What Keeps Online STEM Students Enrolled | Labster Research
New research surveyed 400+ online and hybrid STEM students to reveal what drives persistence and retention, and why experiential learning is the key.
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It's budget planning season, and the dean of a hybrid science program has three requests on her desk. One asks for $1.2 million to renovate a teaching lab. One renews a lab kit contract that ships glassware and reagents to 400 online students every term. One adds six adjunct-led lab sections to keep up with enrollment.
Each request comes with a price. None comes with the full cost.
As more STEM courses move online or into hybrid formats, every choice carries costs that never appear on the purchase order: shipping and replacements, instructor time, space that sits empty between sections, and students who don't come back after a hard first term. A total cost of ownership (TCO) view puts those costs side by side, so you can compare your options on equal footing.
TCO counts every cost of delivering a lab experience over its life, not only the upfront price. For most STEM programs, those costs fall into five groups:
The last group rarely shows up in a budget request, yet it’s often the one that decides whether an option pays off.
Physical labs give students hands-on experience that no other format fully replaces. They're also some of the most expensive spaces on campus to build and run.
Lab construction currently runs $600-$1,400 per square foot, with chemistry labs averaging around $800, according to Lab Design News. At that rate, a single 1,500-square-foot teaching lab costs roughly $900,000 to $2.1 million before anyone orders equipment.
The costs keep coming after opening day. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) reports that a typical lab uses three to four times the energy of a typical office building. Add consumables, equipment maintenance, chemical waste disposal, and lab coordinator salaries, and the cost per student hour climbs quickly, especially when a room sits empty between sections.
For hybrid programs, the physical lab is still the right place for many skills. The better question is how much of each student's lab time needs to happen there.
Lab kits bring physical materials to online learners, which is why so many programs adopted them. The cost model looks simple: one kit per student, per course.
Kit prices vary by course. At one state university, the mail-order lab component for an introductory online chemistry course is estimated at $112.50, and kits for more advanced courses can cost more. Even at that entry price, a program enrolling 400 online students in lab courses each term spends about $45,000 per term, paid by the institution or passed to students as a course fee.
The kit price leaves out several real costs:
The School of Professional Studies at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) ran into these limits firsthand. It mailed lab kits to working healthcare professionals until supply chain problems and safety concerns sent it looking for another option. The school replaced kits with Labster in microbiology, chemistry, and biology courses, which now serve more than 2,000 students a year.
None of this rules kits out. It does mean the sticker price understates what each student's lab experience actually costs.
Every lab format needs people. In physical and kit-based labs, staffing grows in step with enrollment: more students mean more sections, and more sections mean more instructors.
The median adjunct earns $1,166 per credit hour, or about $3,498 for a three-credit course, according to the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR). If a one-credit lab section pays at that rate, adding 10 sections to meet demand adds roughly $11,660 per term in instructional pay alone. That's before TA stipends for grading, onboarding, and coordinator time.
Staffing is also slow to flex. Finding qualified lab instructors takes time, and programs with rolling starts may need coverage outside the standard term calendar.
Virtual labs change this math without taking instructors out of the picture. Simulations include built-in assessment questions, and scores can flow into your learning management system (LMS) gradebook. Faculty spend less time on routine grading and more time with the students who need help.
Labster virtual labs follow a different cost model. There's no construction, no consumables, and nothing to ship. Students open hundreds of simulations in a browser, on their own schedule, and can repeat a procedure as many times as they need.
Pricing is custom and scales with your program. Institutions choose between two purchasing models, or use both:
Fully online programs can use virtual labs as the core lab experience. In hybrid programs, they usually sit alongside the physical lab as pre-lab preparation, so in-person time goes further.
Each model puts its costs in a different place. Physical labs are front-loaded, kits repeat every term, and virtual labs shift spending from space and materials to access.
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The biggest recurring costs are kits and per-section staffing. Virtual labs remove shipping and replacement costs and give students access on the first day of a rolling start.
The biggest costs are fixed: space, equipment, and the hours a lab sits idle. Moving safety training, technique practice, and concept review into virtual labs means students spend scarce bench time on work that needs the bench.
The largest cost in any lab program may be the students who leave. Each withdrawal means lost tuition, a seat that's hard to refill, and a student further from their goal.
Students connect hands-on practice to whether a program is worth it. In a Labster survey of 411 online and hybrid STEM students, 78% said they feel less prepared for their future careers without hands-on labs. And 81% said access to virtual labs would have positively influenced their decision to enroll.
Outcomes data points the same way. At Yavapai College, the online microbiology completion rate rose from 70% to 87% within a year of adding Labster, matching in-person sections.
A TCO analysis that stops at the purchase price misses this. Keeping a few more students in each course can outweigh the price difference between lab options.
You don't need a full cost study to see where your lab budget goes. Start with three questions for each lab course:
The answer is rarely one model everywhere. Most programs land on a mix, and the right mix depends on your students, your space, and your goals.
Want help building the numbers for your program? Get a quote based on your student count, or talk to our team about where virtual labs fit.
Explore how Labster pricing works for your institution and get a quote based on your program's size and needs.
