Down Economy May Be Driving Students to Online Education
As jobs continue to disappear and unemployment soars, large numbers
of adult learners may soon be enrolling in online programs,
particularly at two-year colleges and for-profit institutions,
according to a new online education survey (“Recession May Drive
More Adult Students to Take Online Courses,” The Chronicle of Higher
Education, Jan. 9, 2009).
These two-year colleges and for-profit institutions, which offer
programs tailored to working adults, will likely see the biggest
boost in enrollment, but all types of colleges could experience an
enrollment surge as more people turn to higher education to gain
marketable skills in the recession, revealed the 2008 online
education survey by the Sloan Consortium, a non-profit organization
working to improve online education.
“A lot of people want to increase their skill levels or get that
degree they didn’t have,” said I. Elaine Allen, one of the report’s
authors. The threat of losing their job can be as big a motivator
for people to get a degree as actually losing their job, Allen told
The Chronicle.
She said that the primary motivator for adults turning to online
education over a traditional classroom-based education may be one of
convenience. “Time-wise, you have the flexibility of logging online
and taking the course whenever you want,” Allen said. With Internet
-based courses, “you don’t have to leave your house. If you have a
family, that’s going to make things much easier for you.”
Over 20 percent of all U.S. students enrolled in higher education
were taking at least one online course in the fall of 2007,
according to data from the Sloan Consortium. And, The Chronicle
suggests, if the recession were to drive more students to take
courses online as expected, the percentage of online education
students is likely to rise sharply.
Most of that growth will likely come from the two-year and for-
profit colleges that have not yet maximized their potential for
online enrollment, Allen predicts, while public institutions likely
won’t see “huge growth” in Web-based learning. Of all the colleges
surveyed, 58 percent said that online courses were critical to their
enrollment strategies, and a full 70 percent reported that
competition for the growing number of students pursuing an education
online is increasing.
Allen said, “For the first time, [schools] are seeing students
choose another college for its online program.”