One of the more puzzling things to observe over the past many years in higher education is the lack of scrutiny, or even basic curiosity, about online colleges and online college programs.
There is no question that remote college options are increasingly popular. Recent reporting in a trade publication found that about a quarter of all college students are in an online-only program. In 2008, that portion was just 3.9%.
But throughout their existence, few people have raised any serious questions about them. Few have even asked – and no one has waited for an answer – whether online college programs are any good.
Even without knowing much about what we are selling and what students are buying, schools have been selling online college like it’s their job – pumping millions of dollars into marketing campaigns and student recruitment as if they were selling car insurance. Most of the schools selling online college don’t sell much else. And, as more and more students respond to the ads and gravitate to the ease and convenience of online learning, these online-forward schools have become downright enormous. Several enroll more than 100,000 students at a time in their online programs.
Keeping in mind that no one can definitively say whether online programs in general are any good in the first place, these massive online schools have run into another challenge in the past few months. New data shows that most of the students who are pulled into these online programs don’t graduate. They end up with nothing to show for their money, their time, their debt, or for the taxpayer subsidies many online schools are gobbling up.
The new data broke in a December LinkedIn post from Michael Itzkowitz, President at the HEA Group, a higher education consultancy. In it, Itzkowitz examined the eight-year completion rates at seven schools with very heavy mixes of online programs and online enrollments – University of Phoenix, Western Governors, Southern New Hampshire University, Grand Canyon University, Liberty University, Arizona State, and the University of Central Florida.
The numbers were bleak.
At Phoenix, Itzkowitz found that a paltry 26% of entering students completed their programs. Again, that’s after eight years. At Southern New Hampshire, the eight-year completion rate was just 36%. Less than half the students who entered Western Governors, Grand Canyon, or Liberty earned a credential in eight years. Central Florida and Arizona State fared better, but those numbers are buoyed by sizeable on-campus student populations. Grand Canyon has an on-ground component too, which also likely makes their graduation numbers seem better than even this bad data conveys.
When a higher education publication looked at the trend further, they found similar patterns at other schools with outsized online programs and enrollments. At Purdue University Global, the school’s online division, the eight-year completion rate was just 28%. At University of Maryland Global Campus, fewer than one in three enrollees come out with a credential after eight years, 32%.
If a student is going to college online, part time, and especially if it’s their first college experience, the eight-year completion rates are even worse. At Southern New Hampshire University, only 14% of part-time, first-time online students complete in eight years or less.
These universities say that their poor completion rates are the result of their liberal acceptance policies and that they tend to enroll students who want to go to college, but maybe simply cannot because of life or job circumstances, or because they are not academically ready. That is largely true and a fair consideration. And it is unfair to compare a school that welcomes the least prepared students with schools that only accept the best of the bunch.
It’s relevant to note as well that poor completion rates for online programs are not a new finding. Way back in 2012, when massive, open, online courses (MOOCs) were supposed to change everything about teaching and learning, they flopped because, even though interest was shockingly high, completion rates were abysmal. In other words, the bad completion rates at massive online schools may not lie at the feet of the schools themselves. Poor outcomes may be baked into the mode of delivery.
Still, the poor success rates are very troubling, especially when you consider the sizes of these schools and that their programs are not free, or a token cost, as MOOCs were.
With eight-year completion rates in the twenty and thirty percent range, and online enrollments in excess of 100,000 students each, these schools may be leaving hundreds of thousands of students worse off then had they never enrolled – carrying debt, burning financial aid, investing time and talent away from careers or other training.
Critics say that many of these schools have prioritized rapid growth over quality – delivering cheap programs and massive advertising budgets to swell their ranks, without making similar investments in student support and basic instruction quality. Call it the Taco Bell model. Unfortunately, it’s an education plan that makes money, as demonstrated by for-profit colleges soaking up millions of students and billions of dollars with the promise of fast, cheap degrees that either never materialize or are not worth much if they do.
Now that the underwhelming graduation or completion rates for these schools are out in the open, the question becomes whether we think a 14% success rate in eight years is acceptable. And, if we do not, what we should do about it.
Some are calling for increased regulation, or any regulation at all, on these large, predominantly online, mass-market schools. And some sort of special regulation or oversight may indeed be due for schools that fit these criteria – say, enrollment of more than 100,000 students with at least 60% of those enrollments being online. It’s probably past time for that.
About the new data and the necessary conversations they demand, Itzkowitz asked whether “it was acceptable to hold online programs to lower completion standards than traditional classroom learning.”
He also told me, “The subpar completion rates at some of our largest online institutions demand a fundamental reimagining of how we develop and implement these programs. As more institutions invest in distance learning, we must prioritize student outcomes over rapid expansion.”
It’s hard to argue any alternative, and a premise that I suspect even the big, online colleges on this list would support. Whether they can, or will, is an entirely different question. What is not in question is that, as Itzkowitz said, “The true value of education lies not just in its delivery, but in its completion.”
Reached for comment, Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governor’s University did not respond.
Grand Canyon University replied, in part, “With GCU’s affordable tuition levels, high graduation rates among graduate students, protections to financially protect more vulnerable online populations who are statistically less likely to complete a degree, low cohort loan default rates, and the significant number of graduates who are making an impact across the country, GCU has proven that it is a great return on federal taxpayer investments.”
