A Cost Benefit Analysis of Net Based Nursing Education

The inland of Northern Sweden is characterized by a negative net migration partially driven by people moving away for higher education. As such this region experiences a shortage of human capital within certain competence areas. One way of tackle this problem is to integrate higher education with the regional policy and bring the education to the inhabitants hoping for them to stay within the region after they have graduated. The education is net based and brought to the region by ICT tools. Thereby the students can stay in their home region and follow the course online. This is in line with the government bill presented in year 2002 that points out online education as a mean to target new student groups. This paper analyses a case where a shortage of nurses was established within a specific region in Northern Sweden and the prediction was that it would be difficult to attract nurses educated elsewhere in Sweden. An association of local authorities from the region initiated and partially financed an online nursing program that made it possible for the nursing students to stay within the region during their education. In this paper we study if the online program is economically motivated. This part focuses on the added costs associated with the online version of the nursing program compared to its campus located counterpart and we perform a cost-benefit analysis from the perspective of the association of local authorities “Partnership Inland ” that initiated the nursing program