Online education has become a critical component for
colleges and universities, according to the 2014 Babson Survey Research Group
report. That’s particularly true for smaller campuses, where 70% of the
academic leaders from schools with fewer than 1,500 students told Babson
researchers that online education was a critical long-term strategy at their institutions.
Overall, 71% of respondents said online education was
an important part of the educational plans at their schools, up from 66% in the
2013 report.
The study, Grade Level: Tracking Online Education inthe United States,
also reported that 74% of academic leaders said they believe online courses are
at least as good as face-to-face courses, but that most professors continue to
be wary of online courses. In fact, just 28% of the academic leaders said their
professors thought online courses were legitimate, the same percentage from the
2002 survey, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The study reported just a 3.7% increase in the number
of distance-education students in 2014, the lowest increase in the 13 years of
research. It also found that only 8% of the institutions in the survey offered
massive open online courses (MOOCs). Just 16% of the academic officers said
they believe MOOCs are a sustainable way to offer online courses.
