Ken Tidwell Jr. was fairly certain: Students would come back to San Jacinto College for in-person classes after the pandemic.
Texas, as elsewhere, still had digital-equity gaps. And online learning didn’t quite fit his understanding of the state’s historical ethos — that the faculty expertise and student experiences that define higher education reside on a campus, not a computer screen.
But that return en masse didn’t happen. Five years since the Covid-19 pandemic forced an emergency pivot to remote learning, the community college outside of Houston, which served 15 percent of students online right before the pandemic, is teaching 67 percent of its learners at least partly online this spring.
“Students didn’t respond” to the notion of a “return to normal,” says Tidwell, chief officer for online learning at San Jacinto. “That really drove our hand to say … ‘OK, we need to do an internal, hard look at what’s going on.’”
San Jacinto College’s story reflects a broader shift across academe. Online education has moved from the periphery to the center at a blistering pace, forcing institutions to reimagine it as an integral part of their strategy to serve and attract learners. As of the fall of 2023, 54.3 percent of college students were taking at least one online course, according to an analysis of the latest U.S. Department of Education data by the ed-tech consultant Phil Hill. That’s about 25-percent higher than where data projections suggest enrollment would be had the pandemic never happened.
Put another way: Without the 2020 upheaval, colleges likely wouldn’t have reached that level of online enrollment until around 2030.
“That,” says Kemi Jona, vice provost for online education and digital innovation at the University of Virginia, “is a phenomenal sea change.”
The factors driving continued interest in online learning are manifold. Many students and faculty members are more comfortable now with educational technologies. And the flexibility and accelerated learning opportunities that online instruction can afford have enticed learners who are unable — or perhaps unwilling — to commit to a four-year, in-person college experience. That is especially the case, sources say, for a population not historically associated with online learning: traditional-age undergraduates. Many still want to reap the social benefits of living on campus, but now expect the option of both in-person and online courses.
Colleges see their own benefits. As many stare down daunting demographic shifts, like projected declines in high-school graduates, there’s an allure to expanding the universe of prospective students and establishing new channels for revenue and industry partnerships. At a time when the public is questioning higher education’s worth, there’s a chance for institutions to meet learners’ needs and make that value clear. Colleges have an incentive to continue refining online operations, too, as more find themselves pivoting online for short stints in response to climate-related events like hurricanes and wildfires.
So, many are doubling down, creating virtual campuses, new degree programs and certificates, and individual courses based on existing in-person offerings. A number are looking to do this work in-house as well, calling into question the long-term role of an already-hobbled online-program management industry.
But doing online and doing online well — as the sector has learned in the last five years — are two very different things. Traditional brick-and-mortar institutions, in particular, face hard questions, like how much money to spend, how much infrastructure to build, and how to preserve faculty autonomy while setting standards for quality.
And perhaps on an even deeper level: how to retain their identities.
Online education existed well before the pandemic. But it was “othered,” says Bethany Simunich, vice president for innovation and research at the nonprofit organization Quality Matters, and seen largely as a vehicle of graduate-student education and continuing-education programs for adults lacking a degree. In the fall of 2019, 32.7 percent of graduate students were taking courses fully online, compared with just 14.8 percent of undergraduates, according to Education Department data.
While behemoths like Southern New Hampshire University and the University of Phoenix drew hundreds of thousands of students, online education remained a largely foreign concept for many colleges. That lack of familiarity, paired with reports of poor student outcomes and predatory recruiting practices, fueled notions that online learning was subpar learning. And with that, the belief that faculty members couldn’t teach a lot of their courses online without compromising quality and student engagement, recalls Christine Goshorn, executive director for innovation and instructional support at Central New Mexico Community College.
Darnell Hunt, executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California at Los Angeles, has a similar memory. “The ball was in the court” of a small group of champions and innovators to “make the case for why [online instruction] was warranted,” he says.
