ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of four financial models that are particular to online education organizations: fee-for-service, revenue share, at-scale, and revenue share with a third-party organization. It is a challenge to separate any model from the context in which it is intended to be used, but some underlying commonalities are a part of the models: management of financial risk, incentives, and revenue sharing. As might be expected, financial losses or net revenues are often managed or maintained by the administration in common area maintenance universities, whereas colleges, schools, or even departments are expected to manage financial risk in responsibility center management universities. Overhead costs are generally simple to calculate and are often the same across university programming. Sometimes called indirect costs, overhead costs cover the necessary costs of running the university that are often not direct costs for running a program.
