UNICON Membership Benchmarking Survey
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      Please clarify the question around number of Programs, Starts, and Length - how should we count program days?

      Please clarify the question around number of Programs, Starts, and Length - we have always reported the total of program days as every 8 hours of any given program, but when it says any day with open enrollment activity then it means it can't be over

      You are referring to this question:

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      Part 2 | Open Enrollment

      All questions in this part of the survey are focused on Open Enrollment programs.

      Section A: Number of Programs, Starts, & Program Length

      1. Please indicate the number of TITLES and STARTS offered and the number of PROGRAM DAYS (any day with an open enrollment activity) your open enrollment programs are delivered:

      a. Titles
      Actual (2012-2013)
      Planned (2013-2014)

      b. Starts
      Actual (2012-2013)
      Planned (2013-2014)

      c. Program Days
      Actual (2012-2013)
      Planned (2013-2014)

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      Regarding the 8 hr day. Many schools run multiple programs simultaneously so they could easily have more than 365 program days.

      Regarding 1 hr/day deliveries, yes; the program should be counted as a 'day' if it only runs one hour per day (adhering to our definition of program days: any day with an open enrollment activity). This provides consistency in our measurement with focus on Program Days as opposed to hours. The data we gather are not precise at the Hour level, but they do indicate directional shifts to our industry and that is the value the data provide as a benchmark.

       

      I am afraid I disagree, when you frame it as any day with open enrollment activity it can't be over 365, there may be days with a lot of activity(many programs) or days with very little activity (one program) but there are still only 365 days (or 366) in a given year.
      If you stated a program day is every day you run a program for any program, then it's a different story and I agree with you.

       

      I believe a school can have many more than 365 days of programs. As administrators and managers of Exec Ed we have to think about resource allocation to cover our programs. The intent of the question is to see the trend over time with regards to whether we are increasing or decreasing total number of program days, so it can’t be tied to calendar days. For example a school may have a total of 600 program days that are distributed over 240 calendar days of the year. No school is able to perfectly allocate programs over a 365 day calendar. Since most of our schools increasingly depend on custom, where the client often dictates the dates of the program, we have even less say over when our programs run. So some weeks we may have 5 programs running and others we may have no programs running. Bottom line, program days are independent of calendar days. Monica’s suggested wording might clarify the intent of the question.