Using a dataset containing nearly 500,000 courses taken by over 40,000 community and technical college students in Washington State, this study examines the performance gap between online and face-to-face courses and how the size of that gap differs across student subgroups and academic subject areas. While all types of students in the study…

For two decades, state financing of higher education has been on the decline and the situation has exacerbated since the onset of the economic recession, where the US state systems have resorted to a substantial cut of funding for higher education. Faced with the challenges of limited resources for financial pressure and an increasing demand,…

Using a dataset containing nearly 500,000 courses taken by over 40,000 community and technical college students in Washington State, this study examines how well students adapt to the online environment in terms of their ability to persist and earn strong grades in online courses relative to their ability to do so in face-to-face courses. While…

This report investigates enrollment patterns and academic outcomes in online, hybrid, and face-to-face courses among students who enrolled in Washington State community and technical colleges in the fall of 2004. Students were tracked for nearly five years, until the spring of 2009. Results were similar to those found in a parallel study in…