Online Learning Demand Is Exploding — And Colleges Are Quietly Failing The Students Who Sign Up

I saw the Forbes headline earlier this week — Online Learning’s Moment: How Colleges Struggle To Meet Rising Demand — and I had to stop scrolling. Because I know at least four people right now who are either enrolled in, or seriously considering, an online degree or certificate program. And if what that piece is describing is accurate, some of them are walking into a genuine mess without realising it.

So I spent a few hours reading through the full report and a handful of supporting studies. Here’s what the online learning demand colleges failing students story actually looks like — stripped of the jargon.

The Numbers Behind the Online Learning Demand Surge

Let’s start with the scale of what’s happening. According to data referenced in the Forbes investigation and backed by World Bank education tracking, global online higher education enrollment has grown by more than 300% between 2020 and 2025. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a structural shift.

Post-pandemic, universities saw an opening. Suddenly they could take students from anywhere — not just the city or country where their campus sits. And they did. Enrollment numbers climbed fast. Some institutions reportedly doubled their online student body in under two years.

But here’s where it gets uncomfortable. The support systems — tutors, academic advisors, technical help desks, course designers — did not double. In many cases, they barely grew at all.

“Colleges are essentially selling seats on a plane that doesn’t have enough crew to run a safe flight.” — paraphrased from an education policy researcher quoted in the Forbes piece

The result? Students are paying full price — sometimes €8,000 to €25,000 for a full online degree — for an experience that is, in practice, a folder of pre-recorded videos and an email address that responds slowly.

Why the Online Learning Demand Is Outpacing What Institutions Can Deliver

There’s a structural reason this keeps happening, and it’s not malicious — it’s just how university budgets work. When a new student enrolls online, the revenue arrives immediately. The cost of serving that student — hiring advisors, building better courses, investing in live support — comes later, and often gets deprioritised.

To handle the surge in numbers, many universities are quietly outsourcing course delivery to Online Program Management companies — called OPMs. These are private businesses that build, host, and sometimes teach the courses on behalf of the university. The university lends its brand name. The OPM takes a cut — sometimes 50 to 60% of tuition revenue.

Students often have no idea this is happening. They think they’re getting a course designed and delivered by the university on the certificate. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they’re getting a white-labeled product built by a company most people have never heard of.

This isn’t universally bad — some OPMs do excellent work. But it does mean the quality is wildly inconsistent, and there’s almost no transparent way for a prospective student to find out which situation they’re walking into.

The Completion Rate Crisis Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here’s the stat that genuinely shocked me. According to data compiled by MIT OpenCourseWare researchers and cited in multiple 2025 education journals, the average completion rate for open online courses sits around 12 to 13%. That means roughly 87 out of every 100 people who enroll never finish.

Even for paid university-backed online programs — where students have real financial skin in the game — completion rates rarely exceed 50 to 55% globally.

Universities know these numbers. They don’t advertise them.

And the reasons students drop out aren’t lazy stereotypes about people lacking discipline. The Forbes piece specifically surveyed online students who left programs, and the top reasons were: lack of timely instructor feedback, technical problems with the platform, and feeling completely isolated — no community, no sense that anyone noticed whether they showed up or not.

What You Should Actually Do Before Enrolling Anywhere

Look, I’m not saying don’t pursue online learning. The opportunity is real and the flexibility is genuinely life-changing for people who couldn’t otherwise access education. But the online learning demand surge has created a market where not all programs are equal — and institutions have limited incentive to be transparent about quality differences.

So here are four things I’d check before paying anything:

Ask who actually built and delivers the course. Email the admissions office and ask directly: “Is this program managed by a third-party OPM, and if so, which one?” If they won’t tell you, that’s information too.

And find the instructor online before you enroll. Do they have a real professional presence? Have they published, presented, or worked in the field recently? A quick 10-minute search tells you more than any marketing brochure.

Check whether there’s a community — not just a discussion board that looks like it was last active in 2023, but an actual active space where students interact. No community usually means high dropout and low accountability.

Finally, confirm the refund window in writing. Many institutions bury the policy. A 7-day refund window on a course that takes 3 weeks to get started is functionally useless.

The Online Learning Demand Gap Is Actually an Opportunity — If You Know Where to Look

Here's the part that doesn't make many headlines. The failure of traditional universities to meet online learning demand is pushing serious investment into alternatives. Cohort-based platforms, employer-backed micro-credentials, and hybrid models are growing fast — and some of them have dramatically better outcomes.

Companies like SAP, Google, IBM, and Unilever have all launched or expanded their own credential programs in the past 18 months. These aren't marketing stunts. They're responses to a genuine skills gap — and increasingly, hiring managers at those companies treat their own certificates as seriously as a university diploma for specific roles.

This matters. Because it means the question is no longer just "do I get a degree?" It's "which credential actually moves the needle for what I want to do next?" And that's a much smarter question to be asking in 2026 than it was five years ago.

The demand for online learning isn't going anywhere. But the quality gap between institutions — and between platform types — is wider than most people realise. Go in with your eyes open, check the things most people don't bother checking, and you'll be in a completely different position than the 87 people out of 100 who don't finish what they started.

Last updated: July 05, 2026