Online Education in the United States, 2010

Class Differences: Online Education in the United States, 2010 [Survey report published by the Sloan Consortium]

• Over 5.6 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2009 term; an increase of nearly one million students over the number reported the previous year.
• The twenty-one percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the less than two percent growth of the overall higher education student population.
• Nearly thirty percent of higher education students now take at least one course online.

After remaining steady for a number of years, the proportion of chief academic officers saying that online education is critical to their long-term strategy took an upward turn in 2010.

• Sixty-three percent of all reporting institutions said that online learning was a critical part of their institution’s long term strategy, a small increase from fifty-nine percent in 2009.
• The year-to-year change was greatest among the for-profit institutions, which increased from fifty-one percent agreeing in 2009 to sixty-one percent in 2010.
• For-profit institutions also were the most likely to have included online learning as a part of their strategic plan.