Post-Covid, though, pressures both outside and inside of academe have forced colleges off the sidelines. Societal awareness of — and comfort with — online education has helped “demystify” and “destigmatize” it, says Glenda Morgan, an analyst with Phil Hill & Associates, an ed-tech market advisory firm. In a 2023 Champlain College Online study, 43 percent of more than 2,000 adults surveyed reported having “a better opinion” of online education following the pandemic (another 44 percent had the same opinion).
Their whole life is hybrid. Their whole life involves technology.
Enthusiasm has been particularly notable, experts say, among the undergraduate population. And not just adult learners in the work force who are simultaneously pursuing degrees or certifications. Many colleges are now witnessing what Thomas Cavanagh, vice provost for digital learning at the University of Central Florida, calls “a bifurcation of the traditional residential student expectations” — traditional-age learners who live on campus but want to take a mix of online and in-person courses. In a 2024 study from UPCEA, a professional education association, 82 percent of chief online learning officers surveyed said that an increasing percentage of their traditional undergraduate students seek out online courses “for at least some of their degree.”
That expectation aligns with a shifting power dynamic favoring students that higher education is experiencing in other ways, including inside the classroom. It also just makes sense, if you ask Chris Montagnino, executive vice president of Champlain College Online.
“Their whole life is hybrid. Their whole life involves technology,” Montagnino says. Her son, who graduated high school during the pandemic, “wouldn’t even have thought of attending a school that didn’t offer the option to take some of his classes online.”
To be sure, the proportion of undergraduates — and students in general — taking online courses now is lower than it was in 2020. And learners, as administrators point out, are not a monolith. There continues to be robust interest in attending college in person; Texas A&M University, for example, recently had to pause undergraduate-enrollment growth while it updates its infrastructure to accommodate steep increases in the number of on-campus students.
Still, the tide of online-ed enrollment hasn’t fully receded. The “water line,” Cavanagh says, is now higher than it was.
Students aren’t the only contributor. In Quality Matters’ latest annual survey of chief online officers, 49 percent said faculty members requesting more online courses was a “major driver” of expansion in online courses and programs.
More and more faculty members have “softened” to online instruction, recognizing that they “can do it with standards” using tech tools and creative techniques, says Mindy Murray, a biology professor and Faculty Senate president-elect at San Jacinto College. In anatomy, for example, 3D-modeling programs can let students see “every nook of a bone or organ” — even muscle contractions.
Flexibility has also proved valuable. Murray notes that some colleagues are considering teaching online courses as they plan to have children. For others, online education is the only way they can teach. June Trevino, a mathematics professor and Faculty Senate president at San Jacinto, is one example: She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 28, and her difficulty with walking, coordination, and handwriting makes in-person teaching unworkable.
Online options can be “lifelines” for both faculty and students, Trevino wrote in an email.
Postings to The Chronicle’s job board suggest that institutions are responding to this sustained interest. While online-focused job postings make up just a fraction of all Chronicle postings — about 1 in every 100 — an internal analysis found that the number grew fourfold from 2017 to 2024, outpacing growth across postings overall.
The pressures to embrace online education aren’t equal across institutions, though. Those needing to retain or bulk up enrollment and those serving diverse, high-needs populations — community colleges and regional comprehensives, for example — are likely feeling more urgency to adapt, sources say. (Nearly 42 percent of the online-related jobs posted by public two-year colleges in the last eight years were placed in 2023 and 2024 alone.)
On the whole, state flagships and highly selective institutions “don’t have the same pressures ... simply because when you are in that rare air, you will always have a huge recruiting class,” says Julie Uranis, senior vice president for online and strategic initiatives at UPCEA.
Administrators at UVa and UCLA, which are exploring new online opportunities, say they are driven more by mission and a desire to innovate than by a need to shore up enrollments, which are healthy.
Whatever the reason, what was once an extra for many is now a necessity. And that means having a strategy.
Some colleges’ long-term strategies included online education before Covid. But in many cases, sources say the pandemic accelerated the timeframe and scope of their online initiatives.
The University of Maine system — which is confronting an aging resident population, dipping enrollment, and declines in high-school graduates — aims to double the total number of fully online offerings across its seven institutions and law school by 2028 through a combination of degree programs, minors, certificates, and microcredentials.
