variable depending on the location and the rationale. The spreadsheet was not quite set up to reflect what I understood to be the goals of this paper. I have never heard of such an analysis, and I could not find an example.
In the realm of nursing, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that this endeavor is not only plausible, but would serve the needs of the medical establishment. Nurses are in demand and if all the current schools graduated all their students, the need would not be filled. Currently foreign nurses on H-1B visas have been employed to help fill the shortage and that does not even bring the numbers up to alleviate a persistently urgent need (Esposito, 2017).
