Is Higher-Ed Experiencing a Deceleration of Distance Education?

Joseph Miller, Vice President, Enrollment Management and Marketing at Winthrop University

In May, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released their highly anticipated annual update of the 'Condition of Education' report. The annual Condition of Education report provides updated statistics and summary information from NCES and other educational data sources and provides a wealth of information on educational progress in the U.S. to help inform education leaders, decision-makers, and policy specialists. While the Condition of Education report is chock-full of statistical insights, one of the interesting findings in this year’s report is the trend report of distance education within post-secondary education (i.e., Undergraduate Enrollment and Post-baccalaureate Enrollment). The reason why this year’s findings are so intriguing is that this is the first year that the Condition of Education report provides comparative data on fall 2019, fall 2020, and fall 2021 distance education trends (that is – pre-COVID, meso-COVID, and post-COVID). So, what does the report reveal? 

First, let’s explain how NCIS defines ‘distance education.’  The NCES provides a detailed and lengthy definition of distance education as follows:

“Education that uses one or more technologies to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor synchronously or asynchronously. Technologies used for instruction may include the following: internet; one-way and two-way transmissions through open broadcasts, closed circuit, cable, microwave, broadband lines, fiber optics, and satellite or wireless communication devices; audio conferencing; and DVDs and CD-ROMs if used in a course in conjunction with the technologies listed above.”

If you are considering your institution’s participation in distance education or how you report in IPEDS, you may identify with one or all of the modalities listed in the NCES definition above. Distance education has been growing in popularity in recent years and provides a valuable modality to expand accessibility to higher education. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many institutions modified their instructional modality to teach exclusively online for a period (from spring 2020 through fall 2021 and beyond) as more information and guidance became available during the pandemic. Because of the widespread shift to online instruction, if an educational researcher were to compare the enrollment in distance education during the pandemic, it would be difficult to discern the noticeable trends by simply looking at students enrolled exclusively in distance education courses (i.e., the data is skewed because of widespread adoption of instruction through distance education during the pandemic). Therefore, to examine the trends in distance education, I argue that it is more helpful to look only at students enrolled in at least one (but not all) distance education course for the periods pre-COVID, meso-COVID, and post-COVID.

Also, enrollment in distance education programs varies across the institutional sector (public, private nonprofit, private for-profit) in addition to the percentage of courses taken by an individual student. Fortunately, the Condition of Education report provides a summary of undergraduate and post-baccalaureate students enrolled in distance education by level and control of institution, as well as compared of students enrolled in at least one distance education course vs. students enrolled exclusively in distance education courses.

To keep it simple, I am interested in reviewing the changes in distance education for undergraduate and post-baccalaureate students enrolled in at least one distance education course across all institutional sectors.

"Distance education has been growing in popularity in recent years and provides a valuable modality to expand accessibility to higher education"

Distance Education Trends – Undergraduate and Graduate Enrollment

The Condition of Education report notes that in fall 2021, approximately 9.4 million undergraduate students - or 61 percent of all undergraduate students - enrolled in at least one distance education course. As a percentage of total undergraduate enrollment in fall 2021, participation in distance education was lower than in fall 2020 (at 75 percent), the first fall of the COVID-19 pandemic, but remained higher than in fall 2019. This shift in enrollment reflects the spike in distance education from 2019 to 2020 (i.e., from 36 percent to 75 percent) due to instructional modality changes during the COVID-19 pandemic; and then a down-shift from 2020 to 2021 (i.e., from 75 percent to 61 percent) as the pandemic began to draw to a close. Specifically, the percentage of undergraduate students enrolled in at least one distance education course was as follows:

• 36 percent in 2019;
• 75 percent in 2020; and
• 61 percent in 2021.

Likewise, in fall 2021, the Condition of Education report indicates that roughly 1.8 million post-baccalaureate students (i.e., graduate students) enrolled in at least one distance education course. Similar to the undergraduate experience, participation in distance education in fall 2021 (as a percentage of total post-baccalaureate enrollment) was lower than in fall 2020, the first fall of the COVID-19 pandemic, but higher than in fall 2019. Specifically, the percentage of post-baccalaureate students enrolled in at least one distance education course was as follows:

• 42 percent in 2019;
• 71 percent in 2020; and
• 56 percent in 2021.

The trends for undergraduate and graduate distance education enrollments portray a similar story. Namely, student enrollment in at least one distance education course increased from 2019 to 2020 (in the transition to online instruction during COVID-19) and then decreased from 2020 to 2021 (as campuses began to return to in-person instruction as the COVID-19 pandemic abated). While it is too early to tell what these comparisons mean in the long run, it is interesting to note the dramatic change in instructional modality over only a three-year period of time. These findings raise interesting questions about institutional decisions, individual student decisions, and the accessibility of higher education during one of the most turbulent public health crises in the last century. Future educational researchers will be able to examine this three-year period of time and note substantial changes in both institutional delivery methods and student learning behaviors in response to the widespread adoption of distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, these results raise questions about upcoming trends for the next few years and the long-term enrollment decisions of institutions and individual students. However, before drawing any extrapolated conclusions about the data, it is important to check these findings against your own institutional experience during this same period. 

How generalizable are these findings?

If you share the same curiosity as me, I decided to compare these findings against the distance education enrollment at my current institution. Fortunately, my institution has been reporting the 12-month unduplicated enrollment by distance education status to IPEDS for several years, which makes for a generalizable comparison. I was curious to discern if there were themes of generalizability or external validity to how these findings align with my institutions' enrollment trends in distance education for the same period reported in the latest Condition of Education report. Not surprisingly, I found that the experience at my institution was similar to the findings in undergraduate distance education for 2019, 2020, and 2021. 

If you - or your Institutional Research office at your institution - report distance education to IPEDS, I encourage you to conduct a similar review to check your results. Not only will it help to determine if your results are within the normal distribution, but you may also discern if your experience is an outlier in any capacity.   

So, what does this mean?

Does one year make a trend? No, of course not. However, the distance education data in the Condition of Education report might begin to indicate that something in the distance education landscape is about to change. For example, given the choice, will students continue to enroll in distance education at the same levels as they did during the pandemic? The data from this year indicates that it does not seem likely. Similarly, is it possible that student enrollment in distance education will return to pre-pandemic levels? That, I think, is an interesting question – which can be answered only in the results and findings from the next few years' updates of the Condition of Education report. If you are interested in tracking this data and enrollment trends in distance education (among other educational statistics), mark your calendar for late May of each year as IES and NCES release upcoming annual updates of the Condition of Education report. 

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