Dive Brief:

• The Babson Survey Research Group’s final annual report about online education shows the number of distance education students growing faster from 2014 to 2015 than the prior year, 3.9%, even while overall enrollments in higher education was down.
• The proportion of chief academic leaders that say online learning is critical to their long-term strategy actually fell in 2015 to 63% from about 71% the year before, and while 60% of those at the schools with the highest distance enrollments say their faculty accept the “value and legitimacy of online education”, the average is just 29%.
• Among academic leaders, 71% say learning outcomes in online education or the same or better than face-to-face instruction, good news considering more than one in four students take at least one distance education course.

Dive Insight:

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports this will be Babson’s final annual survey as researchers recognize the field has gotten more attention since they started asking about distance education in 2003 and there are many other reports and surveys that get to the same questions.

Online education has become a focus area for many institutions looking to increase their enrollments and better serve students who need flexible learning opportunities. Perhaps for the second reason, public institutions enroll the vast majority of undergraduate distance education students (73%). More private nonprofits reported higher enrollments in 2015, however, and for-profits, like in face-to-face enrollments, saw their numbers decline.