News Flash: Maybe Online Learning Won’t Grow Forever

Online learning has been one of the biggest stories in the web business for several years. It seems like every small private school and big state university has been diving into it with a promise of quickly making millions of dollars. But how long will the growth really go on? A study by the Sloan Foundation and the Babson Survey Research Group indicates that, while distance learning is still growing, it’s not growing as quickly as it once was. About 3.5 million students (just under 20% of everyone enrolled in higher education) took an online course in 2006. That’s a 9.7 per cent jump from the previous year. The key for all those investing in the University of Phoenix and other for-profit schools, however, is that this is a small rise compared to 2005, when enrollments in online courses were up 36.5 per cent over the previous year.