Good to Great – Enhancing Services to Professional Working Adult Learners through a Campus-Wide Benchmarking Study

With a new university President, a two year freeze on student tuition rate increases and the challenges of a contracting State general fund for higher education, the Purdue University Center for Professional Studies in Technology and Applied Research (ProSTAR) underwent a highly visible assessment of value addedness. This study compared all on-campus continuing professional education organizations to determine efficiencies through a reduction in redundancies and subsequent cost savings. In 2009, Purdue University’s College of Technology centralized professional studies into a single fully supported Center for Professional Studies in Technology and Applied Research (ProSTAR). ProSTAR (as it became approved in 2009), on October 13, 2000, was approved by the full committee of the Indiana Commission on Higher Education (ICHE) to provide a feebased distance learning Master of Science degree in Technology, versus, the traditional tuitionbased on-campus residential program. As a fee-based organization, ProSTAR receives no state funds. It is entirely funded through feebased revenue. To this end, organizational success in delivering quality programs to professional working adult learners is paramount. Over the five years since its inception, ProSTAR has demonstrated significant success by increasing enrollments over 200%, graduate students 154% (representing 41% of the total college) and gross revenue 300%; this while dropping overhead from 56% to near 24%. With a new University President and renewed focus on efficiencies and cost savings, ProSTAR was invited to participate in a benchmarking of its operations against other internal university similar fee-based program organizations. This paper focuses on the results of this five month benchmarking study; including the recommendations for improvement to serve professional working adult learners in the areas of: Reduction of administrative overhead Creation of an expense and residual financial model Unbundling of services – a la carte service provider Increasing Program specific expense transparency Enhancing marketing expertise Standardization of a faculty compensation model Administrative department teaching to reduce overhead P ge 24648.2 Additional this paper focuses on the emotional and psychological implications on the administering organization’s personnel during the above referenced organizational success.