Student Growth
Current projections by Department of Education’s NCES are for Postsecondary enrollments to grow at 1.5% to 2.0% through 2020 (to about 21 million students), although the demographics point to a decrease in the 18-22 year old population through 2015, a greater percent of students will be enrolling. This forecast of slow growth assumes that we will not meet the Obama’s goal that by 2020 the US would have the highest college graduation rate in the world, 60%. Achieving that goal would add another 6 to 10 million students.
Time to complete programs
Students attending proprietary (also known as for-profit) higher education institutions tend to graduate faster than students at the not-for-profit or public ones, as shown in the following chart:
Adult learner market
38% of Postsecondary students are adult learners, and the For-Profit sector has drawn a greater proportion of these students than either the Publics or the Not-For-Profits. The 25-44 demographic is going to increase by 28% by Fall 2020 to 9.6M, and a higher percentage of them will attend Postsecondary institutions (from 9.8% to 10.8%). This translates to an increase of just over 300,000 students in this demographic in Fall of 2020 registrations.
Veteran (Photo credit: Keturah Stickann)
Educating Veterans
Current benefits of the GI bill are $1,473 per month for 36 months. Only 6% of veterans use the full amount; and the average veteran that uses these funds uses them for only 17 months. The market leader is U of Phoenix with 17,000 veteran-students (the 3rd and 4th have 4,000 students) and $133M last year in GI Bill revenues. The biggest caveat in targeting veterans is that 54% drop out of 4-year programs, and 63% drop out of 2-year programs.
Trending Career Preferences
The National Research Center for College and University Admissions (NRCCUA) conducts surveys of HS seniors, including career preferences. Below are the professions that moved up the most between the (college graduating) classes of 2013 and 2017:
Trending Occupations among HS Seniors
|
Occupation |
2017 rank |
Move up from 2013 |
|
Journalism |
39 |
20 |
|
Game Design and Developer |
12 |
19 |
|
Christian Services/Missionary |
35 |
18 |
|
Engineering (Computer) |
25 |
15 |
|
Marine Biology |
20 |
13 |
|
Fashion Merchandising |
19 |
10 |
|
Electronic Technician |
46 |
10 |
|
Software Developer |
55 |
10 |
|
Athletics/Coaching |
3 |
9 |
|
Veterinary Medicine |
10 |
9 |
|
Interior Design |
39 |
9 |
|
Travel/Tourism |
50 |
9 |
Trends on online learning
2.78M (13.5%) of postsecondary students enrolled in fully online programs 2010-11. 6.1M students (31%) took at least one online course in Fall 2010. Online enrollments are increasing at 5.5% annually compared to 1.4% of all postsecondary enrollments.
$18.5B was spent on online postsecondary education in 2010-11, and will grow by 11% per year for the next five years (unless prices decrease, which is a possibility given some of the new business models)
80% of online students live within 100 miles of the campus
Of 6.700 colleges, only 2.6% offer fully online learning programs
Almost ¾ of students who seek online degrees do so primarily for career, job, or employment reasons.
