Online Learning Information

Online courses are becoming so popular today that they are almost expected in any formal education curriculum. Classrooms are often supplemented by an online portion, while some universities promote exclusively their distance learning programs.

As online learning has become more mainstream, we have been able to gather information about the online learner. It is interesting to see the demographic distributions, including the one fact regarding the annual income of the online learner.

Probably least surprising of all of these facts is that University of Phoenix has the largest proportion of online students. From what I can tell, online learning is their primary offering (and if I’m not mistaken, they were one of the first to the market with this value proposition).

Below are 10 unique facts about students who take a portion of their courses online – well, nine now that I have just mentioned the fact regarding the University of Phoenix .

10 Surprising Facts About Online Students

• 46% of students say their biggest motivation for enrolling in an online course was to advance their current career.
• 37% of online students were the first in their family to attend college.
• 33% of people taking some online course are studying business.
• University of Phoenix has the largest proportion of online students at 15%.
• 39% of online students fall between the ages of 18 to 29.
• 21% of online students pay for their education using personal funds only.
• 70% of virtual learners are female.
• 29% of online graduates earn $85-150k annual income.
• 60% of students taking an online course are employed full-time.