One motivation is to compete with private colleges in the state, says Dannel Malloy, the system’s chancellor. Another is to widen the net. While still committed to serving in-state learners, “we would be foolish not to go after students in other states if we have a program that fits their needs,” Malloy says.
A number of institutions are creating online versions of existing in-person courses and degree programs to scale up. Nearly 70 percent of chief online officers surveyed by Quality Matters said these were top online priorities for their institution.
At D’Youville University, a small private college just minutes from the Canadian border in Buffalo, N.Y., 15 of its 16 online-degree programs began as in-person programs, says Jeremiah Grabowski, executive dean for online learning and faculty development. The college, which specializes in the health sciences, has been adding online options for electives, too, in response to student demand and requests from program directors.
In some cases, online has even become the dominant programming format. According to Grabowski, 12 of the 15 programs initially run in person are now exclusively online. The State University of New York at Cortland — a three hours’ drive east — made a similar decision, transitioning all of its graduate-degree programs in the School of Education to be exclusively online as of the fall of 2024. (Administrators say the move is meant in part to keep recent graduates, many of whom need a master’s degree but have historically moved away from the predominantly rural county, enrolled at Cortland.)
Shifts online have prompted structural changes as well. San Jacinto College, which is introducing an online campus this fall, intends to fully centralize its online operations, with dedicated online-only faculty members, department chairs, and support staff, Tidwell says. (That transition will happen in phases.)
Quality distance education isn’t cheap to produce.
Others plan to keep programming under the purview of individual academic colleges and departments while centralizing support services. Last year, UVa established the Office of the Vice Provost of Online Education and Digital Innovation — a four-person team as of February that assists colleagues universitywide with services such as market research, instructional design, and student advising.
A goal, says Jona, who leads that team, is to eventually establish internal expertise. The office hired a strategic firm for advisement on best practices for building that expertise, but decided against outsourcing any operations to an online-program manager.
For years, online-program managers have provided services like research, IT support, marketing, and recruitment to colleges. But they’ve found themselves in something of an existential crisis amid criticism of revenue-share models, increased government scrutiny, and interest among colleges in moving more of their online operations in-house. Some companies, like Pearson and Wiley, have lopped off their OPM businesses. One embattled OPM, 2U, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year after months of fiscal misfortune.
ListEdTech, an education market-research firm, reported 140 “decommissions” of OPM-supported academic programs in the United States in 2024 (this could mean the OPM partnership ended, or the program itself shuttered), while 111 new programs were launched. It was the first year that the firm observed retrenchment outpacing growth.
Still, some observers note that OPMs continue to have value for institutions that don’t have the upfront capital or capacity to expand their online offerings.
“The heady days” of companies like 2U selling on the stock market are over, says Morgan, the analyst. But she adds that OPMs still solve the collective-action problem that can often plague institutional initiatives. “They’re like the personal trainer” who comes in and pushes development forward, she says.
At Kentucky State University, which opened its online campus last fall, Magellan Learning Solutions, an OPM, is “fully integrated” into the institution’s online operations, providing services such as enrollment strategy, marketing, and course development, Deanna McGaughey-Summers, interim director of online education, wrote in an email. She added that the intent is to eventually staff internally for much of the work Magellan does — “a phased transition towards a sustainable online program infrastructure.”
Whether the work is internal or external, it definitely isn’t without cost. And counter to a common misconception, online courses and programs often aren’t cheaper to run.
In a recent report from WCET, a nonprofit focused on education technology, a majority of institutions surveyed said their online courses cost the same as, or more than, in-person courses across 21 different components of course development and delivery. Six components reported to be more expensive for online courses included technologies and software, instructional design, and accessibility.
Some colleges may “think that digital learning is going to be their cash cow,” says Van Davis, executive director of WCET. But “quality distance education isn’t cheap to produce.”
uality Qis also becoming non-negotiable. While affordability and flexibility remain key considerations for those pursuing online education, surveys like Voice of the Online Learner suggest that students are increasingly looking at quality-adjacent factors like “accreditation” too. Broader interest in measuring quality is also growing, with the magazine Times Higher Education in December releasing the first iteration of its global Online Learning Rankings.
