Strength
of Agreement Increases with Size of School 
Chief Academic
Officers at larger schools are more likely to agree that online
education is critical to long-term strategy and schools with less
than 3,000 students enrolled are less likely to call this a key
strategy. Over 60% of academic leaders from schools with over
3,000 students agree with this statement, and virtually none disagree.
The results are different for smaller schools, however, where
the percentage agreeing is somewhat lower, and the percentage
disagreeing is considerably larger (15% to 20% compared to less
than 5% for the larger schools).
In
3 Years. All Institutions Expect Improvement in Online Learning
Less than
one quarter (23%) of the respondents at all schools surveyed expect
online learning to be inferior to face-to-face learning in three
years. Considerable variation remains by institutional type: 20.9%
of leaders at Private, nonprofit schools expect that face-to-face
learning will be superior, as compared to 37.5% of leaders at
Public sector institutions, and 58% at Private, for-profit institutions.
The percentage of leaders at Private schools expecting online
learning to be superior to face-to-face learning in three years
almost triples relative to the present - from 8.3% in Fall, 2003
to 20.9% in Fall, 2006 in the nonprofit sector and increases almost
five-fold - from 12% in Fall, 2002 to 58% in Fall, 2006 for the
for-profit sector. This is consistent with the current and three-year
projections from last year's survey.
