The FOIA folders.
This document explains the process of data collection and data cleaning of this project.
The original dataset was aquired from this GitHub repository:
https://github.com/HigherEdData/Outsourcing-Online-Education
The file [filename] is based on their dataset but we have collected new rounds of data which are also included in the file.
We filed a new round of FOIA requests to the universities in the original data and as a result of the responses, we have added new partnerships between universities and online program managers.
We have updated the invisibility meassurement.
0 - There is no mention of the partnership on University program website, may have 1 press
release from the provost, head of university, etc when the partnership began, but definitely
not clear to potential students. You would need to specifically look up key terms
1 - The partnership is mentioned somewhere on the university website, but not clear that
there is an external partnership in place "available but not accessible".
2 - The partnership is clear on the university program’s website, clear differentiation between
the university and an external tool
Also updating the data as we receive new responses to our FOIA requests – contracts that are extentet or renewed.
We decided to narrow the sample to contracts that are still active or expired later than 2019. We did so to ensure that the project only include recent partnerships – and exclude contracts that expired years or decades ago. By doing so we drop 104 partnerships.
We also exclude partnerships where the online program manager only provides an online learning platform - known as Learning Program Managers (LMS) to make the cases in the sample more comparable. The LMS are coded as -999 in the invisibility column.