Despite predictions that the growth of online education would begin to level off, colleges reported the highest-ever annual increase in online enrollmentamore than 21 percentalast year, according to aAreport on an annual survey of 2,600 higher-education institutions from the Sloan Consortium and the Babson Survey Research Group.

In fall 2009, collegesaincluding public, nonprofit private, and for-profit private institutionsareported that one million more students were enrolled in at least one Web-based course, bringing the total number of online students to 5.6 million. That unexpected increaseawhich topped the previous year'sA17-percent riseamay have been helped by higher demand for education in a rocky economy and an uptick in the number of colleges adopting online courses.

Although the survey found sustained interest in online courses across all sectors, there was a spike in the number of for-profit institutionsaa 20-percent increase over last yearathat said online education is critical to their long-term strategies. However, more public colleges thanA private for-profitsa74.9 percent versus 60.5 percentasay it's part of their long-term plans.

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