100 Essential E-Learning Statistics for 2022

Today’s educational landscape is going through a revolution unlike any we’ve ever seen before. The e-learning industry growth statistics aren’t showing any signs of slowing down, and the corporate e-learning sector is expected to grow by as much as $38 billion from 2020 to 2024. The largest EdTech companies such as Coursera are already valued at well over $1 billion, and they will be the driving force of the entire online education industry.

Through online learning, students can find MOOCs of their liking from any corner of the globe. Companies can save hundreds of millions in corporate training. And, universities no longer have to invest a quarter of their entire budget in large physical premises that host their lectures.

Online learning opens up new windows of opportunity for everyone, but it’s not always impeccable. Not all types of e-learning are showing growth, and some are even declining. Statistics on the self-paced e-learning market, for example, reveal a steep decline of 6.4% or more per year. That is despite both employees and students reporting self-paced instruction as one of the key motivators to use e-learning. In this decade, it’s likely that microlearning will rise to the top and fill in any holes left by declining numbers in the self-paced digital learning market.

Corporate E-Learning
Statistics

Corporations will be one of the biggest drivers of the e-learning industry during this decade, with companies spending increasingly larger percentages of their learning and development budgets on online learning. In this section, you will learn the key worldwide corporate e-learning statistics, together with the numbers behind digital learning success stories from global corporations such as IBM, Shell, and Airbus.

Coursera, an online education provider valued at well over $1 billion, is the enterprise choice of customers such as Adobe, Procter & Gamble, and L'Oreal. In 2019, they partnered with the Abu Dhabi School of Government to train 60,000 government employees in digital skills.

Forbes

The global corporate e-learning market size will be worth $50 billion by 2026. With an annual growth rate of 15% from 2020 to 2026, the corporate market will be one of the biggest drivers of the e-learning industry.

Business Wire

90% of corporations now use e-learning compared to just 4% in 1995.

KPMG, LinkedIn

68% of employees prefer when learning takes place at the workplace.

LinkedIn

KPMG

With corporate e-learning, IBM managers were able to learn five times more content at one-third of the cost. As a result, IBM saved $200 million, which accounted for around 30% of their previous training budget.

IBM

In some large organizations, up to 60% of total training costs are attributed solely to traveling costs.

KPMG

Employees' lack of time to dedicate towards learning is the #1 challenge facing talent development today.

LinkedIn

87% of millennials and 69% of non-millennials consider career development to be an important part of a job.

LinkedIn

By moving from physical classrooms to corporate e-learning tools, Dow Chemical saved $34 million and reduced their training course costs from $95 per learner to $11 per learner.

Belitsoft

On average, employees only have 24 minutes per week to spend on learning.

Josh Bersin

E-learning takes 40% to 60% less employee time than traditional learning.

Brandon Hall

Only 1% of the average workweek is dedicated to training and development.

elearningbrothers

42% of companies saw increased revenue after implementing e-learning.

SHIFT

E-learning motivators for employees are individual learning pace (95%) and no traveling (84%).

KPMG

KPMG

ABB, a Swiss-Swedish multinational corporation, uses e-learning for up to 80% of all employee training. From 2012 to 2015, they experienced a six-fold increase in supply chain management online training.

KPMG

Using corporate e-learning results in an increase of 18% in employee engagement.

SHIFT

Employees deliver $30 of increased productivity for every $1 invested in e-learning.

SHIFT

56% of employees would spend more time learning if their managers offered them courses.

LinkedIn

On average, corporations with 10,000 or more employees invest 50% of their L&D budgets into e-learning. Companies with only 200 to 1,000 employees, on the other hand, only invest around 37%.

LinkedIn

Shell, one of the largest oil companies in the world, has used e-learning to reduce the cost of their priciest training programs by 90%, deliver more than 12,000 virtual lessons, and save over $200 million.

Computer Weekly

82% of organizations conduct some of their compliance training online.

TRG Mag

58% of employees prefer self-paced learning over instructor-led learning.

LinkedIn

28% of organizations conduct absolutely all of their compliance training online.

