Is Distance Learning Here to Stay?
- Mar 01, 2010 ArchiveDistance learning has been around for many years, but somewhat new to the real estate license field. In 2004 there were 27 states that allowed distance learning for pre-license students desiring to get a real estate license. Today that number has grown to 38 states that have allowed distance learning to play a part of the real estate learning process.
Over the years, states allowing distance learning courses for continuing education have been whereas, as of today only Massachusetts and New Jersey do not allow some sort of distance learning for continuing education.
Today real estate license courses are certainly becoming more and more popular for students especially for post license and continuing education requirements. There are primary providers and secondary providers. The major primary providers are Dearborn Real Estate Education/Kaplan, 360 Training, Cengage and Hondros.
There are also some new schools that have come on board nationally and continue to play a major role in developing their own products in distance learning such as Real Estate Express, ProSchools, McKissock, Rockwell, Real Estate Career Institute and Cooke Real Estate School (which is currently in 5 states with a streaming video product)
Many schools are resellers of Dearborns RECampus and Hondros Learning Courses. In Florida, most schools provide Dearborns RECampus courses such as: IFREC Real Estate School, Ed Klopfer Schools of Real Estate, Bob Hogue School of Real Estate, Goldcoast Real Estate Schools, The Real Estate School, Real Estate School Online and Cooke Real Estate School.
All of the above schools were conventional classroom schools before offering courses on line except Real Estate School Online.com which has never been a conventional real estate school. Real Estate School Online is a major player as an online school. The interesting aspect of this is that Internet marketing is a different animal than conventional advertising. The conventional schools have not been familiar with Internet marketing but are beginning to learn, so the future between real estate schools for a market share of distance learning is going to be interesting.
The real estate school business has changed dramatically over the last 10 years and I certainly believe it will continue to change as real estate schools adapt to the new landscape of the real estate school business.
Frank Cooke