When a university decides to launch an online programme and has no appetite to build the capability in-house, the standard answer is an Online Program Manager. The OPM brings marketing, recruitment, a platform, student support, instructional design and video production. The university brings the degree.
It is a genuine service and for some institutions it is the right call. But almost nobody prices the components, because the OPM does not sell it that way. So let us price one of them.
What the bundle costs
Published revenue-share ranges, from a market analysis by Phil Hill:
| Provider | Share of fee revenue | Contract length |
|---|---|---|
| Wiley University Services | 30–40% | 5–7 years |
| 2U / edX | 35% → 60% | Base package to full bundle |
| Noodle | 15–35% | Varies |
The Century Foundation reviewed more than seventy OPM contracts and found the provider's share ranged from 35% to 80%. Most agreements ran beyond five years. Six ran seven to ten. One, at Concordia University, ran twenty.
Now price one component
Take a cohort of 1,000 students on an online MBA at ₹1,60,000 — near the bottom of the published Indian range. That is ₹16 crore of gross fee revenue.
The programme needs video. Twenty courses at twenty hours each is 400 finished hours. At our Essentials rate that is ₹8 lakh; fully produced, ₹20 lakh.
One cohort, one programme
And the production is a one-time cost. The second cohort watches the same videos at no additional charge, while the revenue share is levied again, in full, every year for the life of the contract. Over a five-year agreement at 1,000 students a year, a 30% share is ₹24 crore.
Production is not the expensive part of an OPM contract. It is a rounding error inside it.
The honest part of the argument
An OPM is not charging 30% for video. It is charging for demand generation — the media spend, the counsellor floor, the CRM, the enrolment machine — and that is genuinely expensive and genuinely hard. If your programme has no way to fill seats, an OPM solves the problem you actually have, and this article is not for you.
But two things are worth noticing. First, many Indian private universities already run their own admissions operation at scale; they are not buying demand, they are buying delivery. Second, the components unbundle cleanly. You can buy production at a fixed price per finished hour, a platform on a per-seat licence, and support from your own staff — and keep the third of tuition.
The market has already moved this way. Wiley sold its OPM business entirely in 2023, and 2U filed for Chapter 11 in 2024. Revenue share and contract length have both been falling. Unbundling is not a contrarian position any more; it is the direction of travel.
What to do with this
Ask for the contract to be itemised. If a provider will not put a price on production, platform, support and recruitment separately, that is information.
Price production on its own. Finished hours × a per-hour rate. It is the one component with an obvious unit and an obvious market rate.
Check the term and the tail. Five to seven years is standard, and many contracts continue to collect on already-enrolled students after termination.
Count the cohorts. Production is paid once and reused. Revenue share is paid on every student, every year, for the term.
Sources
Phil Hill, OPM market forces: lower revenue sharing and contract length, On EdTech. Article
New America, citing The Century Foundation's review of 70+ OPM contracts. Report
Higher Ed Dive, Academic Partnerships closes purchase of Wiley's OPM business. Article
Fee figures compiled September 2026 from the published programme pages of Online Manipal, LPU Online, JAIN Online, NMIMS CDOE, Amity Online and Chandigarh University Online.