New facts discovered about distance education reveals that our perception may be exaggerated

ditance-learning-onlineAccording to a new analysis of the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the current national conception that distance education is “booming,” is an exaggeration, since only a low percentage of postsecondary students are enrolled in a distance education course.

The analysis, conducted by the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET), which brings higher-ed stakeholders and institutions to “improve the quality and reach” of eLearning programs, and based on the same methodology of Phil Hill of the e-Literate blog, is based off of IPEDS’ first time inclusion of data on students taking distance education courses in Fall 2012.

“With this data, we can finally get a comprehensive, objective look at the current state of distance education adoption nationally,” said Terri Straut of Ascension Consulting, who provided the analysis for WCET.

Analysis of the IPEDS data was conducted on all degree-granting institutions in the U.S., which represents 4,726 institutions of higher education (IHE) in total, both 4-year and 2-year colleges.

Straut’s analysis provides data not just on the number of students enrolled in a distance education (DE) course, but breaks the numbers down by state, as well as type of institution (public, non-profit, and for-profit).

(Next page: Infographic)

Infographic looks best in either Chrome or Firefox. For a closer look, click on the URL: https://magic.piktochart.com/output/1615702-distance_education

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