Colleges See 17 Percent Increase in Online Enrollment — from The Chronicle by Marc Parry

Colleges saw a 17 percent increase in online enrollment, with more than one in four students taking at least one online course in the fall of 2008, according to an annual survey published today by the Sloan Consortium.

The growth rate eclipsed last year’s 12-percent increase and dwarfed the 1.2 percent growth rate of the overall higher-education student population. The report, which has become a widely cited benchmark of distance learning, found a total of more than 4.6-million online students overall. That’s up from about 3.9 million the previous year.