Online university education is on the rise, and studies indicate a higher enrollment rate among the younger generation

The annual report prepared by the American Education Dynamics Foundation on the requirements and preferences of university students online today indicated that university students are recruited via the Internet to a large extent.

In the survey that was conducted, eighty percent reported that they are now working in jobs, fifty-nine percent full-time and twenty-one percent part-time.

Nearly twenty percent of online college students will enroll in majors focused on health and medicine, with health and medicine now overtaking computer engineering and information technology as a field of study, after enrollment in computer engineering and information technology fell by ten points compared to last year’s survey, but now the most students are enrolled in business administration, followed by health, nursing, medicine, computer engineering and information technology. Together, these three fields make up nearly sixty percent of online undergraduate students.

The survey showed that online graduate students are more likely to stay in their current field of work than undergraduates in an online bachelor’s degree. In addition, graduate students are more likely to enroll in a program directly related to their current job.

According to the study, the most important factor in decision-making for online university students is the cost of tuition and fees, and the vast majority of students live in their countries. Of online graduate students are single.

Muhammad Rizkallah, Director of Curriculum Development at the University of the People, pointed out that the number of students studying online around the world has jumped to forty million students, a number that is rising year after year, for several reasons, the most important of which is “technological development is fast and all sectors are now dependent on the Internet, as well as education accompanies this development, and the other reason, is that the availability of Internet networks and the ability to build an educational curriculum via the Internet, helped increase demand so there is no need to travel or attend classes, as in the past even the university library is now on the Internet, and it includes many times more The traditional library can contain.

About one hundred and twenty thousand students are now studying at the American University of the People from different countries of the world, and there is a department for teaching business administration in the Arabic language because language is also not a barrier in the world of the Internet.

Student Tariq Muhammad, studying at the university, “There is no need to travel anymore, and from my home I study business administration, and within two years I will obtain a university degree, and the prices in electronic universities are much lower, and the most important thing is to communicate with students and professors from many countries, which helps me to make relationships that may benefit me in the future when looking for work.

When evaluating the goals behind the study, more than half of them enroll mainly to start a new career, with this divided almost equally between starting a new career that is more in line with their interests and starting a new career to earn more money. This is followed by the motivation to increase their salary in their current occupation and the motivation to get their first professional job.

Caroline Levander, vice president of global and digital strategy at Rice University in Houston, USA, said during a symposium on the future of online learning, “When the pandemic hit, it was a provocation, in addition to a demand for innovation.. While the changes were difficult for many, it was Faculty at Rice University and elsewhere have embraced the new opportunities offered by online learning.”

The World Economic Forum, in turn, prepared a study on online education, which came out with results indicating that the United States topped the ranking, with more than seventeen million enrolled in online education, followed by India with thirteen million, and there was a large gap separating these two countries from Mexico by about five millions, with Brazil and China completing the top five.

In numbers, online college and university enrollment is nearly three million students annually, nearly fifteen percent of all college learners in the United States alone. The reasons, as stated in the study, for the increase in enrollment in universities and colleges via the Internet is to help them navigate jobs in the ever-changing labor market. The highest growth rate of new online learners came from emerging economies i.e. developing countries. The report summarized this approach to education as “an important tool to help bridge the widening global skills gap.”

“The beautiful thing about online education is that it can virtually transcend geographic borders and online learning models play an important role in expanding access,” explains Don Kilburn, who works as a consultant for the University of Massachusetts . Adding to the potential added benefit of reducing the financial burden on students and part of the learning potential is affordability.”

“Part of meeting the needs of those who choose to attend classes online means understanding why they do so and how their needs differ from those who choose traditional in-person options,” said Nancy Gonzalez, executive vice president and provost at ASU. At the University of Arizona, its online programs will reach nearly 90,000 students this year.”

Traditional universities are now learning to compete with e-learning is not feasible, and for this reason they began to adopt education via the Internet and within a few years, university classes will witness a decrease in numbers, in exchange for an increase in the number of students studying remotely.

The relationship will be complementary, so that universities will try to adopt both methods to meet the demand of the new generation that is pushing for university education via the Internet. The development in communications is rapid, and social networking applications have transformed the global mood, which instead of relying on newspapers, papers, and books, tends to read from blackboards, and even writing jobs or studies, all of which are now done digitally.