– By Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Online education is growing by leaps and bounds, says an annual study by the Sloan Consortium based on research conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group. Some key points of the survey:

• At least one in six students is pursuing their higher education online.
• As many as 3.2 students took at least one online course in the fall 2005 term; the number was only 2.3 million in 2004.
• Of the total 17 million student population, 17 percent are off-campus learners.
• Larger schools with strengths of more than 15,000 are more likely to offer online courses; over 96 percent provide online offerings and 66 percent offer programs that can be completed without setting foot on campus.