Data needed to determine whether online education eliminates academic jobs

“How many good jobs in education have been created by the growth in online learning?” asks Joshua Kim, who notes that the popular assumption that online learning kills jobs may be misleading. Kim notes that from 2002 to 2014, the number of students who took at least one online course rose from 1.6 million to 5.8 million, with a large proportion of these students concentrated in non-profit institutions. “If anything, I’ve seen online learning offer more opportunities for teaching gigs for all higher ed teachers,” Kim argues, stating that many schools tend to draw their online faculty from the same pool of academics as their residential programs. Yet ultimately, Kim argues that data on the jobs associated with online education need to be published before one can determine the impact of online learning on academic jobs. Inside Higher Ed