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Key Takeaways Online higher education is growing because millions of students, especially working adults, need programs built around jobs, families and cost constraints.
The competitive question for colleges is increasingly not whether they offer online courses, but whether they can deliver flexibility.
The growth of online higher education in the United States is producing more than a new delivery format. It is creating a new set of institutional models, each designed around a different student population.
Western Governors University (WGU), founded in 1997, built its model around online, competency-based education and working adults. Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), which began offering online programs in 1995, has expanded its reach to more than 170,000 online learners. University of the People, founded in 2009, took a different approach, building a nonprofit, tuition-free online university.
At the same time, established institutions have created large digital extensions of their traditional campuses: Penn State launched World Campus in 1998, while Arizona State University has developed ASU Online into a major national platform. The emergence of these institutions points to a broader change in higher education: universities are increasingly being designed around the needs of specific student populations rather than a single traditional college experience.
One of the clearest markets these institutions are serving is the growing population of adult learners, students who are balancing education with work, family and existing career commitments, and therefore have very different expectations from a traditional college experience.
The 2026 CAEL-CollegeAPP study found a substantial pool of potential adult learners in the U.S., 27% of adults between 25 and 64, roughly 41.7 million people, said they plan to pursue education or training within the next two years. But their circumstances are different from those of traditional college-age students.
Cost was a concern for 81% of respondents, while 67% pointed to limited time, and 43% were primarily interested in developing skills they could apply to their current careers. For this population, higher education has to work around existing professional and personal commitments, helping explain the growing appeal of flexible and online learning models.
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