Online courses enrollment continues to rise

Online courses enrollment rising almost as fast as hemlines in Ukraine? (see below)

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, more good news for online courses:

Research firm Eduventures has released a new report that puts the number of students enrolled in wholly online courses last year at close to one million, doubling the number from just two years earlier. The report predicts another 500,000 or more students will enroll in online courses over the next two years. The company estimates that by the end of 2005, students enrolled in entirely online courses will constitute more than 15 percent of the total number of students enrolled at degree-granting institutions in the United States. Although much of the growth in online course enrollments is taking place in the for-profit
higher education market, nonprofit institutions are closing the gap, according to Sean Gallagher, senior analyst at Eduventures. As more and more nonprofit institutions put their courses online, he said, "the rate at which for-profits are stealing market share is beginning to slow down."Picture by Veronica Khokhlova.

DeVry gets customized math program from Pearson

Dvery has hooked up with Pearson Education for a customized math program. The story on the Dvery decision at Business Wire. Pearson Education (NYSE:PSO) today announced an agreement with DeVry University, Inc., a division of DeVry Inc. (NYSE:DV), one of the largest publicly held international higher education companies, to customize Pearson’s MyMathLab online courses for DeVry students nationwide. The MyMathLab homework and tutorial platform will be implemented at the 69 DeVry locations where the university offers its undergraduate programs and available to 43,000 students enrolled in both onsite and online programs. The world’s leading education company, Pearson Education will customize content from its mathematics textbooks to align with DeVry University’s "mastery learning" strategy, recently adopted to ease the initiation to college-level math for DeVry’s large and diverse student body. "Mastery learning is an educational philosophy that increases student success by providing students with feedback and correctives geared to the needs of each individual learner," said DeVry Vice President of Academic Affairs, Patrick Mayers. "MyMathLab provides the curriculum content and computer-based tools and applications to support this learning methodology."

Defense department to create vast student database

From Inside Higher Ed …

Officials at the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have proposed the creation of a database containing information on virtually every college student in the country, as well as many high school students. Intended as a tool to aid recruitment efforts, the database would include names, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates, ethnicities, grade point averages, and other data. The DoD's database bears similarities to another database proposed by the Department of Education. That database would track individual students through their college careers, providing a clearer picture of
graduation rates than current records, which track only aggregate rates from institutions. The Education Department's proposed database has drawn criticism from privacy advocates, who see it as a potential risk to privacy. The DoD proposal has similarly elicited complaints from groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). According to EPIC, the database would be a "bad idea," putting tools of direct marketers in the hands of government officials but without affording consumers the same protections from government that they enjoy from marketers.

Flexibility, autonomy drive online education

A good story about online education out of the Baltimore Sun about how for-profit, online education is gaining acceptance in the world of higher education, giving people more opportunities to get degrees without having to be on campus.

"The best part is the flexibility, it's autonomous, it allows one to work at his own pace," said McCollum of Fort Washington, who earned a doctorate in applied management and decision sciences at Walden University, an online school. "I work well independently. I don't need the face-to-face interaction."

These schools – which refer to their students as consumers and market their degrees with a blitz of advertising on Web sites and billboards – are targeting working adults who don't have the time or money to attend traditional colleges. Some of the schools offer campus-based and online programs.
Photo by Stephen Gardner.

Distance education going mainstream?

That's the question asked at The Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration – Can distance education be mainstreamed? We'd love to Hear from you about this article, so mail michael@online-universities.com with your comments – be sure to tag the subject as "Can Distance Education Go Mainstream?" We'd love to hear from more people about this, and any of the subjects covered here. Also, if you are in a distance education or online university course, we'd like to hear from you about how it is going.

The term " mainstreaming&lrquo; is often used to capture distance education's re-positioning within traditional universities. However, the results of a study of written distance education policies in four land grant universities challenge the implied widespread acceptance and integration of distance education into the educational mainstream. Furthermore, the results reveal major issues that compromise distance education's capacity to be mainstreamed into all relevant areas of the university system.

High marks for online education

From Yahoo Finance, online education is getting high marks. According to a recent survey, "60 Percent of Online Education Respondents Believe the Overall Quality of Education Is the Same for Online and Classroom Courses" …

Most people considering online education believe the quality of online education equals or is better than taking classes in an actual classroom setting, according to independent research conducted by Feedback Research, a division of Claria Corporation.

Distance learning mobilized

At Educause … mobile distance learning has the hi-tech ed all abuzz.

There is a sense of anticipation in higher education technology circles these days, a feeling of prickly excitement that hasn't been experienced since the heady days of the dot-com boom.

For the past five years, the landscape has been littered with funding shortfalls, problems with network capacity and security, and the never-ending scramble of trying to stay ahead of maintenance and upgrade curves. Today, there is a new buzz in the air-along with a growing cacophony of beeps, ring tones, vibrations, and occasional random sound effects that startle and amuse.Download file

Online degree in Engineering – SUNY

Soon to be SUNY will be offering an online degree in engineering. From Buffalo Business First, this story of yet another online degree from an established university.

The University at Buffalo and two other State University of New York institutions will now offer electrical engineering students an opportunity to gain a bachelor's degree online.

SUNY officials said Thursday the first-of-its-kind program will be created through the assistance of a $300,000 grant awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. UB will work in partnership with Stony Brook University and Binghamton University on the program.

Distance courses for the full time worker

From the Globe, this story on distance courses and a full plate of employment are juggled.

Used to be, you could go to college, study, have some free time, and never have to worry about the 'working world' until you finished school. Today, you can dream about the past all you want, but the truth is that those days, for many of us, are over.

In 2001 it was estimated by Sebago Associates, an economic consulting firm, that "fifty-seven percent of all college students have jobs-and in 2000, that "one in 10 college students attended classes full-time and worked full-time."For more information on distance courses, visit any of the links to our site sponsors for free materials on how to enroll.

IT Job market to make gains …

From CNET …

A survey conducted by staffing firm Robert Half Technology paints a rosier picture for IT professionals than has been offered by the company for three years. Results of the survey, which polled CIOs at more than 1,400 U.S. companies, showed that 14 percent expect to hire full-time IT staff in the third quarter, while 3 percent projected reductions in IT staff. Eighty-one percent of respondents said their staffing levels will remain steady. Respondents indicated that the primary factors determining staffing levels were business expansion (38
percent) and the need for higher levels of customer and end-user support (21 percent). The report comes amid mixed signals regarding the IT job market. According to the Labor Department, the number of unemployed high-tech workers fell by 64,000 last year. Still, the overall number of unemployed IT professionals was nearly 150,000, and 60,000 high-tech jobs were cut in the first quarter of this year, double the number of jobs lost during the same period in the previous year.