The following is part of a memorandum from the president of Humana University."Last year the number of students who enrolled in online degree programs offeredby nearby Omni University increased by 50 percent. During the same year, Omnishowed a significant

The president of Humana university believes that they should begin offering online classes with the aim of attracting more students and decreasing the maintenance costs of buildings. The Omni university, more successful rival academic institute in the area, has recently migrated from traditional model of education which usually involves a lot of physical space to a virtual form which transfers knowledge through the internet capabilities. Now the Humana university wants to gain the same success by doing the same as Omni university. However, the assumption stated in the memorandum does not seem plausible, because there are probably other factors behind the success of Omni university.
First, the president of Humana University attributes enrollment reduction to the lack of online degree programs and uses the evidence from rival university to buttress his argument. Unlike the president who thinks being online is the first priority, students consider many factors at the time of applying to universities which is a wide area from quality to quantity. For example, value of courses, expertise and popularity of faculty members, library, internet access, dormitory and other facilities are among the contributing factors to student’s final decisions. Thus, assigning the success of Omni university only to online degrees is not wise.
Second, As the president of Humana university mentions, the Omni pays less for dormitory and classroom after going online so it would be a profitable strategy for humana university to doing the same thing. In other words, the president ascertains that if they offer courses on the internet, they can decrease the costs for physical spaces, but this idea is not going accepted by most students who usually expect a moderate price for virtual education or online degrees. In fact, one of the major motivators for students to choose online programs is the affordability so possibly the Humana university has to ask for an extra budget from government or to offer fee-based extra services to compensate maintenance costs.
Finally, another fact which undermines Humana’s university plans to go online is instability of the internet infrastructure in different countries which lowers the value of it an educational platform. For instance, In case of natural or manmade disasters, the cables or satellites will defiantly be damaged and the connections will be lost. It means that, extremely investing in online education programs not only provides benefit for the university but may completely ruin the reputation of its brand. Therefore, the Humanas’ president has to investigate other potential areas to increase the rate of enrollment and make revenues to meet the ends.
All in all, The recommendation from the president of university of Humana which mainly put emphasis on the success of another rival university because of offering online degree programs seems illogical, for the president’s assumption lacks to consider other important factors for students to choose a degree program. In addition, his belief to earns lots of money from online education is unmatched among students so he should not invest all his eggs in the basket of the internet, because of possible treating disasters.