More than 6 million students took at least one online course in 2015, representing more than a quarter (29.7 percent) of all higher education enrollments that year, according to a new report from Digital Learning Compass. Among that 29.7 percent, it’s almost evenly split between students who took some but not all courses online (15.4 percent) and those who took every class online (14.3 percent). In contrast, total online enrollments in 2002 came in just under 10 percent.
Put another way, the number of students who have taken a “distance education” course rose by 3.9 percent in 2015, adding an additional 226,375 online students to the virtual attendance rolls. Between 2012 and 2015, the number of on-campus students has declined by 5 percent, losing a total of 931,317.
