Why Online Education Is Growing
Distance education of one sort or another has been around for a long
time. Correspondence courses helped people learn trades on their own
free time, while radio or taped television courses educated students in
remote areas. Now, with the rapid expansion and evolution of the
Internet, online education has become a reality. What began as a
convenient means of offering internal training to employees via
corporate intranets has now spread to the general public over the
worldwide web.
Online-only colleges and career schools have
flourished, and traditional ground-based universities are moving courses
and degree programs onto the Internet. It’s now possible to earn a
degree from an accredited college without ever setting foot on campus,
and more people enroll every year.
Evidence of Growth
The Sloan Consortium, a non-profit foundation, conducts yearly
surveys investigating online education. Their most recent report
captured the online learning landscape as it stood in 2007-2008,
revealing that
- 20% of all US college students were studying online at least part-time in 2007;
- 3.9 million students were taking at least one online course during Fall 2007, a growth rate of 12% on the previous year;
- This growth rate is much faster than the overall higher education growth rate of 1.2%.
Higher Education: Meeting The Need For A Skilled Workforce
Higher education in general has grown greatly. Census data shows
that in 1980, only 32% of US adults under 25 had earned a degree or
completed any college coursework. By 2000, this number had jumped to
52%. Prosperity has played a role in this growth: as median incomes
have risen over the past several decades, more people have been able to
afford to send their children to college. Political support for
putting people into college education, via Federal funding such as Pell
Grants and loans, has also helped increase access to higher education.
However,
the main driver behind the increase in higher education is the huge
change in the overall economy of the US over the last fifty years.
Changes in technology and globalization of the economy means the
once-large manufacturing base of the United States has dwindled. Those
jobs accounted for 40% of workers in 1950, but by 2000 had shrunk to
include only 18% of the workforce. Most workers are now employed by the
service sector, where more specialized skills are often a necessary requirement for finding a job. As a result, some post-secondary
education is now seen as critical for workplace viability by a majority
of the population.
Online Education: Meeting The Needs of the Skilled Workforce
And a majority of the population is now online: in 1997, less than
20% of US households had Internet access. By 2007, that percentage had
grown to 61.7%. Internet access took only 7 years to reach 25% of US
households, compared with 35 years for the television and 46 for
household electricity. As with music, television, and newspapers,
higher education needs to move to where the people are if it wants to
expand its user base. Also, traditional campuses are having trouble
maintaining facilities that meet the growing college population’s
needs. While the cost savings of running an online degree program
aren’t tremendous (or at least aren’t a driving concern for university
officials), it’s generally easier for colleges to move programs online
than it is for them to build extensions to their campuses.
The
sagging economy has also been good for online education. The Sloan
Consortium’s findings revealed that many institutions expect more
working adults to turn to continuing education to build new skills or
enhance existing ones to better their chances in the job marketplace,
and also to avoid paying higher fuel costs as commuter students.
This
is probably a safe bet: nearly 90 million adults participate in some
form of continuing education every year even during good times,
according to Census data. The convenience of being able to complete a
degree without giving up employment makes online education attractive
to working adults. As those adults strive to continue earning, they’ll
want to continue learning.
Colorado Technical University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and a member of the North Central Association (30 North LaSalle Street, Suite 2400, Chicago, Illinois 60602-2504) www.ncahlc.org.
CTU does not guarantee employment, salary, or performance of graduates
Deepa Singh
Business Developer
Web Site:-http://www.gyapti.com
Blog:- http://gyapti.blogspot.com/
Email Id:-deepa.singh@soarlogic.com
No comments:
Post a Comment