The State of Courses in Business

Because context matters.

This report was born from BS statistics. In the fall of 2025, I did some digging so I could have real statistics on course creation, and what I found was a conflation of contexts. ALL the data was coming from higher education, corporate learning and development, or the course platforms trying to sell you something. I was so pissed, I created a whole YouTube series on it.

So I created a survey, did some interviews, and this report is the result of that study.

Who am I to do this?

I’m Dr. Catrina Mitchum. I’ve published quite a few academic articles, spent almost 2 decades in higher ed, and am a course creation consultant. It matters to me that the data is from the right source.

What will I find in the report?

Whelp, you’ll have to sign up for specifics, but I had half the respondents who already have and sell courses and half on their way. They’re all either solo-proprietors or small business (under 5 employees).

The report is organized by a summary where I try to tie things together, followed by the descriptive statistics (basically the percentage of folks who responded a certain way), and I’ve also included the analysis of 2 open ended questions and 3 follow up interviews (including a summary and quotes).

Why should I care where the data comes from?

Because the learners are different. Students signing up for college courses and employees completing a required cyber security training are coming to the learning situation with completely different goals and expectations than your clients are coming to you with. The learner is a stakeholder in the process and if you’re not considering the difference in context, you’ll be wasting a shit ton of time and money.

The next survey for the state of courses in business will go out in October of 2026. If you sign up for the report, you’ll be on the list for the survey request.