Completing College – National – 2016 – Eight Year Outcomes Supplement

Earlier this summer, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) released its latest snapshot report on student persistence and retention. The group in focus is students who started college in fall 2015. Overall, 73.4 percent of students persisted somewhere in fall 2016, while 61.1 percent of students were retained where they started their first year. The report provides a number of valuable benchmarks against which members can compare their own outcomes.

As expected, students who enrolled full-time were more likely to persist or be retained than part-time enrollers. For the first time, the NSCRC was able to disaggregate non-degree-seeking students as their own category separate from full- and part-time enrollers. This resulted in a spike in the part-time retention rate, but it also represents an important disaggregation moving forward.

Beyond overall persistence and completion rates, the report also provides rates by race and ethnicity, age at college entry, and institution type.

Persistence & Retention – 2017

For years, the commonly held talking point around time to degree completion has been two years for an associate’s degree and four years for a bachelor’s degree. NCAN members have long known that many of the low-income, first-generation students they serve take longer than that, but a recent National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) report offers evidence that these time-to-degree projections are unrealistic for the average student nationally.

https://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport11/

The NSCRC examined more than 2 million students who received an associate’s as their first and only degree or received their first bachelor’s degree between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015. They specifically looked at: (1) the amount of time that elapsed between first enrollment and degree receipt and (2) the amount of time students were actually enrolled, converted into academic years.

Overall, associate’s degree-earners attained a degree after being enrolled for 3.3 academic years and over 5.5 years of elapsed time from first enrollment to attainment. Bachelor’s recipients were enrolled for 5.1 academic years over an elapsed time of 5.7 years before attainment. To add even more evidence that the two- and four-year time-to-completion standards are unrealistic, the NSCRC’s research found that “among associate degree earners from two-year public institutions, only 14.7 percent received their degrees in two calendar years and only 7.4 percent had two academic years of full-time or full-time equivalent enrollment,” and among bachelor’s recipients from four-year public institutions, “37.5 percent received their degrees in four calendar years and only 10.1 percent had four academic years of full-time or full-time equivalent enrollment.”

The report notes that, “The change in traditional timelines for college completion can become expensive when viewed in terms of college costs, taxpayers’ subsidies, and the wages students forfeit with each additional semester of enrollment…However, we also recognize that a longer time to degree may not be solely in control of the institutions or policymakers. It may also be an effect of the changing economic, social, and cultural circumstances of students.”

This finding is one NCAN already had some evidence of for member-served students. In the first two Benchmarking Project reports, cumulative degree completion rates nearly doubled between the fourth and sixth years of the enrollment window.

NCAN members should pass these findings along to their students so they understand that “the norm” is no longer two- or four-year degree attainment. At the same time, students must understand that taking a break or elongating time to degree costs money and time and puts them at increased risk for stopping out.

http://www.collegeaccess.org/SD10112016Article3

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) released its 3rd annual report benchmarking college progression rates at the national level. This important research resource provides the best picture of enrollment, persistence, and completion nationwide.

The report contains first fall college enrollment rates for the high school graduating classes of 2013 and 2014 and first year college enrollment rates for the classes of 2012 and 2013. These rates, like the others in the report, are divided into 12 categories of high school characteristics, including high- or low-minority; urban, suburban, or rural; and high- and low-income. In both the first fall and first year enrollment rates, the most recent data (2014 and 2013 respectively) are similar to their preceding years. As in previous years, students from higher-income, lower-minority high schools had higher enrollment rates, as did students from suburban high schools. Notably, first year enrollment rates for students from higher income, high minority, suburban high schools increased four percentage points from 2012 to 2013.

http://www.collegeaccess.org/SD10202015Article2

A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center examines postsecondary transfer and mobility patterns. The report finds that of the 3.6 million students who first enrolled in the fall of 2008, over 37 percent of them transferred at least once in the ensuing six years. Of those who transferred, nearly half (45 percent) transferred multiple times. The report is a useful look at enrollment patterns and offers evidence of what NCAN members have known for some time: a large swath of students aren’t staying in one place.

Among the other findings in the report were that nearly 20% of students who started in two-year public institutions and nearly 25% of those from four-year public institutions occurred over state lines. The students who were most likely to transfer were those who had both full-time and part-time enrollments (53.7% of these students transferred).

The report also considers the role of community colleges. Nearly 25% of students who started at a community college transferred to a four-year institution within six years, but they did so mostly without earning an associate’s degree or certificate first. Additionally, 25% of students who transferred from a four-year institution to a community college did so just for the summer and then returned to their four-year institutions in the fall. The NSC previously reported that this strategy was “correlated [with] higher degree completion rates at the starting four-year institution.”

http://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport9/

This new research released Tuesday looks at the six-year paths of first-time students enrolled in college in 2008. It draws on a database that tracks 96 percent of the nation’s total college enrollment.

The third annual report on college-completion rates finds that 2.7 million students enrolled in college in 2008, an increase of 12 percent from the previous year. The growth is likely linked to the recent recession, which typically drives more students to college, and there was a 20 percent increase in the number of older students, the researchers note.

Yet, of those students, just 55 percent earned a degree or certificate by the fall of 2014, down from 56.1 percent in last year’s report. Nearly 15 percent of students were still in school working toward completion, while the rest left higher education with no degree.

The report found the best odds for completion were for students who started at four-year, nonprofit colleges (73.6 percent), up slightly this year and at public, four-year schools where graduation rates were stable at 62.8 percent.

Not so good of a bet was attending a for-profit school where completion rates fell nearly 4 percentage points to 38.4 percent and for students who started a community college where just 39.1 percent finished. Still, more students flocked to community colleges and for-profits during the recession than to other types of postsecondary institutions.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/college_bound/2014/11/college-going_rates_up_six-year_completion_rates_down_new_report_finds.html

The latest report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center offers high school-to-college transition rates for public, non-charter high schools across 12 categories, based on demographic and geographic characteristics. It finds, unsurprisingly, that students from higher-income, low-minority, suburban schools had the highest college enrollment (73 percent) and highest persistence rate (remaining enrolled for a second year) in 2013. Among school characteristics, school poverty level was the most consistent correlate to college enrollment rate, regardless of minority or geographic category. The highest immediate college-going rate across all low-income groups (58 percent) was lower by three percentage points than the lowest rate (61 percent) among higher-income groups. Enrollment at two-year colleges was not necessarily higher for students from low-income schools, but two-year colleges were a larger share of total first-fall enrollments for students from low-income high schools and from higher-income, high-minority schools. Regardless of high school type, persistence rates among students enrolled in private colleges and universities were higher than for public institutions, and higher in four-year institutions than in two-year. One interesting fact, noted by Jill Barshay in The Hechinger Report, is that the best 25 percent of low-income, high-minority schools sent at least 60 percent of 2013 graduates to college in fall of 2013. By contrast, the worst 25 percent of high-income schools sent fewer than 60 percent of graduates to college in the fall.

http://nscresearchcenter.org/hsbenchmarks2014/#Introduction