New College Scorecard Data

Posted by Center for American Progress on March 14, 2016

New Scorecard Analysis Offers Good News on Completions

A recent analysis by the Center for American Progress examines data from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard and finds some promising trends. Students receiving federal aid saw their six year completion rates at four-year public institutions increase six percentage points (50% to 56%) across entering cohorts from 2002 to 2007. Low-income students saw even larger gains across the same period (38% to 47%).

These results are encouraging, the “charticle” notes, because enrollment at four-year public institutions increased six percentage points from 2002 to 2007, which means that more students were completing degrees, even with a larger pool of students overall. The increase in rates “does not…lessen concerns” about low-income students’ outcomes however, because these students’ outcomes are still ten percentage points lower than the overall average. Worth noting is that the completion gap between low-income students and their peers did narrow slightly over six years, from 12 to 9 percentage points.

Read more: http://www.collegeaccess.org/SD03082016Article2

College Scorecard: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/

Center for American Progress analysis: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/higher-education/news/2016/03/01/131984/new-analysis-of-college-scorecard-data-shows-college-completion-on-the-rise/