Students click with online education

Several Ozarks colleges are reporting dramatic increases in their online enrollment for the fall 2008 semester, and they all point to the same three factors: convenience, economic problems and high gas prices.

The most dramatic increase is at Ozarks Technical Community College, where 1,332 students are enrolled solely in online courses, up 52 percent from fall 2007. And that number doesn’t factor in students who combine online courses with courses on campus, according to Randy Humphrey, OTC’s vice president for academic affairs.

“When you add those students in, currently we have just more than 3,000 (online) students,” Humphrey said. That constitutes about 27 percent of OTC’s total student population of just more than 11,000.

“All of our students are commuters, and in many cases, they drive up to 50 miles each way to get to campus,” Humphrey said. “We’ve heard anecdotal comments that (fuel) cost has become too prohibitive.”

The veterans

Other local higher learning institutions have similar stories. Drury University students have registered for more than 7,600 credit hours online this semester, according to Director for Online Education Steve Hynds. That’s up 29 percent from last fall, and 15 percent more than the school expected.

“I started here four years ago, and we were producing 1,800 semester credit hours then, so we’re up fourfold from that,” Hynds said, adding that Drury’s online offerings have increased from about 40 different courses four years ago to 135 this semester – and the school has plans to increase to 160 in the spring.

Hynds said that while Drury’s increase in online credit hours could be partly due to fuel costs, those prices aren’t as much of a factor because most of Drury’s students live on campus. The bigger driver, he said, is convenience.

At Missouri State University, the growth at first glance doesn’t seem as dramatic – online enrollment is up less than 10 percent compared to fall 2007.

But Steve Robinette, director of MSU’s extended campus, noted that the school has been offering online courses since fall 1998; MSU has 64 undergraduate sections and 65 graduate sections this semester.

“We’ve not had as much growth this past year, but that’s mainly because it’s a larger, well-established program,” Robinette said.

MSU’s online offerings – called MissouriState Online – are supplemented by telecourses accessed on a dedicated Mediacom Cable channel and by courses offered totally on CD or DVD that can be viewed at MSU’s library.

Getting started

Evangel University is one of the newest local players in online education, but the school is quickly expanding its program, dubbed eUniversity. Total enrollment in the program for 2007 was 400 students, according to eUniversity Director Jeremy Harris; 2008 numbers haven’t yet been calculated.

For Evangel, Harris said, online classes help stop potential revenue losses during the summer months.

“(Students) would go home, take a course at a community college, and it may or may not transfer,” Harris said. “We’re offering these online courses especially in the summer so we can keep our students in the system. It’s a way for us to keep them in-house and for the students to still have that Evangel education no matter where they are.”

He said Evangel’s online offerings will include the school’s first hybrid online master’s degree program, in organizational leadership. That program should be up and running by fall 2009.

No matter the reasons behind the growing interest in online classes, all four schools expect it to continue.

“With high gas prices and the ability to have access to classes at a time that’s convenient for them, we’re going to continue to add classes,” MSU’s Robinette said. “We see continued growth, and we don’t see it slowing any time soon.”