Present is Prologue

Tag: WCET

Fall 2017 IPEDS Data: New Profile of US Higher Ed Online Education
Update 19 Dec 2018: Images and interactive chart have been updated to fix mistake with sector of multiple institutions. Overall totals have not changed but allocations for each sector have. Thanks to reader Drew Bagley for discovering issue and even looking at data to point me in direction of fix. Post publish date has been updated accordingly.

The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) and its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) provide the most official data on colleges and universities in the United States. I have been analyzing and sharing the data since the inaugural Fall 2012 dataset.

Below is a profile of online education in the US for degree-granting colleges and university, broken out by sector and for each state for the most recent, Fall 2017, data.

Please note the following:
- There are multiple ways to filter and select data. For this set, I have limited to U.S. degree-granting institutions in six sectors – public 4-year, private 4-year, for profit 4-year, public 2-year, private 2-year, and for profit 2-year. For undergraduate totals I have included degree-seeking and non-degree-seeking students (degree-granting institutions can offer non-degree programs). Note that this will give different totals than what was reported in the NCES First Look report.
- For the most part distance education and online education terms are interchangeable, but they are not equivalent as DE can include courses delivered by a medium other than the Internet (e.g. correspondence course).
- I have provided some flat images as well as an interactive graphic at the bottom of the post. The interactive graphic has much better image resolution than the flat images.
- There are two tabs below in the interactive graphic – the first shows totals for the US by sector and by level (grad, undergrad); the second shows a map view allowing filtering by sector.
Here is the map view of state data colored by number of, and percentage of, students taking at least one online class for each sector. If you hover over any state you can get the basic data. As an example, here is a view highlighting New Hampshire institutions.

Interactive Graphic

For those of you who have made it this far, below is the interactive graphic, which can also be found here. Enjoy the data.
December 19, 2018
e-Literate Sightings in the Fall 2018 Conference Season
We should have posted this a week ago, but we at e-Literate are in the midst of Fall 2018 conference season, and we’d love to connect with people at the various conferences we’re attending. We’re going for the divide-and-conquer strategy this year.
- OpenEd 2018 in Niagara Falls, New York – Michael attended last week.
- Online Learning 2018: Global Summit in Toronto, Ontario – Phil will be at the summit October 16 and 17, presenting in the Tuesday plenary session, moderating a panel, and presenting a special briefing Wednesday on “Learning Platforms as Tools for Educators and Not Replacements”.
- WCET 2018 in Portland, Oregon – Jeanette Wiseman and Phil will be at their 30th annual meeting October 23 through 25, presenting Wednesday on “The Increasing Importance of Understanding OPM Market – Where it is and Where it is Going”.
- MoodleMoot US 2018 in Denver, Colorado – O’Neal Spicer will be at the meeting on October 29.
- EDUCAUSE 2018 in Denver, Colorado – Phil will be at the conference October 30 through November 1.
- OLC Accelerate 2018 in Orlando, Florida – Michael will be at the conference, presenting Thursday about the Empirical Educator Project with “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Collaborative Model”.
We’re looking forward to connecting in person and scouring for tasteful tchotchkes we can put in new conference bags.
October 14, 2018
Fall 2016 IPEDS Data: New Profile of US Higher Ed Online Education
The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) and its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) provide the most official data on colleges and universities in the United States. I have been analyzing and sharing the data since the inaugural Fall 2012 dataset.

Below is a profile of online education in the US for degree-granting colleges and university, broken out by sector and for each state.

Please note the following:
- For the most part distance education and online education terms are interchangeable, but they are not equivalent as DE can include courses delivered by a medium other than the Internet (e.g. correspondence course).
- I have provided some flat images as well as an interactive graphic at the bottom of the post. The interactive graphic has much better image resolution than the flat images.
- There are two tabs below in the interactive graphic – the first shows totals for the US by sector and by level (grad, undergrad); the third shows a map view allowing filtering by sector.
There is also a map view of state data colored by number of, and percentage of, students taking at least one online class for each sector. If you hover over any state you can get the basic data. As an example, here is a view highlighting Virginia private 4-year institutions.

Interactive Graphic

For those of you who have made it this far, below is the interactive graphic, which can also be found here. Enjoy the data.
January 14, 2018
Do For-profit Institutions Converting to Non-profit Affect Distance Education Enrollment Numbers?

In a comment to my post on the new Digital Learning Compass report covering distance education enrollment trends for US higher education, Richard Garrett, Chief Research Officer at Eduventures and Director at The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, asked an interesting question.

I’d welcome your view on a related issue I’ve been wrestling with, namely how to treat for-profit institutions with significant numbers of online students that are now nonprofit. A number made such a conversion in the fall 2012-15 period, and more are to come (e.g. the EDMC and Kaplan announcements). In your study, did you use institutional control for the year concerned or continue to treat former for-profits as such? If the former, then I think it is worth pointing out that some of the private nonprofit growth, and for-profit decline, is due to control conversion.

With all of the news around for-profit changes, include Corinthian Colleges, ITT, Kaplan University, DeVry rebranding, I thought it would be worth addressing this question in a new post instead of just in the comments as I suspect others may have the same question.

tl;dr – There has been no material effect of these institutional control changes for the periods covered in the DL Compass report (Fall 2012 through Fall 2015). (more…)

May 3, 2017
Digital Learning Compass: New report on distance education higher ed enrollments

The next generation of the long-running Online Learning Survey is here, and it is now called Digital Learning Compass. Originally known as the Sloan Survey of Online Learning, then known as the Online Learning Survey, this study led by Jeff Seaman and Elaine Allen from the Babson Survey Research Group (BSRG) has been the definitive source for understanding the state of online learning for higher education in the United States since 2003.

Three years ago the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Data System (IPEDS) started releasing census-based data on online enrollments, starting with the Fall 2012 term. The most recent data set is from Fall 2015, and today’s release of the Digital Learning Compass: Distance Education Enrollment Report covers this new data. Download the full report for free here. (more…)

May 2, 2017
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.

Register today for “Distance Ed Enrollment Trends: New Data, New Trends, New Partnership” on April 19 at Noon MDT. The webcast will run for 60 minutes and take place via GoToWebinar.

April 19
8:00 AM HAST /10:00 AM AKDT/ 11:00 AM PDT and MST/ Noon MDT / 1:00 PM CDT/ 2:00 PM EDT

(more…)

April 17, 2017
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 produce and therefore save students money on tuition doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, a survey of distance education providers found.

While there is value in countering a myth held by many state legislators and policy makers that online education is a surefire way to save money – and the report does shoot down this myth – it is unfortunate that most of the public discussion is based on the oversimplified summary described above and and entirely-justified pushback that online education does not have to cost more.

The report itself tackles the difficult subject of price (what a student pays) and costs (what it takes to produce) of online vs. face-to-face education with much more nuance and information that gets lost in the conversation. In particular, the “demographics” section is laudable as one of the best description of survey respondents and how this response compares to national averages. And there is text noting discrepancies and limitations to the survey results. (more…)

February 20, 2017