If someone were to tell you that there is a way to provide your distance education program with quality leads from interested prospective students, while at the same time cut your student-acquisition costs for such qualified leads to almost zero, you’d more than likely not believe such a seemingly outrageous proposition. Then if this same person were to tell you that, in addition to obtaining free qualified leads, we’ll provide you with access to more than 125 distance-education courses, for a very reasonable, almost no-risk fee, featuring a vast array of first-class multi-media content worth millions of dollars that’s been created by some of the most talented educators and broadcast producers in the world, you’d probably politely ask that person to leave. But, guess what, that is exactly what’s happening with institutions who are licensing distance-education courses from PBS Campus.

PBS Campus distributes 125 multi-media courses in a broad range of subjects that represent the work of 30 top education producers. The courses include rich video and interactive content delivered via TV, video and/or the Internet. "These are extremely comprehensive multi-media courses designed to fill up a college semester," says O’Brien, adding that the collective value of these courses is in the range of $200 million. The institutions who license these courses register the students; provide advice and support; provide supplemental materials, in some cases, beyond what the PBS courses offer, such as a textbook and other reading materials; and, most importantly, their own instructors who teach at a distance.

To help bring in student enrollments, PBS Campus has a great Web site with a "Find a Course," and "Find a College" search engine that features a send-more-information function (similar to many of the pay-per-lead search engine marketing programs offered by commercial distance education Web portals) that allows prospective students to fill out an online form tailored to the college of their choice. PBS then relays the form to the appropriate college for free.

"The only requirement for a college to be listed with us is they must be offering at least one PBS course to students," says O’Brien. "We make it easy for colleges by giving them access to a private Web page where they can enter information about their educational offerings and keep their search engine listing up-to-date." Plus, the lead-generation function is "a bonus for licensing a course from us; there is no cost associated with it."

The PBS Campus Web site also features an online "Advice Center," a "Success Stories" section with interesting profiles of distance learning, and a well-designed and informative opt-in newsletter called "PBS Campus Previews." Among a number of highly informative articles geared toward helping distance learners, Educational Pathways Editor George Lorenzo recently wrote a piece for Previews titled "A No-Nonsense Guide to Distance Learning."

At press time, the PBS Campus Web site had not been promoted extensively, with most of its traffic coming from a link on the PBS.org Web site, which happens to be the most highly trafficked "dot org" Web site on the Internet.

However, according to O’Brien, PBS Campus will soon be broadcasting more free promotional activities generated through the extensive PBS television network. Before Winter arrives this year, PBS Campus is planning to run on-air advertising spots about these courses on its PBSYOU distance learning channel, which 17.5 million Direct TV and Dishnet satellite subscribers have access to 24 X 7. Additionally, every PBS local-member station in the country will soon be given the ability to integrate the PBS Campus Web site into their local station Web sites, "and we will provide them with TV spots that they can run on TV airways in local markets to drive viewers to these Web sites," says O’Brien.

Pricing for individual colleges or universities to license a PBS campus course are as follows:

Video-Based Telecourses: $500 licensing fee per term plus $22 per student enrollment.

eLearning Courses: $650 licensing fee per term plus $22 per student enrollment.

Video-Based Telecourses: No licensing fee per term and $40 per student enrollment.

eLearning Courses: No licensing fee per term and $50 per student enrollment.

"We are a non-profit and that is why we are able to keep these prices so low," O’Brien says. "Basically, if you are a college, you can get access to a $3 million course for only $500 per semester.

"Pricing option B is a new one we introduced, and it has been very well received because it makes it easier for a college to test-drive our courses." By having only a per-student-enrollment fee, "colleges do not have to feel that they are taking any financial risk to offer a course for the first time. They can see how many students are going to show up."

Additionally, "prices for colleges that are members of consortia are lower. "We reward higher volume with better discounts, and we service more than 30 consortia around the country with a variety of discounts, depending on the volume."

O’Brien adds that "enterprising" professors are currently flowing PBS Campus courses through their campus course management systems. "Now they have a rich, multi-media, interactive course, rather than just some kind of online textbook, which is what too many eLearning courses are like today. What we distribute are courses a college could almost never create on their own - not just because of the great investment poured into these, but because it is a better model. We have an English composition course, for example, that includes interviews with some of the greatest living writers today, like Maya Angelou or Dave Barry or Michael Moore. I don’t care how good of a professor you are, you are not going to go out and get interviews with all these people and put them into your course. So we have a model that fortunately is very efficient; you get the highest quality course you can imagine. But we spread that cost over the whole country, with lots of institutions sharing the costs. It is a great model, and we are hoping that more and more colleges will want to take advantage of it."