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 offered by nearby Omni University increased by 50 percent. During the same year, Omni showed a significa

In the above argument the author uses the example of omni university to correlate between higher proportion of online education to lower maintenance costs. He further applies this correlation in suggesting the promotion of online education to humana university to cut down expenditure and increase enrollment. Although this correlation seems plausible at first but when we look closely it has several flaws.

First of all, the author claims that the expenditures of dormitory and classroom space of omni university have decreased during the past year and the reason that author states is the increase in online education that takes place on the internet so expenses on classrooms and dorms are saved. This claim made by the author assumes that online education is responsible for decrease in physical enrollment of students. This might not be the only case. It is also possible that physical enrollment of students reduced due to some other reason e.g. reduction in education standards in physical classrooms, lack of dorm space, overcrowded classrooms etc.

Secondly, the author also mentions that Humana university's lack of enrollment growth is linked to non-existence of online education. However, this might not be the case. Lack of quality teachers, inadequate spending on relevant areas of university and an overall decline in the university standards might be possible reasons why the enrollment has not grown in Humana University.

Furthermore, the author claims that the only way to increase enrollment and decrease maintenance costs is to promote online education. While it is true that online education results in a much lower maintenance and operating cost and costs will considerably reduce if higher proportion of education takes place online, it is not always the case. There are other ways to increase enrollment which include but are not limited to increasing teaching standards, lowering selection criteria, appointing new teachers and installing latest technology.

To conclude, I would say that higher proportion of online education will certainly reduce maintenance costs but promoting online education as a means to increase enrollment is not the only way. Other methods that are mentioned above can also be adopted that