College Completion Rates Bounce Back After Decline During Recession
By Allie Bidwell, Communications Staff
College completion rates for students across the board are rebounding after a decline for students who began their postsecondary education during and toward the end of the Great Recession, according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
The new report, released on Monday, tracks the six-year completion outcomes for all first-time students, regardless of their institutional sector and enrollment intensity. Overall, the national six-year completion rate increased by 1.9 percentage points, from 52.9 percent for the fall 2009 cohort to 54.8 percent for the fall 2010 cohort. The increase is also notable because the size of the cohort remained nearly unchanged, and resulted in an additional 55,000 graduates. The number of students who remained enrolled in their sixth year without earning a degree also decreased slightly, indicating that the percentage of students “stopping out” dipped for the fall 2010 cohort, from 33 percent to 31.9 percent.
The report also for the first time included completion rates for exclusively full-time students across all four-year and two-year institutions, including those students who transfer to different institutions.
“We can expect this nationwide recovery in college completion rates to continue in upcoming years,” said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, in a statement. “But the rising tide of outcomes should not lull institutions into complacency. There is still ample room for improvements and campuses should look carefully at their results for specific student populations to find them.”
The completion rates varied widely by institutional sector and student enrollment intensity.
For students who started at four-year public institutions, for example, the completion rate increased from 61.2 percent to 62.4 percent, with the largest increase occurring among mixed enrollment students. Meanwhile, enrollment in four-year public institutions increased by 3 percent.
At four-year private nonprofit institutions, the completion rate increased from 71.5 percent to 73.9 percent, and the size of the cohort increased slightly, by 1.1 percentage points.
The increasing completion rates at four-year public and private nonprofit institutions “accomplished with continuing increases in enrollment are a surprising result,” the report said.
Completion rates at two-year public institutions also increased, from 38.1 percent to 39.3 percent. The completion rate of students who started at two-year institutions and earned a degree at a four-year institution also increased from 15.1 percent to 16 percent. Still, enrollment in two-year public institutions for the fall 2010 cohort dropped by 2 percent.
Meanwhile, enrollment at four-year for-profit institutions sharply declined, by 11 percent. The completion rate for those students improved somewhat, following a 5.6 percentage point drop between the fall 2008 and fall 2009 cohorts. For the fall 2010 cohort, the completion rate increased to 37.1 percent. Still, more than half of the students in the 2010 cohort – 52.2 percent – stopped out or dropped out without earning a degree or certificate at the end of the six-year study period.
The report also examined the completion rates for exclusively full-time students, which paints a dramatically different picture than the statistics reported by the Department of Education (ED), which only track first-time, full-time students who remain at the same institution. The latest data from ED states that the six-year completion rate was 60 percent for first-time, full-time students at four-year institutions for the fall 2008 cohort, and that the three-year completion rate was 29.4 percent for those who started at two-year institutions.
However, because the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) tracks completions for students who transfer institutions, the national completion rate for four-year students (within a six-year window) was 81.3 percent. Among those who began at two-year institutions, the six-year completion rate was 54.7 percent. The NSC also uses a six-year rate for community college students because most say that earning a bachelor’s degree is their goal and that those students “should have time to reach it before we stop counting,” the report said.
Overall, the report said that the upward trend can be expected to continue in the coming years because the improvements in completion rates occurred across the board for all students, regardless of their enrollment intensity, and for both traditional-age students and adult learners.
“In previous reports we observed the effects of the Great Recession on higher education: surges in enrollments, particularly among adult and part-time students, followed by declines in completion rates,” the report said. “In this year’s cohort we observed a partial reversal of these trends: dramatic increases in enrollments appear to have leveled off and completion rates are recovering some ground.”
Publication Date: 12/6/2016
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