Simunich, at Quality Matters, says learners can “recognize” low quality and vestiges of emergency remote learning: course materials copied and pasted into a template, no instructor engagement, and primarily multiple-choice assessments, to name a few. And when they see such hallmarks of the Covid era, she says, “they realize, ‘I’m not getting the return on my investment.’”
In response, some colleges are taking a closer look at student performance and persistence in online courses. At the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the Office of Institutional Research and Analytics regularly reviews data such as drop/withdrawal rates and end-of-semester surveys to identify areas of improvement, and the college’s Office of eLearning works with individual departments on retention strategies. (Administrators say similar processes are in place for reviewing in-person courses.)
“We want [students] not just to choose us because we’re here, but to choose us because they can be successful here,” says David Montague, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs and student success.
Differentiation is also important, administrators say, as the online-education market becomes increasingly saturated.
Colleges should try to offer highly specialized academic programs based on the “unique expertise” of their faculty, Kelvin Thompson, vice provost for online strategy and teaching innovation at the University of Louisville, wrote in an email. One example he cites from his own institution: an online franchise management certificate led by a former longtime director with the KFC Corporation.
Many are setting themselves apart by responding to the needs of learners and local industry, too. Kentucky State, for example, offers most of its online courses as continually recurring eight-week sessions — a format that’s proved popular with its students. And Central New Mexico Community College is assisting local employers with customized offerings like an engineering program for employees at General Mills, the food-processing titan with a manufacturing plant down the road in Albuquerque.
“What keeps me up at night” is that “it’s too easy to create an unlimited number of online-course shells in the learning-management system and say, ‘Go teach.’”
While consensus grows around the importance of quality, oversight is still often inconsistent. Many online courses and programs live within different academic colleges and departments. And when colleges add online versions of existing courses and programs, the approval process is often streamlined, with less “red tape” than, say, seeking approval for a brand-new program, Simunich says.
Administrators say they’re working on checks and balances. At Kennesaw State University, where 40 percent of the course catalog is online as of 2024, a team of instructional designers and media developers tries to review all online course designs before classes go live, ensuring they comply with their respective academic colleges’ policies, says Anissa Vega, associate vice provost. (The Digital Learning Advisory Committee, a shared governance body, reviews all college policies).
That process then “allows us to reach out and help that faculty member create or tweak the design that hasn’t passed to ensure it’s high quality,” she says.
Faculty training can be key to improving the quality of online courses, but the practice isn’t an established norm. Just over half — 54 percent — of respondents to the 2024 UPCEA survey said online instructors are “required to attend training or achieve proficiencies prior to teaching online.”
“What keeps me up at night,” says Cavanagh, at the University of Central Florida, is that “it’s too easy to create an unlimited number of online-course shells in the learning-management system and say, ‘Go teach.’”
There are reasons colleges might not require training, such as faculty autonomy and contract provisions. Colleges also rely heavily on adjunct faculty, who may have less access to — or time and willingness for — professional development. In the UPCEA survey, 86 percent of respondents said they employ adjuncts to teach online programs. The Chronicle’s job-postings data is similarly telling; since 2020, just over half of the postings mentioning online education that included position data were for adjunct roles.
While the use of adjunct faculty doesn’t automatically mean low-quality teaching online, those who’ve taught as adjuncts, like Amanda Klemmer at the University of Maine, acknowledge the potential limitations. “I know the pressure that’s on someone who is getting paid very little” to teach a number of classes, says Klemmer, an associate professor of ecology. “It is a different type of education that you can give.”
Colleges are broaching professional development in various ways. The University of Central Florida requires all instructors teaching online to undergo a training program — a commitment of about 80 hours over 10 weeks — and pays them a $2,500 stipend upon completion. Central New Mexico Community College folds online-certification training into its employee-orientation process, while offering additional (and optional) programming such as personalized boot camps. Some institutions that don’t require training are trying to encourage participation in other ways, like promoting a single “one-stop” session that covers techniques for designing both asynchronous and synchronous courses.
