Online education statistics

EPI Today has a great "did you know" section every day. It puts the education debate into a great factoid of the day complete with statistics. Monday's EPI article is about a USA Today article on virtual education . From EPI:

"The online education sector grew 13% last year and had been growing at about 20% in previous years. Nearly one in four students take at least some college courses online, up from one in 10 in 2002. Two million students older than the traditional 18-22 year-old undergraduates take all their courses online and two million more take one or more online course. Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adults have a college degree, fewer than in many other industrialized nations. Only about 40% of Americans who start college graduate. The price of higher education, which rises by an average of 8% a year, contributes to the high dropout rate."

Lower costs improves access and improved availability could increase graduation rates. We continue to see the disruptive innovation in the university system. Let's hope it moves faster in K12.

When will universities change?

Great article on online learning republished from the Chronicle of Higher Ed in Free Dominion on “Will Higher Ed be the Next Bubble to Burst?” by Cronin and Horton. The point I like best about this is it calls out the Phoenix’s of the world who have online institutions but no real cost savings for students over state schools. Shouldn’t there be efficiencies and cost savings from online classes or are they ignoring some of the gains technology can offer?

The story highlights Brigham Young which has lowered tuition! From the article:

“Brigham Young University-Idaho charges only $3,000 in tuition a year, and $6,000 for room and board. Classes are held for three semesters, each 14 weeks, for 42 weeks a year. Faculty members teach three full semesters, which has helped to increase capacity from 25,000 students over two semesters to close to 38,000 over three, with everyone taking one month (August) off. The president, Kim B. Clark, is a former dean of the Harvard Business School and an authority on using technology to achieve efficiencies. By 2012 the university also plans to increase its online offerings to 20 percent of all courses, with 120 online courses that students can take to enrich or accelerate degree completion.”

There you have it. It can be done more efficiently and online courses can accelerate the timing of graduation. The final question: why aren’t more universities doing this?

Virtual Revolution

There was an interesting article in the Sunday Washington Post about the virtual education revolution. It is interesting because the revolution is getting a huge boost from the economy and it is puzzling to me that bricks and mortar institutions are not figuring this out at all.

Students have less money to go to school so institutions have to find efficiencies in their system or they will lose customers. At the same time, institutions are getting significantly less money from the state and feds. But we have more kids wanting to go to college. The result is more crowded classrooms and kids having to stay in school longer because the classes they need are full.

My own daughter had significant problems putting together her schedule at JMU this semester. And all I could think of was why don’t they offer more online courses so the timing wouldn’t be so difficult and it would save everyone some money. The article makes the great point that many of the classes taught are “commodities” that can be accomplished with high volume, low cost methods that virtual classes can provide.

The university systems need to wake up or they will be left behind.