Where do distance learners live?

A recent news story in The Shetland Times details the prolific educational career of a distance learner who has been studying with the same home study course provider for almost 30 years. The report is intriguing and very positive for the promotion of distance learning and how it can help people. Yet, the fact that the gentleman in question is one of just over 17,000 people who live on Mainland Shetland led me to the idea for this article - exactly where do most distance learners live?

I thought that such a question was important because, like myself, I expect that any other readers from mainland Scotland, England or Wales (I realize I am making a massive presumption here) would probably come to the conclusion that the gentleman in question lives in such an isolated area that there is probably not a whole lot else to do - let alone any further education opportunities. Yet, with the growth in popularity of distance learning courses over the last couple of years, I couldn't believe that there would really be as much difference in the amount of enrolments from those in isolated areas as those in cities.

Research published at kaplanopenlearning.org shows the distribution of their distance learning students, and the data is quite interesting. Whilst the areas that are perhaps the most isolated seem to be home to their lowest percentage of distance learners, most of those enrolled at Kaplan live in fairly urban regions.

Looking at the map, Scotland is the biggest area included in this data, and enters in the middle percentile making up 5 percent of their student body. This is intriguing, as we can assume from our knowledge of the aforementioned Shetland Times article there are no doubt many areas within the country that are fairly isolated, as well as several highly populated urban areas such as Glasgow and Edinburgh. Even more intriguingly, the two lowest regions with just 1 percent of students each, namely Wales and Northern Ireland, are also areas with a similar sprawl of urban and rural areas.

Consequently, I can't help coming to the conclusion that language and culture may have quite a big effect on a student's decision to apply for a distance learning course. This is reinforced by the areas of the country where Kaplan is most popular, i.e. London with 22 percent and East of England with 15 percent. These areas are as close to the UK headquarters of Kaplan as can be, as well as having a very rich amount of opportunity for higher education. It seems that region is still important in regards to distance learning, but today distance students are as likely to come from cities as they are from rural areas.

Sarah Maple is writing for Kaplan UK about online distance learning.