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System office presents statewide online-enrollment analysis, warns of data limitations
Summary
North Dakota University System staff presented a statewide, fall-term snapshot of online enrollment and warned the committee that data definitions and multiple address/residency fields limit precise classification of "online" and "out-of-state" students.
Jennifer Weber, director of institutional research and chief analytics officer for the North Dakota University System, told the Appropriations - Education and Environment Division that the system office produced a high-level, statewide snapshot of online enrollment but cautioned about definitional and data limitations.
Weber said the snapshot used fall-term data and that the system counted 44,505 students in that term. Of those, more than 26,000 students had taken at least one online course in their career; about 21,000 students had a single term during which every course was online; and around 3,800 students were "career online only" — students who had attended more than one term and every term they attended was only online. Weber summarized the data limitations up front: "there's a lot of data and a lot of limitations to the data."
Weber explained how definitions affected counts. Dual-credit high school students who take an online college course can be classified as online-only for a term if their enrollment record meets the criteria; the committee was directed to a pie chart in the materials showing that 9.5% of students in a specific category fell under an early-entry (dual-credit) admit code. For the career-online-only group, Weber reported those students accounted for roughly 27,000 credits in the fall term, which represented about 5% of census-term credits. She said 53% of the career-online-only credits were from students identified as out-of-state and 44% from North Dakota residents, with the remainder in other categories.
Weber told the committee that identifying out-of-state students is complicated because different fields could be used (origin state, mailing address, residency status) and the student information system contains multiple address fields; that complicates work to attribute students to reciprocity agreements or neighboring-state populations. Committee members asked for the high-level statewide numbers rather than institution-by-institution breakdowns; Weber said the system could produce more detailed analyses but that methodology choices would invite institutional-level disagreement about classifications.
The committee heard the summary as an initial snapshot and did not direct a full institution-by-institution drill down at this meeting; members indicated they wanted a high‑level statewide figure first to guide whether further study is required.
