Study Shows Sluggish Online Learning Growth for Second Year

The number of students taking online courses continues to climb, albeit at the slowest rate in more than a decade, according to a report released today.

About 5.3 million students took at least one online course in fall 2013 -- up 3.7 percent from the previous fall, according to "Grade Level: Tracking Online Education in the United States," an annual report by the Babson Survey Research Group. While enrollment in online courses increased at public and private schools, it decreased in the for-profit sector.

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The 12th annual study used data collected in partnership with the College Board and relied on 2,800 responses from officials at colleges and universities. For the first time, the study also incorporated newly released data reported by nearly 5,000 schools to the National Center for Education Statistics' Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

Past reports overstated the number of online learners, authors say, because their data was not as precise as the government's.

Online enrollment in 2013 varied by institution, the report found. Private, nonprofit four-year institutions saw the biggest percentage boost in online enrollment, followed by public, four-year institutions. For-profit, four-year institutions reported the first drop in enrollment, decreasing 8.7 percent, or by 66,600 students.

Some for-profit schools with online offerings have been under fire for high dropout rates, questionable recruitment practices and poor job placement, which may have affected their overall numbers, experts say.

Jeff Seaman, the report's co-author and co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group, says two schools accounted for most of the decline in online enrollment: Ashford University, down 25 percent, and the University of Phoenix, down 17 percent. Both schools have been subject to government inquiries about their policies.

"There's been an awful lot of bad press about issues related to the some of the larger proprietary schools that may have had a negative halo effect for some of them," Seaman says.

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Given the increased scrutiny for-profit online schools face, Seaman says some are likely being less aggressive with their recruitment policies. It's also possible, he says, that students are taking a more suspicious look at some of the schools.

When it came to opinions about online learning, the percentage of academic leaders reporting e-learning is critical to their long-term strategy reached a new high of 70.8 percent in 2014, the study found. Among the same group, about 74 percent said online learning was the same as or superior to face-to-face instruction.

Among faculty, however, perceptions were less favorable. Only 28 percent of academic leaders say that their faculty accept the "value and legitimacy of online education," according to the report.

"Faculty resistance to online is not changing," Seaman says. "It's been steady since we were doing this. We are right where we were in 2003."

Elaine Allen, co-author of the report and co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group, says some younger faculty might be wary of online education because they are unsure whether it will count toward tenure.

To see attitudes shift, she says, "I think we have to wait until my generation dies."

The report also found that the creation of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, is plateauing. While the classes grabbed national headlines a few years ago, now only 8 percent of higher education institutions currently offer one, and another 5.6 percent report having on in the planning stages.

[Learn about the impact of MOOCs on education.]

The proportion of academic leaders who believe that MOOCs represent a sustainable method for offering online courses dropped to 18.7 percent, according to the report, which was co-sponsored by the Online Learning Consortium, Pearson and Tyton Partners.

"Far more people are saying, 'Nope, I don't want to do it,'" Seaman says. "There's more disillusionment in terms of 'Are they sustainable?' and 'Are they a good way for an institution to learn about online pedagogy?'"

Many schools offering or developing MOOCs are doing so to increase the visibility of their institutions, he says.

Joel Hartman, an administrator at the University of Central Florida and president of the Online Learning Consortium, says despite the slowing growth of online enrollment, this year's report shows evidence that online learning has reached the mainstream.

From 2012 to 2013, he says, "online growth still accounted for three-quarters of all enrollment increases in U.S. higher education. That's not insignificant."

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Devon Haynie is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering online education. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at dhaynie@usnews.com.