Attrition rates for my required online courses at a CC are around 50%. That's typical for the institution.
No, the institution is not making efforts to reconsider its recruitment and advising practices. *hiss*
I'll second that hiss and wish a pox their way. Some lazy advisors dump students into internet courses so the courses "fit the schedule" and they can take an undeserved break. Uggers.
My CC developmental writing internet courses lose 50-60% (but the ones that do the work are a pleasure to teach).
My freshizzle comp. online courses lose 30-45%, depending on the class.
My freshizzle intro to lit online courses lose 25-35%.
Sophomore lit online courses tend to have the motivated students who have survived the "weeding" process, so the loss rate generally doesn't go below 25%.
Fishbrains, this is pretty consistent with what I see at our CC, too, in English. We've stopped offering the dev writing online because the guy who taught them got frustrated with hearing Admin b*tch about his 20-30% drops (well below the 50-60% you see, and below the transfer-level comp classes).
Like you, I think the 200 lit classes are peopled with students who "get" online, but also who "get" what it means/takes to be a college student. Of course, I adore teaching these online lits, because I can get through far more material (i.e., they won't read 40 pp. for class on Thursday in a F2F, so they end up dropping or failing, but they will read 100 pp. in preparation for discussion board questions once a week).
The other beauty of the lit classes and, in my cases, the interdisciplinary capstone online: I get tons of "foreign"* students who are generally really, really high performers. (* "Foreign" = students at other local and distant schools who need a humanities credit and take my classes for transfer back to their home schools.)
ETA: I totally agree with the hisses for advisors who "stick students in" an online class. I've raised hell more than once because I've had students with serious, serious learning disabilities enrolled; the response has been, "Well, s/he needed another class to be FT for financial aid. . . " Great: you blow my numbers by putting in people with nary a chance in hell of passing, so I can then defend my "poor student success rates" to my dean? Thanks so much.
The other major sticking point for me: letting students enroll who have close to/zero computer literacy. It's not at all rare for me to have several each term who don't know how to send an email, save a Word file, etc., let alone know how to use Blackboard. This should be changing soon, though (I hope).
