From: OHE Staff, Eduventures, LLC
Re: Benchmarking Liberty University’s Online Student Headcount
Date: February 27, 2007
Background
Liberty University asked OHE staff to benchmark their headcount of unique, current 100% online students against for-profit and non-profit schools generally.
Methodology
OHE staff compared Liberty’s data against figures reported in the OHE “Online Higher Education Market Update 2006” report, and other intelligence available to OHE staff. As it well known to Liberty, at present a genuinely national, comprehensive dataset concerning 100% online headcount at individual universities and colleges across U.S. higher education does not exist. Eduventures has tracked this market for many years, and is able to offer OHE members an informed perspective. For most purposes, Eduventures confines the online higher education universe to degree-granting, Title IV eligible institutions.
Data
Liberty University confirmed that as of early 2007, the school has around 16,000 current, unique, 100% online students. Based on intelligence available to OHE staff, there would appear to be only eight schools with a reported large online headcount- Figure 1. Consortia are excluded from Figure 1.
Unidentified Figure 1 schools are those that reported headcount data for the “Online Higher Education Market Update 2006” study, and were assured confidentiality. Schools outside the top 15 include UMass Online, University of Illinois Online, Penn State World Campus, Regis University, members of the University Alliance, and schools part of Education Management Corporation and Corinthian Colleges.
It is probable that a small number of schools with 11,000+ online headcount are excluded from Figure 1. The most likely candidates are a handful of large, public universities that do not report online headcount, but do in fact have a large total. There may also be a small number of private universities, like Liberty, “below the radar”. There is no evidence that any school accredited by the Distance Education & Training Council, that is also Title IV eligible, currently has more than 11,000 unique online students.
Based on Eduventures and Sloan-C data, it is unlikely that there are more than an additional ten schools in the U.S. with current online headcounts in excess of 11,000.
On this basis, Liberty University has one of the largest online headcounts among degree-granting schools in the country. A handful of large for-profit schools represent Liberty’s immediate peers in terms of online headcount, and all schools with reported larger headcounts. Based on data available to Eduventures, Liberty University would appear to have the largest online headcount of any U.S. non-profit school. Even with the proviso that a small number of non-profit schools may do have a larger online headcount, it is certain that Liberty has one of the largest online headcounts among degree-granting, non-profit schools in the country.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
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