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During the pandemic, someone once remarked to me that life under Covid was like raising children: the days were long, but the years were short. Increasingly, that feels true even without either Covid or kids. This week in particular seemed to fly by, but what did I read?
Expanding online learning
It’s the beginning of the fall semester in the US, which means the press is full of stories about institutions reporting record or rising enrollments. Posts about declining enrollment are far less common.
Among the updates that crossed my inbox this week, several highlighted online learning gains. A trend I’m noticing is that online enrollment increases are often (but not always) outpacing on-campus growth, with much of the momentum coming from undergraduates and regional institutions. It will be interesting to see whether these early impressions hold up once more comprehensive data becomes available.
University of Cincinnati: Overall enrollment rose 1.4%, but online enrollment grew by 1.7%, reaching an all-time high of about 9,700 students in online programs.
Grand Canyon University: Enrollment is up 8% compared to 2024–25, projected to hit 133,000 students. Interestingly, the largest percentage gain was among the roughly 25,000 on-campus students, who grew by 10%—bucking the general trend.
North Carolina Central University: Reported a substantial increase in its online student population.
NCCU’s incoming class includes 251 online students. That is a 22% increase from fall 2024. The university offers 37 online programs at the bachelor’s and graduate degrees levels, as well as certificate options.
San José State University is setting new records, with overall enrollment up 8% from last year—and online enrollment surging by an impressive 35%.
The University of Texas at San Antonio is also reporting record-setting enrollment this year.
38,200-plus students are enrolled in classes for the Fall 2025 semester — reflecting a 7% increase over last year’s official enrollment of 35,770 [snip]
Enrollment in fully online programs continues to rise, with more than 1,250 students pursuing 100% online programs, a 7% increase over last year. A full 85% of online students are undergraduates; of those, almost half are enrolled in UTSA’s online B.B.A. in cybersecurity.
Are we looking at the right thing?
This week you could hardly go on LinkedIn or open the higher ed trade press without seeing discussion of the latest paper from Stanford researchers Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, and Ruyu Chen on the employment effects of artificial intelligence.
