Distance learning continues to grow, with a little more than half of the total enrollments from students who are taking both online and on-campus classes. That said, the number of students studying on a campus has dropped by almost one million between 2012 and 2015.
Online Education
Recommended Reading … or Not: Updates on UC Berkeley and NBER stories
We have a better understanding of UC Berkeley’s decision to remove free video lecture captures in response to an accessibility suit. Less so on Caroline Hoxby’s problematic paper on the ROI of online learning.
Digital Learning Compass: New WCET webcast on distance education enrollment trends
This Wednesday, April 19th, at 11am PDT / 2pm EDT I will be participating in a WCET webcast based on the latest National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) and its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data for the Fall 2015 term on distance education (DE) enrollment.
Recommended Reading: IHE coverage of NBER paper and critiques
Two good pieces in Inside Higher Ed look into Caroline Hoxby’s controversial NBER report. Neither of them is vindicating.
One More Thing on NBER Report: Where did pre-2011 data come from?
The closer we look, the worse it seems.
New NBER Study on Online Education is Deeply Flawed
Caroline Hoxby from Stanford University just published a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) claiming to analyze “The Returns to Online Postsecondary Education”. This report is a hot mess that that conflates online students, enrollments, programs, institutions and uses a bizarre and misleading data set for its analysis.
Recommended Reading: WCET Survey Report and Tony Bates Commentary
WCET released its survey results on the price and costs of online education last week, focusing on US higher education, and it has caused quite a stir due to the headline, first-look analysis. As Inside Higher Ed described in the article “Online Education Costs More, Not Less”: The myth that online education courses cost less to […]