We have recently started to evaluate some content created by an external company that we have bought in for a specific set of courses. The content is great quality, as you would expect, and addresses the learning outcomes etc that we are trying to achieve. For this, however, we are paying a substantial amount of money every year to retain it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the company in question have done a great job and deserve to be paid for the work. The question running through my head is this – does buying in “generic” content give better value for money than creating content in-house which may be of a slightly lower quality (hopefully not too much lower, I have a good team!) but which can be built into the content and context of the course being taught?

Where is the line between buying in and home growing? Does the line vary from institution to institution? Is it based on cost, quality, quantity or some other factor? Or a mixture of all of them?

At what point do you say “I can do that”, and at what point “I don’t need to do that”?