Over three-quarters of both men and women enrolled in distance education programs are studying part-time.  For both men and women, as age increases, the percentage attending part-time increases.  There is a huge jump for both sexes between students that are 24 years old and younger and the next reporting category (ages 25-34) in percentage attending part-time – from 56% to 80%.  While it is not new information that older students are more likely to study part-time, it is revealing that over half of these distance education students under age 25 are also engaged in part-time study.

The distribution of male and female distance education students across age groups is very similar.  Over one-third of both men and women are in the 25-34-age range and two-thirds are in the 25-44-age range.  In the mixed group, which tends to be younger, the distribution of male and female students across age groups is also similar.  Nearly half are the age of traditional college students and three quarters are 35 years or younger.  Dissimilarities between men and women emerge in the population of onsite students that take no distance education courses.  While this group is the youngest overall, the women tend to be older than the men.

The first Report to Congress on the Distance Education Demonstration Program (January 2001) notes that, with only a few exceptions, smaller percentages of minorities were enrolled in participating institutions’ distance education programs than in their onsite programs and this was true as well of students taking a mix of onsite and distance education courses.  The data for 2000-01 show a similar pattern when examined institution by institution across the three categories.  To understand what this may mean, two things need to be taken into consideration.  One is the fact that there is a much higher percentage of “race/ethnicity unknown” in the data reported for students in distance education programs than for those in mixed and onsite programs.  Another is implicit in the results of research done by UMUC, which looked at trends over time for the participation of minorities in their distance education programs and in their online courses and concluded that the minority participation is increasing at a rate similar to participation by majority students.  A snapshot at a particular point in time cannot capture this kind of information.  UMUC has more distance education students by far than any of the other initial participants, so this research is extremely significant.