Trends: 2007 Archive

The UCEA staff periodically highlights a news story of particular interest to our association membership that could point to an important trend. These appear in the right side column of our home page when we first publish these items, and then are compiled in this Trends section for future reference. Links to online reports and articles are provided as a courtesy to our visitors. These links may change as organizations reorganize their website or archive items. For more summaries of news of interest to members please visit our In The News section.

Gap between Male and Female Enrollments Is Expected to Increase

The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics released its latest higher education enrollment projections, "projections of Education Statistics to 2016." From 2005 to 2016, total enrollment is expected to rise 17 percent, to 20.4 million, with the fastest growth among women and members of minority groups. Nearly 60 percent of enrollments are expected to be women and more than a third will be members of minority groups. Enrollment of women will increase 22 percent by 2016, compared to a 10-percent increase for men. Enrollment of full-time students will rise 23 percent from 2005 to 2016, and the number of part-timers will edge up 6 percent.

See the full report at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008060

U.S. Government Accountability Office Releases Report on College Costs and Enrollment

The report, "Higher Education: Tuition Continues to Rise, but Patterns Vary by Institution Type, Enrollment, and Educational Expenditures" was compiled at the request of Congress and addresses trends in enrollment, tuition and fees, and institutional expenditures on education. More students are enrolling in college than ever before, and an increasingly larger percentage of all students are minorities. Between the 2000-2001 and 2005-2006 school years, increases in average tuition and fees were matched or exceeded by increases in average institutional spending on education at private institutions, but not at public institutions.

Access the report at http://edlabor.house.gov/documentation/20071220GAOReport.pdf (PDF)

MIT Announces Completion of OpenCourseWare Project

MIT recently announced the completion of its OpenCourseWare project, a pioneering effort launched in 2002 to digitize classroom material for all of MIT's 1,800 academic courses. The course material is available for free online for anyone to use. The recently formed OCW Consortium has 160 member institutions creating and sharing their own course materials sites based on MIT's model.

Online Learning

Almost 3.5 million students were enrolled in online courses during the fall of 2006 according to the 2007 Sloan Consortium Survey of Online Learning. The survey found that over the past five years enrollment in online education has gone up by an annual average of 21.5 percent.

Learn more

Did you know?

The rate at which 25-29 year-olds are completing bachelor's degrees has remained essentially flat since 1996, hovering between 27 and 29 percent for the past decade.

The Condition of Education 2007, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (PDF).

Baccalaureate Degree Completion Programs

70 percent of the CE units in private universities and 41 percent in public institutions offer baccalaureate degree completion programs according to the UCEA 2006 Management Survey findings.

Learn more.

Lifelong Learning Trends

The ninth edition of UCEA's most popular publication is available now.

Learn more.