The For-Profit Side of Public U: University Contracts with Online Program Managers

Online enrollments in public universities have soared, in part because of universities’ increasing reliance on for-profit online program managers (OPMs) for everything from instructional design to student recruitment. However, scholarship has indicated that OPMs may play a role in producing predatory forms of inclusion in higher education for marginalized students. To identify mechanisms through which this might occur, the authors conduct a mixed-methods analysis of 161 contracts between OPMs and two- and four-year public universities, an original database of third-party financing structure, and university webpages. The analysis identifies several contract features—targeting, extraction, opacity, and captivity—that may help concentrate marginalized students in extractive or exploitative online programs at public universities. The authors also show that OPMs funded by private equity or venture capital are most likely to include contract features that incentivize aggressive revenue production and promote the recruitment of marginalized students in online, but not in-person, programs.