Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Education has released the data from the first Integrated Postsecondary Data System survey of enrollment in distance learning courses, collected in fall 2012.
- The data will serve as a baseline for tracking future trends in massive open online courses and other distance learning initiatives.
- Of the 21.1 million students enrolled in Title IV institutions in the fall of 2012, 12.5% were enrolled exclusively in distance education courses, 13.3% were in some distance ed courses, and 74.2% were not enrolled in distance ed.
Dive Insight:
This data set — the report runs 43 pages — should provide a lot of fodder for MOOC followers to slice and dice. Broken down by geography, the region of the U.S. with the greatest percentage of students enrolled in Title IV institutions that were exclusively in distance ed courses was the Plains, at 23%, followed by the Southwest and Rocky Mountains, at 20% and 18.3%, respectively.