By Ray Gronberg for BusinessNC
The UNC System says 558 students are enrolled in online degree programs through Project Kitty Hawk which its member schools created after the legislature provided $97 million n 2021.
The programs are the early fruit of partnerships N.C. Central, East Carolina and Appalachian State universities struck with the nonprofit established with the proceeds of the 2021 appropriation.
System officials say they expect another 100 or so students to join one of the 11 existing degree programs this month, and that three more degree programs offered by App State will launch in January.
The Project Kitty Hawk programs are targeting adult learners who have to balance classwork with work and family obligations. Helping them is a “moral obligation,” system President Peter Hans said. “The UNC System is now making good on that obligation and educating hundreds of new students who previously lacked access to the high-quality education our universities provide.”
The idea behind Project Kitty Hawk is to give participating universities behind-the-scenes support to get online degree programs up and running. That includes marketing, IT, program design and even coaching students through the enrollment and learning process, the system says.
As of spring, 11 of the system’s 16 universities had partnered with Project Kitty Hawk, according to the nonprofit’s annual report to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee.
The exceptions include system co-flagships UNC Chapel Hill and NC State, N.C. A&T State, Elizabeth City State and the UNC School of the Arts. The latter school is a music, dance, drama and filmmaking conservatory that works a lot differently than other system universities.
State officials launched Project Kitty Hawk to help the UNC System better compete with online offerings from the likes of Western Governors University. The nonprofit had enrolled 5,556 students from North Carolina as of Thursday, according to spokesman Glenn Gillen. It entered the state in 2017 in a partnership with state government after receiving $2 million from the N.C. General Assembly and $5 million from other sources.
The two flagships have robust online education programs that focus mostly on graduate-degree offerings. The degree programs created through Project Kitty Hawk have focused on offering undergraduate degrees.
Beyond the legislature’s seed money, Project Kitty Hawk gets money from participating universities by charging them for its services. For cash flow reasons, it has to limit program launches to nine per year until fiscal 2026-27.
The nonprofit told legislators it expects the programs it’s facilitating to enroll 1,800 students by the end of the current fiscal year, and 14,800 by the end of fiscal 2027-28.
The preceding article originally appeared on October 20, 2024 at the BusinessNC’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Photo above: Appalachian State University
