“The surge in online enrollment forced by the pandemic is leveling out. And the modality is now far more popular than it ever was during the 2010s, according to newly released federal data.

The Education Department published fall 2024 online enrollment data last month, covering more 5,615 institutions. The data shows nearly 54 percent of college students were taking at least some distance education courses during the fall of 2024, compared to about 53 percent in 2022 and 2023. Although online enrollment in 2024 was nowhere near as high as it was during the height of the pandemic—73.4 percent of college students took classes online in 2020—it’s still much higher than pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, just 36 percent of students were enrolled in some online courses.

“This data reinforces the idea that online is now strategic to institutional success,” Bruce Etter, senior director of research and consulting for the online and professional education association UPCEA, told Inside Higher Ed. “We were always heading in this direction. The pandemic didn’t create the trend, but it accelerated it and didn’t give ground back because learners decided that online education was still a high-quality experience with more flexibility.”

And while the latest federal data is already two years old, Etter said it’s still the most comprehensive data available and sets “baseline metrics” for the state of online education, which the federal Department of Education has tracked since 2012 through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The growing appetite for distance education that it highlights tracks with more recent data: A report UPCEA published last month shows that the modality has become a “pillar” of the current higher education ecosystem, with 80 percent of the 169 chief online learning officers it surveyed agreeing that leaders at their institution have made online learning a strategic direction.”

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