Exploding E-Learning Market

Business Week proclaimed, "Web training is exploding."³¹ Below are some data describing the phenomenal growth of the e-learning market:

• U.S. training and education market

  W.R. Hambrecht: In 2000, $772 billion (9% of GNP) was spent on training and education. Of that, corporate training constituted $66 billion (8.5% of total spending), and continuing education, $12 billion (1.5% of total spending).³²

  ASTD: The percentage of organizations (outside the education sector) using the Internet for training grew from 3% in 1996 to 38% in 1999. For intranets, the growth rate was higher: from 3.5% to nearly 40%.³³

  U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray: In 2005, total spending for e-learning could exceed $46 billion.³⁴

• Enterprise e-learning market

  IDC and W.R. Hambrecht: In 1999, $550 million was spent by corporations. Their total expenditure is expected to grow to $7.1 billion in 2002, and $11.4 billion in 2003-representing a compound annual growth rate of 98%.³⁵ Electronically delivered training will constitute about 30.1% of all corporate training in 2001, up from 8.5% in 1998.³⁶

  Merrill Lynch: Expenditures by corporations in 2001 are forecasted at $1.2 billion, to grow to $7 billion by 2003.³⁷

  Forbes: "The potential for online learning could top $10 billion a year."³⁸

  CIO Magazine: E-learning will constitute at least half the projected $16.9 billion expenditure for business skills training by 2004, with a very high portion of that outsourced (annual growth rate of 13%).³⁹

  W.R. Hambrecht: Sixty percent of corporations will have an LMS deployed by 2003. The average implementation size tripled in three years, reaching 116,000 learners in 2000.⁴⁰

  Forbes: In 1988, there were approximately 400 corporate universities. These grew to 1,600 by mid-2000. In addition to employees, they now deliver information to customers, suppliers, and other partners-with many having become profit centers.⁴¹

  Mindlever.com (now Centra): Despite the availability of high-quality, third-party content from a wide range of sources, corporate purchasing of this "off-the-shelf" content constitutes only 53% of total spending for e-learning content. The reason for the high level of spending on custom content--47%--is that the latter is "immediate, important, and valuable to [companies]".⁴²

• Higher education market

  ASTD: Eighty-four percent of two- and four-year colleges expect to offer distance learning courses in 2002. In 1998, only 58% of colleges reported offering these courses.⁴³

  Credit Suisse First Boston: The percentage of adults enrolled in distance education is expected to triple from just 5% in 1998 to 15% in 2002.⁴⁴