CVC Distance Education Catalog Update 2012

TechEDge, Written by Sandoval Chagoya Thursday, 13 December 2012
California Virtual Campus Link
After its 2012 update the California Virtual Campus Distance Education Catalog now includes 16,129 courses and 1,247 degree-granting programs available online from 167 schools of higher education. These numbers represent a 15 percent decrease in courses and a 15 percent increase in degree programs available online to California's students.
The 2012 update occured between mid-August and mid-October. Information was gathered from public websites in the same manner that a student would look for this information. The CVC distance education catalog takes a catalog approach rather than a class-schedule approach to this information, so regardless of how many sessions a course might be offered in an academic term each unique course was counted only once. Whenever possible information for multiple, future academic terms was included when available.
Here is a list representing the difference in course offerings after the 2012 update when compared to the results of the 2011 update.

• Total course count after 2011 update: 18,979
• Total course count after 2012 update: 16,129
  • Difference: -2,750
  • Percentage: -15%

The California Community Colleges lost 1,977 online course offerings between the 2012 and 2011 updates, which accounts for 70 percent of the decrease in all courses in the catalog.

• CCC course count after 2011 update: 11,915
• CCC course count after update: 9,938
  • Difference: -1977
  • Percentage: -17%

Despite this decrease in course offerings, several colleges report that online enrollments—both raw count and percentage of all enrollments—continue to trend up significantly.
In addition, online academic programs leading to degrees increased 15 percent in 2012 compared to 2011.

• Total program count before update: 1,084
• Total program count after update: 1,247
  • Difference: +163
  • Percentage: +15%

The online, degree-granting programs in the CVC distance education catalog are listed here by degree type:

• Associate Degrees: 252
• Bachelors Degrees: 143
• Certificates: 574
• Degree Minors: 14
• Masters Degrees: 241
• Doctorates: 21
• Others: 23

As illustrated in the following list, both the California Community Colleges and the California State University increased their program offerings in 2012 compared to 2011:

• CCC program count before update: 365
• CCC program count after update: 425

• CSU program count before update: 126
• CSU program count after update: 185

• UC program count before update: 160
• UC program count before update: 121

• Independents program count before update: 433
• Independents program count after update:516

As these numbers show, there are significant opportunities in California higher education for students to supplement their traditional learning with online courses or even to follow a degree path that is offered entirely at a distance.<>

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Sandoval Chagoya is the TechEDge Managing Editor and a Project Manager for the
California Community Colleges Technology Center and the California Virtual Campus.