According to the Babson Survey Research Group’s latest annual report on distance education in the United States, online student enrollment has grown for the 14th year in a row. Nearly a million additional students took distance education courses in 2016 compared to 2012, a count consisting of both people who took online classes (or other forms of distance ed) exclusively as well as those who took a mix of online and face-to-face courses. That translates to more than 30 percent of colleges students — 6.4 million in total — who took at least one distance education course during the 2015-2016 academic year.
Conversely, a million fewer students came to campus for their college education in 2016 than in 2012.