NIC Blog
The Trend Toward Online Enrollments In US Higher Education
Tags: Sloan Consortium Report, online enrollments
Sloan Consortium Report on 2009
Posted by Robert L. Burns
The recent report, The College of 2020, part of which is posted on this blog, includes information on the growing trend toward online enrollments, predicting that the rapid growth will continue well beyond 2020. The Sloan Consortium, a group that follows this specific element of higher education, has issued its report for 2009 and gives additional detail.
Growth in this area is rapid and consistently strong. The executive summary of the Sloan report states that more than 4.6 million students took at least one online course in the fall term of 2008, up 17% from the previous year. You will see the force of this development if you know that overall enrollment growth for the same period was at 1.2%. In summary, more than one in four college and university students in this country takes at least one course online.
The general increases are striking enough, but some institutions, especially pubic campuses, are experiencing even more rapid growth in online enrollment. An extreme example is the University of Central Florida where more than half of the student body is taking at least one online course.
Online enrollments are a mixed bag, it seems. Debate continues among faculty as to the relative value of online instruction. But budget problems make online education a relative boon when construction funds for new classroom space and buildings are severely limited. Besides the convenience for students, online courses do not require new space on campus.
But the trend is meaningful to the fraternity world because of the changes it brings to life as we have known it on the traditional campus. Many of our programs and systems are based on the generally accepted pattern of students spending most of their time in classes physically on the campus. This enhances the role and value of a chapter house, for example. New member recruitment traditionally has had one important base in the relationships of students who get to know one another as they share the experience of taking Econ 202 together in Room 106 on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:30 a.m. Online students often complete a course without ever seeing the other students enrolled in it.
Whatever we think about the quality of the online experience we must admit that it is different and as it grows it will influence the nature of the campus environment at our host institutions. And that will bring challenges to how we do what we do.
The Sloan Consortium report in its entirety can be found at http://www.sloan-c.org/.
