Institutional course infrastructure
The anti-OPM:
you keep the tuition,
you keep the course,
you cut the cost.
Prereq builds your institution's highest-volume courses once. You own them outright — no revenue share, ever.
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Built for the long term.
01 / The case for change
The problem
Every section of your highest-volume intro courses — Critical Thinking, Composition, Intro Psych — is staffed by a full-rate adjunct or faculty member, typically $3,000–$4,000 per section per term.
That's the market rate for someone doing everything: teaching, grading, discussion facilitation, office hours. But once a course is well-designed, most of that per-section work is execution, not expert-level design — you're paying an expert rate for work that doesn't require an expert to repeat it in every section.
Standardize in-house
Requires curriculum staff and instructional design capacity most small and mid-sized institutions don't have.
Bring in an OPM
You hand over a share of tuition revenue and often your student recruiting, indefinitely, for a course you'll never fully own.
02 / A different arrangement
The Prereq model
Prereq builds your highest-section-count courses once, to your specifications, in your existing LMS, for a flat $15,000. You own it outright.
From there, each section is staffed by a Course Manager — someone trained to run the already-built course: grading, discussion facilitation, answering questions, regular check-ins. Course Managers can be your own staff, or Prereq can provide them, at $1,000 per course section.
No revenue share. No recruiting. No dependency on us to keep running it.
| Traditional model | Prereq | |
|---|---|---|
| Who builds the course | A faculty member, at full rate | One PhD subject-matter expert, once, for a flat $15,000 |
| Who owns it | Nobody, really | You, outright |
| Who staffs each section | Full adjunct/faculty rate (~$3,000–4,000) | A Course Manager — yours or ours — at $1,000/section |
| Tuition revenue | 100% yours | 100% yours — always |
| Vendor lock-in | N/A | None — it’s in your LMS |
03 / The three-year view
Make the math
work for you.
If Critical Thinking runs 2 sections a semester, that's 12 sections over three years. At a typical adjunct rate of $4,000/section, that's $48,000 in section-staffing costs.
Under Prereq: a one-time $15,000 build, then $1,000/section for Course Managers.
Illustrative — swap in your institution's actual adjunct rate.
04 / The alternative
Why not just
use an OPM?
Because you don't need to give up a share of tuition or your recruiting relationship with students to bring your per-section costs down.
OPMs solve a different problem — market reach and enrollment growth — and charge accordingly, usually for the life of the contract. Prereq solves one problem: you're paying expert rates for work that doesn't require an expert, section after section.
Flat fee, one build, you own it.
05 / Governance matters
Compliance,
by design.
The Course Manager structure satisfies the Department of Education's Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) requirement for Title IV eligibility.
Interaction is regular, substantive, and properly attributed to someone your accreditor recognizes as instructor of record. Course design goes through your department's normal review and approval process — Prereq builds to your faculty's specifications, not around them.
06 / The people and the fit
Purpose-built
for the courses
that repeat.
Who builds these courses?
PhD-holding subject-matter experts with significant higher-ed teaching experience — not instructional designers working from a template.
Which courses?
High-section-count, introductory-level courses: the ones that run the most sections every semester and therefore have the most to gain from lowering the per-section staffing cost.
07 / A measured beginning
Start small.
Pick one high-volume gateway course. We'll build it, your institution will run it for a semester, and you'll see the cost and quality difference before you commit to anything wider.
Request a proposal