Coordinators

The Home Institution Model

Introduction

Since its inception in 1992, the Indiana Partnership for Statewide Education (IPSE) has contributed significantly to the planning and delivery of distance education opportunities throughout Indiana. This success has been due in large part to the considerable strengths among the member institutions. At least as important has been the willingness of the member institutions to work together for the common good of all learners. Faculty, instructional support staff, and academic administrators have expanded their thinking and collaborated with colleagues across the state in program development and delivery at ever-increasing levels of instructional quality. Working especially through the Indiana College Network (ICN), student services professionals have worked tirelessly with the understanding that student support services are vital if distance education students are to have the same high-quality educational experiences and levels of support as our campus-based students. As each institution has expanded its own technology-based services, ICN has thus been able to grow in its role as an interinstitutional information and enrollment services clearinghouse.

Home Institution

A fundamental principle that provides the foundation for the concept of the Indiana College Network is that each distance education student will have a designated home institution. By definition, the home institution is the institution that records enrollment; records course grades and grants credit; provides financial aid services; issues billing and collects (its own) tuition and fees; certifies enrollment; and provides other student services. In short, the home institution is the institution of record for the student. It is the institution at which the student has applied and has been accepted, whether degree or non-degree status.

Originating Institution

The originating institution provides the instructional origination (via technology) and management for a course. The instructor/professor for such a course is responsible for the content and statewide delivery of the course and will deliver the course to all students enrolled through ICN regardless of home institution. This includes assuring that all students have access to library and other academic support required for a particular course as well as assigning grades and notifying home institutions promptly of apparent withdrawals or last dates of attendance. Thus, the originating institution provides the statewide instruction for a given course on behalf of all the ICN participating institutions which elect to enroll students in that course.

Centralized Information and Enrollment Support

The IPSE recognized early the need to develop the capacity to deliver to distance education students those academic and student support services that will be necessary to student success, as noted above. Most of these services will be provided directly by either the home or originating institution; some may be delivered through local learning centers. The centralized services performed by ICN staff, such as providing general information about distance learning and ICN, information regarding the establishment of a home institution, course schedules, etc., are intended to complement the information and services to be delivered directly from the home institutions to assist students with course enrollments. The ICN staff will not act in the role of academic advisors, nor will they provide financial aid services beyond basic, general information. ICN will provide a single point of contact for students who may be making their first contacts with higher education and distance learning. Beyond that, the ICN staff will offer any help students may request that will facilitate course enrollments and that are consistent with member institution policies and procedures. In short, the staff of ICN will be in a position to act on behalf of, but not in place of, any participating member institution in ways agreeable to both.

Beyond the enrollment service functions noted above, ICN staff will provide overview information about higher and distance education, an informational database of courses and programs, voice and email services for response to inquiries from prospective students as well as institutional staff, and an enrollment database. This enrollment database will be maintained for purposes of providing aggregate data on enrollments through ICN and will in no way replace the official student records to be maintained by the respective home institutions.

Discussion

The concept of a home institution offers several distinct advantages for students and institutions/campuses alike but carries challenges as well.

Among the advantages to students to have an identified home institution is that enrollment in courses, credits and grades earned, tuition and fees to be paid, financial aid services provided, academic advising, and all other such academic and student support services will be provided by and handled through one institution. This home institution will be the one with which the student already has an established relationship. This arrangement offers very significant advantages over one that would require students to enroll in multiple institutions and “run the gauntlet” with each in acquiring needed services and transferring credit after the fact. In addition, students benefit from the assurance of applicability derived from the requirement of advance approval by an academic advisor before entering an originating institution’s course. There is little doubt that such service-oriented relationships with students offer a much higher quality of service to them.

Concurrent with these advantages come several challenges. First, this arrangement calls for students to be enrolled in courses at the home institution that are originating from another IPSE member institution. While this means that the home institution does not have to assign an instructor of record or be concerned either with licensing agreements with an originator or with separate consortium agreements for each student for financial aid, it does imply that the home institution will accept “as its own” the course grade and credits reported by the instructor at the originating institution. Over the years we have grown comfortable with accepting appropriate transfer credits from one another. This arrangement calls upon us to take a further step and recognize our respective faculties as worthy of each others’ confidence, capable of serving as adjuncts across institutional boundaries in accordance with established articulation agreements for the benefit of students. Nonetheless, the home institution is always the final arbiter of which and how many courses may be accepted as resident credit through the Home Institution Model and how those courses will apply to a particular student’s program requirements.

