Factsheets

Distance education (primarily through online programs) is a growing mode of learning in higher education. As of fall 2019, 7.25 million students were taking at least one distance-education course, and 3.44 million students were enrolled exclusively in distance education. Despite the rapid development of internet-based technologies in the 1990s, online education struggled to grow within the regulatory and statutory framework of the Higher Education Act until the mid-2000s. Today, within the context of a pandemic, online education is an increasing mode of delivery. The growth of online education is not without its concerns, however, with the emergence of third-party companies offering for-profit software and management solutions, and with increasing questions of access and quality.

The origins of distance education stretch back to the early eighteenth century, when correspondence courses were introduced. Correspondence courses allowed students who lived in areas without an institution of higher education to enroll in postsecondary learning and receive their lessons via the postal service. Students were able to submit their work for feedback, again, via mail. These courses offered slow, limited interaction between student and teacher and required the student to largely teach themselves. These courses increased in popularity as the postal service’s reach expanded, and the Industrial Revolution led to the need for a more qualified workforce. The second generation of distance education was ushered in by the introduction of radio and television, expanding educational opportunities for more students but still lacking direct interaction with the instructor. With the widespread use of the internet in the 1990s, a new generation of distance education was born: online education. While today’s version of online education often bears little resemblance to correspondence courses, the law—and access to federal financial aid—only differentiated between the two recently.