Online education growth and opportunity
As reported in the Inside Higher Ed blog, a recent report on Online Higher Education in the US indicates:
- Nearly 3.2 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2005 term, a substantial increase over the 2.3 million reported the previous year.
- The more than 800,000 additional online students is more than twice the number added in any previous year.
The barrier to growth is pretty much instructor attitude, as reported in the Higher Ed blog:
Only about one in four academic leaders said that their faculty members “accept the value and legitimacy of online education,” the survey shows. That number has remained steady throughout the four surveys. Private nonprofit colleges were the least accepting — about one in five faculty members reported seeing value in the programs.
Clearly this is a generational issue, which will be remedied naturally over time, though much more slowly with the mandatory retirement exemption expiration in 1994.
For further information, MacArthur’s CHANGE magazine issue this month is devoted to “Learning in Cyberspace.”
Related posts:
- Panel’s Report Urges Higher Education Shake-Up: NYTimes
- Distance Education and Virtual Worlds — Some Issues
- Turning Higher Education into a High Tech Business
- Intro to Statistics course costs vs. open source / creative commons / remix education
- Eager but unprepared: huge numbers of students in need of remedial work
November 10, 2006 • Posted in: education
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