How One University Saved $37,000

A study on the economic and environmental impact of online classes proves that the University of Dallas is taking care of its money and the environment.

The Texas university saved $37,341 during the first 8 months of 2009 by offering online classes through the Master of Business Administration program. While the program has been offered online for the past 10 years through Pearson eCollege, this is the first study to measure the results, and it will soon be published in the Ubiquitous Learning journal.

The business program allows students to take classes online, in person or both, and more than 1,039 working adults (82 percent) who attended online classes in the spring and summer chose to answer questions about their printing habits when a survey popped up on their screen, said Vanessa Cox, director of online learning. The university also used archival data created from virtual page counts and Hewlett-Packard's carbon footprint calculator to come up with their numbers.

More than 1.5 million pages of digital content were available online, and of that number, 863,303 remained online instead of being printed.  

Because the students were receiving some or all of their instruction online, they didn't print as much paper, which also saved trees and energy. After accounting for student printing behavior, the College of Business found that 9,509 pounds of paper wasn't printed, 65,487 kilowatts of energy was not used to print the paper and 47.05 tonnes of carbon dioxide were not emitted during the printing process.

That's a lot of numbers. But here's a concrete example: The carbon dioxide the university saved would have amounted to about 10 round trip flights from New York to Los Angeles.

With this study, the University of Dallas hopes to give other universities a blueprint to follow as they strive to figure out the economic and environmental benefits of providing online classes.

"This whole study about being a good steward really fits with the fact that you can make a profit or impact your bottom line," Cox said, "but do right by the people and by the planet."