The
number of U.S. undergraduate students enrolled in at least one online class
continues to grow, according to provisional federal data released in December.
The
statistics, from the spring 2017 data collection by the U.S. Department of
Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), indicate
that 31% of all students reported enrolling in at least one distance course, charting
a steady rise from 24.8% in 2012.
Those
online enrollments keep growing while the IPEDS numbers show overall enrollment
remaining fairly flat. Almost 31% of community college students enrolled in at
least one online course, as did 29% of their counterparts at four-year schools.
Unsurprisingly,
students at for-profit colleges were the most likely to be enrolled in a
distance course (57.5%). However, the for-profit sector overall saw enrollments
drop from about 1.54 million students in 2015 to about 1.46 million in fall
2016.
Some nonprofit institutions, on the other hand, experienced big gains in online enrollment. At Arizona State University, for instance, online enrollment surged from 22,220 in fall 2015 to 30,989 for fall 2016.
