More students than ever are enrolled fully online at colleges in other states, according to the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA). Its 11th annual data report, announced October 5, 2026, counted 1,722,640 students from SARA member states who attended an out-of-state SARA-participating institution exclusively through distance education in fall 2025. For administrators running online and hybrid learning programs, and for engineering and computing units considering an online version of an accredited degree, the NC-SARA count, federal enrollment data and ABET's accreditation policy together describe where things stand.

What NC-SARA counted

The report, titled Technical Report for Fall 2025 Exclusively Distance Education Enrollment and 2025 Out-of-State Learning Placements, draws on data from more than 2,400 SARA-participating institutions. Of those institutions, 48.5 percent are public, 43.4 percent are private nonprofit and 7.7 percent are private for-profit. As of 2025, SARA membership covered 49 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The fall 2025 total is the highest NC-SARA has recorded, above the fall 2024 figure of 1,661,689 and above the previous peak in 2020. NC-SARA's data reports page puts the increase from fall 2024 at about 4 percent.

The report also tracks out-of-state learning placements, which reached 546,869 in 2025. That was up 15.5 percent from 2024, following a 9.7 percent rise the year before. Health care accounted for 64 percent of placements, education for 7.8 percent and business for 4.2 percent. NC-SARA president Marianne Boeke described fall 2025 as a record year and tied it to the role online study plays in letting institutions serve students across state lines.

What federal data show

NC-SARA's count covers only students crossing state lines to SARA institutions. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) measures online enrollment more broadly through its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). A provisional NCES table of 12-month unduplicated headcount at Title IV institutions for July 2024 through June 2025 reports:

  • 6,206,019 undergraduates enrolled exclusively in distance education, out of 22,517,853 (about 28 percent);
  • 8,192,351 undergraduates taking some, but not all, of their courses at a distance (about 36 percent);
  • 1,829,746 graduate students enrolled exclusively at a distance, out of 4,114,785 (about 44 percent).

The percentages above are calculated from the NCES counts, since the table reports headcounts only. Public institutions enrolled the largest number of exclusively online undergraduates (4,311,654). At private for-profit institutions, about 42 percent of undergraduates were fully online (688,634 of 1,639,527).

The two data sets measure different things. IPEDS counts every student enrolled at a Title IV institution over a 12-month period, wherever they live. NC-SARA counts fall students studying out of state at participating institutions. The figures are not interchangeable and should not be added together.

How ABET treats online delivery

ABET, which accredits programs in applied and natural science, computing, engineering and engineering technology, says on its program search page that it evaluates programs taught on site, online or through a combination, and that all of them are held to the same criteria whatever the delivery method. ABET labels a program 100 percent online when a student can meet every graduation requirement while receiving all course content online. The same page notes that what counts as online is not always well defined and that the online share of a program changes often.

The 2026-2027 Accreditation Policy and Procedure Manual, effective for reviews in the current cycle, sets out how that plays out in a review:

  • Section I.D.1.f requires the Self-Study Report to describe every method of program delivery, every possible path to completing the degree and any remote offerings.
  • Section I.E.4.a.(5)(c) lists a program with multiple sites or a nontraditional delivery method among the cases in which the size of the review team or the length of the on-site visit may be adjusted.
  • Section I.F.1.b.(2) names a change in the methods or venues of program delivery among the changes an institution reports to ABET through a Notification of Program Changes during the accreditation period.
  • The glossary defines an online program as one in which students and instructors communicate by computer for all coursework, and a hybrid program as one delivered through more than one modality or at different physical sites.

ABET directs questions about accrediting online programs to its accreditation department.

What the numbers leave out

None of these sources reports outcomes for online students, such as completion, licensure exam results or employment. NC-SARA's announcement does not break enrollment down by field of study or credential level, and the NCES figures are provisional. Program leaders planning online and hybrid learning options in accredited disciplines can find state detail in NC-SARA's interactive data dashboards and the documentation rules in ABET's manual.

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