Another advantage of this type of relationship is that a home institution will be able to “offer” courses to students with reduced effort by using courses being originated by partner institutions, an opportunity which may even benefit its on-campus students as well. It is expected that the majority, if not all, of the tuition income collected by the home institution will be forwarded to the originating institution to cover instructional costs and fees associated with the technology-based course, but that official enrollments will remain with the home institution for purposes of enrollment change funding for public institutions. This produces a “win-win” situation at least for at least some state-supported campuses. The originating institution will receive tuition income forwarded from the enrolling home institution that it would not likely otherwise receive. Those public home institutions that receive enrollment change funding can potentially realize a modest benefit from enrollment adjustment reimbursement to offset its own administrative expenses associated with student support. It is hoped that, over time, the apparent sacrifice of “enrollment headcounts” by an originating institution for one course may be offset by its role as a home institution in using courses originated by other IPSE institutions.

On the other hand, the tuition revenue split that has been in place since ICN’s inception (90% of the home institution’s tuition forwarded to the originating institution, with 10% retained by the home institution) seldom works well for independent institutions or for those public institutions considered by the state to be “stable campuses” in terms of enrollment change funding. For these institutions acting only occasionally as home institutions, 10% of tuition may suffice to cover immediate administrative costs for a single student, but for those which enroll a significant number of students through the Home Institution Model, 10% of tuition does not cover such costs. Moreover, 90% of a public institution’s tuition is seldom sufficient to cover an independent institution’s costs of providing the instruction as an originating institution, even or especially if aggregated over large numbers of such enrollments. And a public institution student’s financial aid package may not cover the cost of an independent institution’s full tuition for a needed course.

The services and arrangements outlined in this model will serve as a foundation for annually revisited decisions regarding the specific form that rate reimbursements should take. That agreement with executive sponsorship will be appended to this basic policy agreement as Attachment B, along with the separate ICN Financial Aid Consortium Agreement between Member Institutions (Attachment A). The latter document has been developed and signed by financial aid officers of campuses participating in ICN and specifies agreements with respect to defining enrollment status, awarding of financial aid, monitoring of satisfactory academic process, etc. It will be reviewed every five years or upon changes to the Higher Education Act that would necessitate updates to the agreement, whichever comes first.

Clearly, the Home Institution Model challenges traditional methods for conducting the enterprise of higher education. However, when the needs of students become the primary focus for our partnership efforts, these ideas warrant careful consideration.

Approved by the Indiana Partnership for Statewide Education at its June 2, 2006, meeting

ICN Home Institution Model

Attachment B

Cost-Sharing for Cross-Institutional Enrollment

Through the ICN Home Institution Model

2006

The ICN Home Institution Model recognizes two primary areas of expense for campuses participating in cross-institutional enrollment: administrative and instructional. The originating institution bears the full cost of providing the instruction—faculty salary, instructional support, library resources, technology systems and support, etc.—to all students enrolled in a course, regardless of which institutions may serve as those students’ “homes.” The home institution bears the majority (though not all) of the administrative costs associated with advising students, processing enrollment, recording grades and granting credit, awarding and administering financial aid, etc.

Participating institutions recognize, however, that although neither party is profiting financially from these kinds of cross-institutional enrollments, the goal is to help assure that students can make timely progress in their courses of study with access to the full range of educational resources they need. At a broad system level, the institutions hope that apparent financial gains and losses can balance out over the long term for everyone.

Correspondingly, participating institutions have agreed to the following general formula for sharing these service costs, with a goal of providing sufficient consistency to permit clarity for students and staff and to facilitate long-term planning by all.

• It is agreed that Home Institutions will charge their students their own tuition and fees, according to their published resident or distance-education general service per-credit-hour rates. Institutions which ordinarily use block tuition formulas usually have part-time or elective per-credit-hour rates which can be applied for enrollments through ICN.
• Home Institutions will forward 90% of the tuition collected (but not including special-purpose fees) up to 100% of the originating institution’s published resident or distance-education general service per-credit-hour rates plus any technology fee or distance education fee charged to distance students at the Originating Institution. In no case will the Home Institution forward more than 90% of its tuition collected.
• It is the responsibility of the Originating Institution to generate an invoice to the Home Institution for payment of cross-registered students during a particular semester.
• It is the student’s responsibility to drop or withdraw from a course through the Home Institution and the responsibility of the Originating Institution to notify the Home Institution of the last date of attendance. Since the Home Institution is responsible for collecting tuition and dealing with payments, the Home Institution’s policies and schedules will prevail regarding refunds due to students and any amount to be returned from the Originating Institution to the Home Institution if payment has already been forwarded.

This cost-sharing agreement will apply to cross-institutional enrollments through academic year 2006-07 (Fall, Spring, Summer). It will be reviewed each winter and either re-endorsed or adjusted to address changing circumstances or unanticipated problems.

6/2/06