Online degrees made USC the world's biggest social work school. Then things went very wrong
LOS ANGELES - A decade ago, the University of Southern California was looking for a way into online education, which promised a gush of new tuition dollars without the expense of additional dorms and classrooms.
Under then-Provost C.L. Max Nikias, USC signed on with an East Coast digital learning startup, and the university's well-regarded social work school soon rolled out an online master's program.
Enrollment exploded. The student body grew from about 900 in 2010 to 3,500 in 2016, and the social work school became the largest in the world.
That rapid growth, designed to assure a stable future, has instead left the school reeling. As the Los Angeles Times reported in May, USC's Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work is facing a budget crisis so severe that nearly half of the staff may lose their jobs.
Though USC has yet to detail the full scope and causes of the fiscal emergency, some things are clear: Hiring teachers and administrators for the online program proved costly. Fees for the company that runs the digital learning platform ate up more than half of the online
