CRW • Corporate Report • Wisconsin's Business Magazine

The road to economic recovery seems wrought with bumps and potholes, as the unemployment rate hits a 26-year high at 9.5 percent, but Wisconsin universities offering an online component are not experiencing a downturn themselves. In fact, some are reporting triple the number of online registrants than just one year ago.

With experts warning that employment won’t pick up until the second half of 2010, even the most confident workers are starting to sweat. Workers fearing the worst in a troubled economy and those already laid off are taking advantage of the downturn to complete degree programs, attain new skills and possibly a new career in a more stable and lucrative industry.

Even if individuals are unemployed, a full- or part-time on-campus degree program may not be possible. These individuals still face long hours, looking for employment and possibly working two or more jobs to make ends meet until they find some, and family commitments. However, many workers have found the answer to their woes in online education.

Dramatic increases

In addition to traditional on-ground classrooms, Moraine Park Technical College also offers more than 350 online courses and 23 online programs/certificates. Peter Rettler, instruction technology partner who has overseen the college’s online program since 2000, reports online enrollment doubled nearly every year since he’s been there but began to level off about three years ago. At that time, blended learning (which combines online and on-ground education) took off. However, when Rettler checked summer enrollment this year, he got a huge surprise: The numbers for online courses were triple what they were the year prior.

“The only thing I can attribute this to is that once again there is a whole market of people out there who are laid off or have lost their jobs and are looking to retrain,” he says.

These individuals may have picked up retail jobs and have children in the home, so any learning must take place around these commitments. “The only fit for them – really – is online,” he says.

Donald Zahn, associate dean of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater College of Business & Economics, says his university has seen recent increases in its online business bachelor’s degree and MBA programs. In fact, there are more than 100 additional students registered for online programming this fall than in Fall 2008. He purports online education is attractive because people have access to it wherever they are, on their own time, and can save on commuting and childcare costs.

The increase in online enrollment at various colleges in Wisconsin mimics what the annual online education study put out by the Sloan Consortium, an organization dedicated to integrating online education into the mainstream of higher education, predicted in November 2008. Their study reported nearly 3.94 million students were enrolled in at least one online course, an increase of 12.9 percent over the previous year, and predicted the stagnating economy would continue this growth. According to Jeff Seamon, the author of the Sloan Consortium report “Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008,” academic leaders believe there is a correlation between economic troubles and higher enrollments, and that spills over into online education as well.

“Enrollments generally increase during a recession,” agrees Zahn. “People now have the time, and feel it’s a good time to work on that degree. When they were working full-time, they didn’t have that same need.”

Renee Herzing, president of Milwaukee-based Herzing University, one of the first post-secondary institutions founded to train students for the computer industry, agrees. This educational institution encompasses eight campuses in the United States, four in Canada, and an online division, offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 30 different subject areas. It too has seen a surge in online applicants during the recession.

Herzing attributes the increase to the fact that when people are unemployed they seek out new skills to make them more employable. A particular area of interest among recent applicants has been in health care; a fact she doesn’t find surprising.

“When times go down, people hear that medical careers are still there,” she says. “Health care fields are more recession-resistant because people still get sick and need access to medical services.”

Rettler echoes Herzing’s sentiment, stating that when registration opened for Moraine Park’s online Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) class, the line of people was hundreds deep. “You wouldn’t have believed the mix of people in that line and what they’d been doing previously before they decided to become a CNA,” he adds.

Learning for life

Lifelong learning has become a competitive necessity in the 21st century job market. American writer Alvin Toffler, who studies the digital revolution, writes: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who can’t read and write. They will be those who can’t learn, unlearn and relearn.” And in a troubled economy he’s definitely correct.

As the recession hit, many state corporations turned to online programming offered by Wisconsin institutions to help them retrain employees, either because their jobs were being eliminated or because they needed to update employee skills to help them do more with less.

“We’ve been talking to a company in Janesville about what we can do to help retrain employees for a new field,” Herzing says.

How this agreement shakes out depends on whether Herzing University offers the programming this organization seeks. “We offer degrees, and sometimes companies seek very short training intervals instead,” Herzing explains.

Wisconsin higher education institutions are also finding new ways to serve the needs of the recently unemployed online. In many cases, individuals seeking employment have been in the same job for some time, and didn’t have a need to attain or update technology skills for today’s evolving work climate, explains Herzing. For these individuals, Herzing University recently added an IT-focused diploma to get them up to speed on computer technology. Rettler adds Moraine Park has done this as well. “We have more and more people taking basic computer classes,” he says. “A lot of individuals haven’t been in school for 20-plus years, and they haven’t needed these skills.”

Introductory computer courses at Herzing University also can be built into a degree if individuals desire to further their education, Herzing adds. “We believe people have to learn for life,” she explains. “When taking courses, people should seek out something they can build on. It’s better to get a diploma that can transfer into an associate degree program, which can later build into a bachelor’s degree. More employers are demanding degrees for jobs that never required a degree in the past.”

Putting internal training online

WorldWideLearn.com, which offers a directory of e-learning courses and education resources, recently identified the Top 10 e-learning trends.  No. 2 on this list was the fact that companies are increasingly incorporating e-learning into their own infrastructure through company-wide intranets. State universities report similar findings as employers begin seeking out assistance to develop internal training programs. Herzing states the university, recently voted by Corporate Report Wisconsin readers as the “Best School for Online Education,” has been called upon to assist many companies with these types of programs in recent years.

Organizations have also sprung up to help corporations offer internal training. Shift Worldwide, a Midwestern training and consulting firm, is one such company. It recently introduced The Shift System virtual business development training program to help service providers in accounting, law and other service fields train employees in conversational selling. This system allows participants to log into a proprietary training Web site, turn on their Web cameras, and join a trainer and peers on-screen for various training offerings.

According to CEO Paul Trout, Shift Worldwide’s system presents several advantages to today’s cash-strapped companies including saving travel costs and reducing lodging fees. He reports a similar sales training program conducted in person would cost 60 to 70 percent more.

Trout predicts internal training offerings will continue to take off as the economy wavers and rebuilds. “Training like this helps people develop better relationships and get access to education they wouldn’t have access to otherwise, so it makes all the sense in the world,” he explains. “It frees up the ability for folks to gain, access and deliver great content wherever they are.”

Herzing agrees noting that every employee needs to retrain — and retrain often. Internal programs enable companies to retrain employees at a fraction of the cost. “Whether it’s in small bites, like a one-hour Webinar, online training program offerings lasting a couple of weeks or a full degree program, employees have a need to be involved in ongoing training,” she says. Internal offerings such as the one described above and the ones Herzing University has helped companies develop, enable organizations to train many employees at the same time — a critical aspect as today’s corporations become more geographically diverse.

According to Herzing, the future of online education in Wisconsin and beyond is very bright. She predicts there will come a time when online is the main mode of education and on-ground is secondary. Traditional universities will always appeal to those just graduating from high school who seek social aspects only on-ground education can offer, but online programs will become the means to keep workers armed with the ever-evolving skill set they need to do their jobs.

By Ronnie Garrett

Ronnie Garrett is a freelance writer based in Fort Atkinson, Wis. She may be reached at garrettnco@yahoo.com or www.garrettncostudios.com.

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