TRG Mag

Airbus, the world's largest airliner manufacturer as of 2019, employs 100,000 staff members across 35 countries. Through establishing an e-learning library with more than 6,900 pieces of content, Airbus managed to cut down training costs by millions of dollars. In addition to cost savings, the change had a positive effect on employee engagement and satisfaction levels.

Computer Weekly

94% of employees say that they would be more willing to stay in those corporations that prioritize and invest into employee career development.

LinkedIn

Global E-Learning Industry
Statistics

The global online learning industry is sporting massive annual growth of 19% or more per year, and it’s set to be a $243 billion industry within two years. The United States is still at the forefront of the industry in terms of market size, but other regions such as Europe, Latin America, and Asia are also starting to become increasingly prevalent players in the industry.

By 2022, the global e-learning industry is projected to surpass $243 billion.

Statista

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality technologies will be one of the biggest innovators of the industry during this decade.

Research & Markets

By 2026, the global e-learning industry is projected to reach $336.98 billion.

MarketResearch.com

Mobile learning (m-learning) is one of the fastest growing markets in e-learning, with an annual growth of 23%.

Technavio

Digital learning is the quickest growing market in the education industry, with a whopping 900% growth since 2000.

KPMG

The global Learning Management System (LMS) market is expected to reach $29 billion by 2026, with annual growth of 19.1%.

Fortune BI

United States of America

Educational institutions and corporations in the U.S continue to lead the online learning industry.

Online student enrollment in the U.S has increased for 14 years in a row, while overall college enrollment in the U.S has been declining over the last 10 years.

Taylor & Francis

Between 2017 and 2022, the e-learning market in the U.S. will have increased by $6.22 billion.

Technavio

59% of the U.S. market share comes from content-related e-learning products.

Technavio

63% of American high school students use digital learning tools daily.

Statista

45% of American elementary school students use digital learning tools daily.

Statista

64% of American middle school students use digital learning tools on a daily basis.

Statista

The decline in college enrollment in the U.S. is expected to become worse in the late 2020s partly due to the rising costs of studies and college degrees being seen as less valuable.

Taylor & Francis

99% of students taking U.S online degree programs are physically located in the U.S.

Taylor & Francis

More than 30% of American students enroll in at least one online course.

Taylor & Francis

20% of American online college students use solely their phones or tablets to complete all of their course-related activities.

Statista

39% of American undergraduate students consider online college-level education to be superior to classroom learning.

Statista

52% of American graduate students considered online college-level education to be better than classroom learning.

Statista

European Union

Europe is starting to embrace digital learning, with countries such as Germany and France taking center stage.

Venture capital investments into European EdTech companies increased from $70 million in 2014 to $379 million in 2018 - an increase of more than 540%.

Statista

Germany has the highest e-learning market share in Europe.

Business Wire

60% of kindergartens in Estonia offer IT-based learning activities. Estonia is Europe’s top nation in the latest PISA education survey.

e-estonia

Germany's e-learning market is growing 8.5% annually, while the German economy is growing at around 1.9%.

Learning Insights

The average e-learning company in Europe has 25 employees and yearly turnover of €3 million.

Learning Insights

The overall mission of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), consisting of 48 countries, is for digital learning to enhance traditional higher education, rather than to replace it.

EUA

Online Course & MOOC
Statistics

The massive open online course (MOOC) enrollment statistics show unprecedented growth of 29% per year starting from 2020 and today nearly all top U.S universities already offer online courses. Recent data also reveals that the vast majority of online course users are highly educated with a Bachelor’s degree or higher.

An annual growth rate of 29% is projected for the global MOOC market from 2020 to 2025. This makes it the quickest growing market in education.

Mordor

73% of students are still unaware of MOOCs.

eLearningIndustry

By 2025, the global MOOC market size is expected to reach $21.4 billion.

Mordor

22 of the top 25 U.S universities now offer online courses for free.

Mordor

North America makes up 29.4% of the global MOOC market.

MarketWatch

In 2019, the global MOOC market was valued at $5.16 billion.

Mordor

edX is a non-profit MOOC platform created by Harvard and MIT in 2012. With 20 million users, 70 million enrollments and a high number of top-tier university partners, they have become one of the key players in the MOOC market.

edX

67% of students use mobile devices to finish online course tasks.

