The Sloan Consortium has released their fifth annual report on growth in the higher education elearning market in the US. The results: distance ed enrollments keep growing, at a pace significantly greater than their terrestrial education counterparts. According to the free report, Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning, about 3.5 million people registered for an online course fall semester 2006. About 3.2 million did likewise in 2005. From the fall 2004 to fall of 2005, online enrollment grew about 36 percent. The growth between fall 2005 to fall of 2006, was smaller, a 9.7 percent increase. General college enrollment grew by only 1.3 percent from 2005 to 2006, giving online education nine times more growing power even as it slows. While faculty acceptance continues to be a barrier to e-education growth academics themselves increasingly do not see lack of acceptance by employers of online credentials as a key barrier.
The fifth annual report on the state of online learning in U.S. higher education is based on responses from over 2,500 colleges and universities. The full report is available free as a PDF download.
(courtesy Virtual Education Gazette)
