Dartmouth College recently announced its plans to combine professors from its Tuck School of Business and its Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in order to launch a new master’s program that will be available mostly online. The 18-month Master of Healthcare Delivery Science program has been designed primarily to help meet the future needs of mid-career healthcare leaders. Primarily, the program is meant to help prepare healthcare professionals in a way that they will be ready for whatever changes occur within the industry in the future.

“We don’t know how the entire industry is going to reorganize,” said Robert Hansen, who is a professor as well as the senior associate dean at Tuck, in a Yahoo news article. “All we can do is prepare them for change.”

Although it is hardly unusual anymore for a college to launch an online program, Dartmouth is among the first of the elite schools to offer a specialized master’s degree program that is available online.

“Initially traditional schools were more reticent [to offer online programs],” said Trace Urdan, who is the managing director as well as the for-profit education analyst at Signal Hill Capital. “Now, a lot more are getting involved. They’ll be part of the landscape going forward.”
Despite the fact that Ivy League schools remain ranked among the best schools in the nation, many are still relative newcomers in the world of online education. As such, Tuck officials were uncertain about how to structure their new online degree program. Ultimately, they found themselves having to turn to the online education experts at other schools while also having to tap into those members of the faculty who were most interested in using technology.

“We’re trying to see what people have done well and are trying to improve on it,” said Hansen.

Although many students turn to online courses in an effort to save money, this isn’t likely to be the case with the Dartmouth program. In fact, the new program will cost $85,000 in tuition and fees. The online format is a more convenient option for those working professionals who simple can’t take 18 months off from work in order to attend classes on campus. It should be noted, however, that six weeks of the program is still going to be held on campus, while the rest will be completely available online.

In another twist, Dartmouth plans to offer the program to only 50 students. While many colleges use the online format as a means of reaching a large number of students, Dartmouth is placing this cap on the program in the hopes of keeping the discussions and curriculum both intense and intimate for program participants.

“It’s not [University of Phoenix] type of distance learning where they need thousands of people,” said Paul Danos, who is the dean of Tuck. “This is very personal – lots of hand-holding and lots of personal attention.”

Danos is hopeful that this initial project will help the school gain the insight necessary to develop other online programs in the future. In addition, he believes other schools are likely to follow suit by providing other highly specialized online programs geared toward meeting the needs of mid-career professionals.

This is our first significant foray into distance education,” said Danos. “This program gets us into a distance mode and we’re creating [online] platforms.”