PurposePrincipal preparation program pedagogy and course delivery are critical to principal candidates' preparedness to lead. Research around online program delivery, however, is relatively sparse. This study examined the extent to which university-based educational leadership programs offered fully online (FOL) pathways to the principalship, as well as program geographic locations and institutional characteristics most associated with FOL offerings.Design/methodology/approachData were collected through website reviews and coding checks, and then merged with national postsecondary data. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, classification tree analysis, and geographic information system (GIS) mapping.FindingsRoughly 43 percent of all reviewed programs offered an FOL pathway to licensure, which suggests substantial growth in FOL offerings over the last 10 years. While a number of factors were deemed important, geographic characteristics were most associated with FOL status. GIS mapping further illustrated findings with a visual landscape of program FOL offerings.Research limitations/implicationsThis study considered only programs for which degrees or certificates could be earned without ever visiting campus in-person for classes. Hybrid programs were excluded from the analysis.Practical implicationsFindings make a clear call for more research into online principal preparation program design and course delivery.Originality/valueThis study provides the first overview of fully online university-based principal preparation programs in the United States while also offering a previously unavailable landscape of all programs specifically leading to licensure. It is also the only higher education study to map or investigate factors associated with FOL offerings and raises questions about prior FOL higher education research.

This study describes the landscape of school leadership preparation programs in the United States, including pathways to the principalship (master’s, certification, educational specialist) and the delivery modes for each pathway (face-to-face, fully online, hybrid). First, data was collected from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data on the number of degrees and certificates awarded by every postsecondary institution receiving U.S. federal student aid from 2013 to 2018. Then program websites were searched and coded by two independent coders. All discrepancies were resolved; the final dataset was analyzed using measures of central tendency. This study found that master’s programs were the most common route to the principalship, and there were more than double the number of master’s offerings than certification and more than double as many certification offerings than educational specialist. The most common delivery modes across each pathway were, from most prevalent to least: face-to-face, fully online, and hybrid. Ten states had an offering in every pathway and modality, but no individual university offered every pathway and modality. Twenty-one states had one or more universities that offered all pathways but not all modalities. Implications are that program faculty informed decisions about what pathways and modalities to offer, these data allow for sampling techniques that can help researchers conduct more inferential studies to measure the impact of leadership preparation on school outcomes, and these data allow for research that differs by pathway, providing a more nuanced understanding of preparation. Finally, this study serves as a call for a centralized database for tracking SLPP data.