Growing Access: Analysis of the Opportunity

Growing Access: Analysis of the Opportunity (http://www.sloan-c.org/workshop/growth.asp)

John R. Bourne, Ph.D., Olin and Babson Colleges and The Sloan Consortium

In the summer of 2005, a working group investigating growth in online education took part in the annual summer Sloan-C workshop. This group investigated, discussed and wrote papers about ways in which online education could grow. Topics ranged from investigating growth of online methodologies in higher education to how retired populations of learners might employ online education in the future. This short paper provides an overview analysis of growth opportunities; more details can be secured from papers written about this topic that appear in combined papers from the workshop and in the online seminar that will be offered in May, 2006.

The key question about growth is whether there is an opportunity for having more learners secure their education online. From our research, the answer appears to be a resounding "yes." There are very significant opportunities for reaching more learners, both in the United States and abroad. Methods for capturing these learners and strategies for improving access will be examined in the workshop; in this paper, we highlight the areas of possibility and the attendant implications.

First, a major area for growth is in higher education. The annual Sloan-C report on online education found that somewhat less than 3 million learners were taking courses online in 2005. The growth rate was nearly 20% per year. Three million learners represent less than one fifth of the total learner population in higher education in the United States. However, the total population of learners in higher education is growing only at about 1.5%. Discussions reveal that researchers believe that a significant opportunity for increasing online learners is in the blended area - that is, in the traditional venues of higher education in which mixing face-to-face and online education can be beneficial. Learning situations on-campus can be augmented through blending, thus saving institutional space, student time while increasing the capability of the faculty to deliver high quality education to un-reached learners.

Second, K-12 is an area that deserves attention. If the fifty-five million K-12 learners in the United States were to be educated with online and blended methods, this change would dramatically affect what new students entering higher education would likely demand for as an educational delivery system. The rate at which K-12 progresses toward blended and/or fully online will enable us to gauge how higher education should respond.

Third, the retired (baby-boomer, Silver Tsunami) generation may show significant increases in use of the internet for continued learning. However, so far, these changes have not appeared. Perhaps as the first baby boomers transition to retirement, there will be some early evidence of change (e.g., in the numbers of people taking continuing education courses). If there is a significant up tick in boomer uptake, this change could represent a tremendous market for online education.

Fourth, online learners in the corporate world are increasing in number. One source estimates that it is possible to reach perhaps 25% of the total addressable population of perhaps 80 million to take online courses. At the same time, military, government and health care populations may see similar growth.

In addition to the four areas above, "the opportunity for growing access for minority institutions, laboratories access and retaining students" were identified as ways to provide additional opportunity.

Taken in aggregate, the research described in our upcoming workshop posits that it will be possible to grow online education ten times in ten years through the combining of all the potential avenues for growth. "10 in 10" is a slogan used sometimes in Sloan-C to provide a goal for the organization. To reach 10 times as many learners by 2016 will require significant effort; nevertheless, the opportunity is there and potentially reachable. Moreover, the assessment of opportunity for growth was developed for the US with a population of about 300 million. The world population is more that 20 times larger - a very significant opportunity as that population becomes reachable.

For their contributions to this work, we wish to thank: Jacquie Moloney, Burks Oakley, Linda Ettinger, Melody Thompson, Devon Cancilla, William Booth, Olin Campbell, Bob Ubell, Mary Niemiec, George Otte and Tony Picciano, Janet Moore, John Sener and Kathleen Ives.