Budget Planning
The Office of Online Learning can work with you to create a budget based on your goals. A part of that budget could be a marketing plan with suggested spending based national and regional competition.
When creating a program budget, some factors to consider are listed below:
- Marketing and recruitment
- AdWords (should be coordinated between all UGA offices bidding on Adwords)
- Social media advertising
- Other forms of advertising
- Recruiting events usually at conferences
- Office of Online Learning’s enrollment coach who helps increase the rate of return on requests for information from potential students
- Hardware and software for program faculty
- Administration and support salaries
- Graduate student labor
- Development stipends or course releases
- Teaching salaries including summer teaching salaries
- Professional development
- Course development and maintenance
- Videography
- Captioning
- Content licensing
- Materials development
- Design
- Travel and honoria for outside experts either to appear in video or to mentor students
- Quality assurance
- Student access to technology and/or proctoring paid for by the program
- Additional student support services (e.g., advising, success coaches)
Budget planning for a program occurs in the context of a program’s goals and strategies. For instance, a program with a low-residency model that requires students to come to campus for a brief time will need to faculty salaries and other student support during that time period. Our competitors are increasingly adding student success coaches and other student services to their online programs.
The categories of expenses above are listed roughly in the order that occurs for UGA programs.