Fall 2023 IPEDS Data: Profile of US Higher Ed Online Education

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The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) and its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) provide the most official data on colleges and universities in the United States. I have been analyzing and sharing the data since the inaugural Fall 2012 dataset, and the Fall 2023 data were just released. You can find the most recent Fall IPEDS profiles for these years:

• Fall 2019

• Fall 2020

• Fall 2021

• Fall 2022

Also note that we have covered the 12-month Headcount IPEDS data (which counts all students at an institution over each year, compared to the census method of the Fall data) in this most recent post.

What makes this year’s data most interesting is that we are both seeing the last remnants of pandemic recovery for face-to-face enrollments (primarily in public institutions) and the beginning of a new normal of increasing fully-online and partially-online enrollments. The percentage of students taking no online courses (45.7%) compared to students taking at least one online course (53.4%) was nearly identical between Fall 2022 and Fall 2023.

But more importantly, it now appears that we had roughly a 12% jump in students taking some online courses from what we would have expected before the pandemic for 2023. The view that Covid caused students and faculty to not want online education is not borne out by the data, despite the pushback from Zoom U. Covid accelerated the shift to online even beyond the campus shutdowns.

For this Fall 2023 profile, nearly everyone wins, despite the looming demographic declines scheduled to begin in 2025-26 and the ongoing financial crises at colleges and universities. Put another way, this might be the most positive profile we’ll see for quite some time.

Additional Data Notes

Please note the following:

• There are multiple ways to filter and select data. For this set (as with previous analyses for consistency’s sake), I have limited to U.S. degree-granting institutions in six sectors – public 4-year, private 4-year, for profit 4-year, public 2-year, private 2-year, and for profit 2-year. For undergraduate totals I have included degree-seeking and non-degree-seeking students (degree-granting institutions can offer non-degree programs).

• For the most part distance education (DE) and online education terms are interchangeable.

• Exclusive DE is for students taking all courses online; Some DE is for students taking some (but not all) courses online; At Least One DE, or ALO DE is a combination of exclusive and some DE. No DE is for students taking all courses face-to-face.

• I am using Adjusted Sector to categorize the data, as this removes the numerous sector changes since 2012 where a 2-year institution adds a small number of bachelor’s degrees and is reclassified by IPEDS as a 4-year institution. This despite the predominant degree offering being a 2-year associate’s degree. I believe this gives a more accurate representation of how each type of institution is faring.

Table View and Initial Observations

Below is a profile of online education in the US for degree-granting colleges and university, broken out by adjusted sector for Fall 2023.

Combining with last year’s profile, Total enrollments increased from 18.65 million students to 19.13 million overall, Exclusive DE enrollments increased from 4.97 to 5.05 million, Some DE enrollments increased from 5.17 to 5.33 million, and No DE enrollments increased from 8.52 to 8.75 million. Wins across the board.

A more useful comparison is to Fall 2019 to remove the worst of the pandemic distortion. Combining with the Fall 2019 profile, Total enrollments in Fall 2023 decreased from 19.68 million students to 19.13 million, Exclusive DE enrollments increased from 3.47 to 5.05 million, Some DE enrollments increased from 3.87 to 5.33 million, and No DE enrollments decreased from 12.34 to 8.75 million. In percentage terms, Exclusive DE enrollments increased from 17.6% to 26.4%, Some DE enrollments increased from 19.6% to 27.9%, and No DE enrollments decreased from 62.7% to 45.7%.

Nonlinear Trends

To get a sense of the growth in the number of students taking at least one online course (which combines those in fully-online programs with those mixing face-to-face and online courses), this pincer chart (as Morgan calls it) displays the trend along with an extrapolation of the pre-pandemic trends (in black).

To the extent that Fall 2023 data give insights into the structural changes to online education - those that will persist in future years - note that the differences highlighted above in bold above represent a jump above the linear increases seen 2012 - 2019.

Pre-pandemic, we were seeing a fairly linear trend shifting from No DE to Some DE, and if that linear trend had persisted, we would be at roughly 42% of students taking at least some online courses. Instead, there are 54.3% of students taking at least some online, indicating that the Covid pandemic significantly increase online education offerings, by roughly a 12% jump. That is a meaningful acceleration in online education.

Additional Analysis

If you’ve been considering whether to upgrade to a premium subscription, now may be a good time to use the 30-day free trial. I plan to post additional data views in future On EdTech+ posts.

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