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June 19, 2009, 02:59 PM ET
The Online 'Attrition Puzzle': New Study Revisits Dropout Debate
Online students are much more likely to drop out of courses than their campus-based peers, according to a new study that confirms earlier research on what has been a longstanding concern in the distance-education industry.
The study, conducted by two researchers from East Carolina University, examined graduate-level online and campus programs in two subjects, business administration and communication sciences and disorders.
In the business-program sample, 43 percent of online students dropped out, compared with just 11 percent of campus students. In the communication program, 23.5 percent of the online students abandoned their studies while just 4 percent of students in bricks-and-mortar classes jumped ship.
The researchers cautioned that their study, published in the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, was limited to selected programs at one research university in the southeastern United States and “may not be representative of other institutions and programs.”
Online students who dropped out and those who stuck with their studies “did not differ significantly” when it came to academic variables the study tracked, such as undergraduate GPA. That lends credence to the possibility that outside factors may be affecting attrition.
“Students in the online cohorts were significantly older than those in the campus cohorts, so one might assume that the higher dropout rate is possibly a result of an older student population with greater family obligations and job responsibilities,” wrote the study’s authors, Belinda Patterson and Cheryl McFadden.
The bottom line: Plenty of “unanswered questions” remain about online student attrition.
Same goes for the future of distance education in the researchers’ home state. Growth of the University of North Carolina system’s online programs is “in peril” because of state budget cuts, reports The Triangle Business Journal. (Check out this 2007 Chronicle story for more on the system’s online-education ambitions.) The North Carolina situation is the latest case of budget troubles in the public online-education sector.—Marc Parry
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