If I asked you to guess the top two factors that drove the growth of online education in the last couple years, what would you say?

Surely the recession would be one. Bad economic times mean higher campus and online education enrollments - the lack of good jobs encourages more people to seek education and those currently employed want to improve their chances for advancement by advancing their education. The Sloan Consortium even has the data to back this up:

• 54% of colleges and universities reported that the economic downturn has increased demand for existing face-to-face courses.
• 66% of institutions reported increased demand for new courses and programs.
• 73% saw increased demand for existing online courses and programs.

Sloan’s study, “Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009″ is the seventh annual report on the state of online learning in U.S. higher education. It found that enrollment in online learning jumped 17% - that’s 4.6 million students or 1 in 4 college students taking at least one online course. In comparison, overall higher education grew just 1.2%.

So what about the other major factor that has influenced the growth of online degree programs?

The swine flu!

I never would have thought of that! It turns out last year’s outbreak prompted many schools to develop a game plan in case of an outbreak on campus. The survey found that two thirds of schools have formal plans in place and substituting online courses for face-to-face classes is a component of 67% of those plans.