Generating enthusiasm, whether for training or online teaching in general, is still a hurdle at many institutions. While faculty members can be online education’s biggest cheerleaders, some continue to wrestle with concerns about retaining rigor, reputation, and mission.
Klemmer, who’s also the Faculty Senate president at the University of Maine, has heard from colleagues seeking assurances that online instruction won’t water down programs that incorporate hands-on learning, for example. “We are a newly R1 institution,” she says. “We don’t want to lose our core values and the type of degrees we offer.”
Administrators say success often comes down to making the reimagining process collaborative. At San Jacinto, work groups have involved nearly one in five of the college’s full-time employees to date, Tidwell says. The groups cover a range of topics, including organizational structure, quality course development, and academic support. Their findings are informing how the future online campus runs.
“When you think, ‘This is who I am, this is what I do, and this is what I do well,’ and then change comes … those are hard conversations,” Tidwell says. But hard conversations, he adds, can yield positive results.
Hunt, at UCLA, says that reaffirming institutional values has also helped build trust. He sat on a UC system subcommittee last year that developed shared principles for quality instruction. One such principle: If the system’s campuses begin offering fully online undergraduate-degree programs, admitted students would have to meet the same caliber as those in residential-degree programs. (The UC system’s Academic Senate effectively banned fully online undergraduate-degree programs in 2023; the Board of Regents repealed that decision last year).
A few faculty members The Chronicle spoke with note that buy-in is more likely, too, when there’s a clear institutional investment. That can mean bolstering wraparound supports for students learning online, such as tutoring, advising, mental health, and IT services; providing assistance with proctoring (especially when an academic department requires proctored assessments); offering stipends for training; sharing guidance on teaching online alongside a bevy of AI tools; and regularly monitoring students’ technology and WiFi needs.
That is easier said than done. Cash isn’t freely flowing; just 39 percent of respondents in Quality Matters’ survey agreed that they have sufficient institutional resources for online learning.
Administrators cite a number of ways they’re helping cover costs. San Jacinto is reassigning faculty members to teach online. Kentucky State won a $2.7-million state-government grant. UVa is tapping its strategic-investment funds. D’Youville invested the “small sliver” of funding available into the “top of the funnel” — marketing and admissions — and is now reinvesting tuition revenue into its online operations, says Grabowski, the executive dean for online learning and faculty development.
“We get a little more enrollment, then we get a little more money” to hire another, say, instructional designer, Grabowski says. “It slowly builds from there.”
As if achieving consensus for — and financing — online ed weren’t difficult enough, colleges also face a chaotic regulatory environment.
Administrators and policy watchers say they’ve observed an array of regulatory pushes in the last few years that, if successful, would influence colleges’ planning and strategizing.
Some have passed: Updated regulations under the Americans With Disabilities Act outline specific technical standards for web content; the embattled gainful-employment rule requires for-profit colleges and those with certificate programs to demonstrate that graduates’ earnings justify the cost of their education; and more recently, a final rule will require colleges to report more data on enrollment in distance-education classes.
Others have withered on the vine. The U.S. Department of Education last fall rescinded a 2023 “Dear Colleague” letter that would have put many ed-tech vendors on the hook for increased accountability following public confusion and a lawsuit. Murmurs last year that the department was also reconsidering 2011 guidance that undergirds how much of the sector recruits students never came to fruition.
Institutions “have whiplash over what rules are out there and which ones are pending,” says Russ Poulin, a consultant and former executive director at WCET.
The political landscape offers little clarity on which regulations will or won’t stand. President Trump — who has historically favored institutional freedom over consumer protection — is pursuing a wave of government deregulation (notably, he’s seeking to dismantle the Education Department). But policy experts note that there is growing bipartisan interest in holding higher ed accountable for student outcomes. And undoing rules, at least historically, has taken time.
For Davis, the executive director at WCET, the best advice for colleges is to “proceed as if the regulations will go into effect.” He suggests working on updating web content, for example, and starting to put processes in place for more robust data collection.
“Regulations are the regulations until they are not,” Davis adds. “And right now, they are still regulations.”
