Enrollment in Distance Education, by Sector, Fall 2017

More than a fifth of graduate students at four-year public institutions and more than a quarter of graduate students at four-year private nonprofit institutions studied exclusively through distance education. At four-year for-profit institutions, 84 percent of graduate students did. Undergraduates were far less likely than graduate students to be enrolled exclusively in distance-education courses. In the fall of 2017, more than two-thirds of undergraduates were not enrolled in any distance-education courses at all.

Undergraduate

Graduate

Note: Data cover 4,277 degree-granting four-year and two-year institutions in the United States that are eligible to participate in the Title IV federal student-aid program. Distance education refers to the use of one or more technologies to instruct students who are separated by distance from the instructor, and to support interaction between students and the instructor. The technologies may include the internet, wireless communication devices, closed-circuit television, and audio conferencing.

Source: Chronicle analysis of U.S. Department of Education data

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