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The Virtual Professor: A New Model In Higher Education, Randall Valentine, Robert Bennett

Administrative Issues Journal

Traditional colleges and universities face a unique challenge of increasing the scope of educational operations to accommodate the growing demand for online education. While online enrollments in higher education have grown at a rapid pace, faculty resources have remained stagnant at many institutions due to budget constraints and a sluggish economy. Many administrators in higher education struggle to find a balance between meeting course demands and maintaining quality of instruction while adhering to financial constraints. This paper proposes a model to manage costs by supplementing traditional faculty with virtual faculty who would operate primarily in an online environment and work …