Nichols ends military base program
Costs outweighed benefits for business school
Dudley-based Nichols College has halted its 5-year-old program offering courses at military bases, opting instead to focus on its three major campuses and online offerings.
As a result, the business school no longer has a physical presence at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee or Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, N.Y., its largest base location.
A Nichols official cited the difficulty and expense of providing quality courses off-site, as well as the hurdles posed by the frequent moves of the locations’ armed forces clientele.
Over extended
"Originally, we had worked on some military bases as a way to increase our population in the adult market," said Tom Cafaro, Nichols’ vice president for enrollment and marketing. "Over time, we realized we were extending ourselves too far. It was very difficult for us to manage and do the type of job we like to do on extension outside the Worcester area."
Providing classes on the bases came with added expenses for Nichols. The college had an employee who specifically managed and administered the military classes, and regular administration had to devote time to finding faculty members to teach the courses. Plus, the military students often proved hard to contact, making it difficult for the college to provide advising services.
Nichols will continue to provide active-duty troops with the ability to obtain undergraduate and graduate degrees with the same course-load as civilian students, according to Cafaro. He said Nichols’ online classes (which are offered both independent of and in concert with traditional classroom courses) are better suited to the transient nature of military personnel in wartime.
"People are taking classes while they’re stationed in Iraq or Saudi Arabia," Cafaro said. "One is even on a Coast Guard cutter.
"It was a very difficult market to maintain, given where the military is at this time. We felt like we were not able to manage it as best we could. The decision was to do what we do well; to get back to our core business of providing good business education in the Worcester area."
Area troops can also commute to Nichols’ brick-and-mortar campuses. The main campus is in Dudley, and satellite schools are located at Worcester’s Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in Worcester and at Auburn High School.
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