Learning House

Asia-Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing market for MOOCs from 2020 to 2025.

Brandon Hall

More than half of MOOC learners are educated at a degree level or above.

UK Gov

3.1% of students ages 5 through 17 took school-related online courses in 2016.

NCES

In the UK, MOOC completion rates are 40% for those who pass the first module.

UK Gov

87% of students use mobile devices to search for new online programs.

Learning House

79% of MOOC learners have a Bachelor's degree or higher.

UK Gov

Online courses save educational institutions from $12 to $66< per credit hour. That is a difference of 3% to 50% of the average credit hour costs.

ASU

44% of learners who use MOOCs have a postgraduate degree.

UK Gov

There are 50 MOOC-based fully online Master's degrees available today.

Class Central

Overall MOOC completion rates in the UK are less than 13%.

UK Gov

Udemy is a MOOC platform launched in 2010. It has 30 million students, more than 100,000 courses, and a number of high-value business customers such as Pinterest and booking.com.

Udemy

Online Education
Statistics

The data on online education shows worldwide growth. The most recent statistics show that most K-12, undergraduate and graduate students are in favor of using e-learning in schools. Educational institutions see digital learning as a way to rejuvenate the stagnant numbers of student enrollment, and students see e-learning in schools as favorable alternative to traditional classrooms.

E-learning can increase student retention rates by 25% to 60%.

Forbes

10 of the largest educational institutions in the world enroll as much as 20% of all online students.

EdSurge

57% of students are assigned personal mobile devices for school use.

Tomorrow

K-12
Students

The new generation of schoolchildren is not only digitally adept, but also highly motivated to use online learning tools.

The number of scientific articles researching K-12 online learning is growing steadily. Rural schools are often the focus point of research, as rural areas could stand to benefit the most from successful online learning practices.

Academia

Annual growth of 12% is projected for the global market size of K-12 online tutoring from 2020 to 2025.

IndustryARC

45% of elementary school students said that their favorite learning methods are playing digital learning games and watching online videos.

EdSurge

Annual growth of 7.5% is estimated for the global online K-8 education market through 2023.

EdSurge

13% of grade 6-12 students have trouble with doing homework due to lacking out of school Internet access.

Tomorrow

48% of K-12 students have online classes available to them.

Tomorrow

Using technology for collaboration is the favorite learning method for 50% of elementary school students.

Tomorrow

46% of females and 62% of male high school students say that they are interested in learning programming.

Tomorrow

The most common online learning materials used in K-12 classrooms are online educational videos, apps, and software.

Statista

61% of K-12 students are interested in using mobile apps for learning.

Tomorrow

50% of K-12 teachers take professional online training classes.

Tomorrow

72% of K-12 students use cloud-based educational collaboration tools.

Tomorrow

52% of K-12 students consider online tutoring to be part of an ideal learning experience.

Tomorrow

Undergraduate Students

While the total number of undergraduate students has declined since 2010, the number of online students has been growing.

In a study involving 674 undergraduate and graduate students at Midwestern University, it was found that first-time students in e-learning courses may be substantially worse at effective learning than those students who are already experienced.

JISE

Overall post-secondary student enrollment is declining 1% to 2% annually. The number of students taking some or all of their courses online is growing 5% annually.

ASU

46.4% of undergraduate students taking entirely online degrees are studying either Business (17%), Computer Science (16.1%), or Health (13%).

NCES

The percentage of undergraduate students taking one or more online classes has risen from 15.6% in 2004 to 43.1% in 2016.

NCES

More than half of all nursing and criminal justice students pursue their master’s degrees either fully or partly online.

EdSurge

24.9% of undergraduate students taking entirely online degrees are aged 30 or older.

NCES

The percentage of undergraduate students taking entirely online degree programs has risen from 3.8% in 2008 to 10.8% in 2016.

NCES

More than 3 million students are now studying higher education fully online.

EdSurge

Graduate
Students

The feedback from graduate students is one of the most valuable sources of data for any educational organization.

37 postgraduate students from a Russel Group University in the UK participated in a distance learning study. The students met with a number of administrative and practical barriers, and it was found that university support is crucial for the success of a distance learning program.

Taylor & Francis