Posts Tagged ‘college completion’

The Project Win-Win has helped community colleges and four-year schools in several states find hundreds of ex-students who have either earned enough credits to receive associate degrees or are just a few classes shy of getting them. As the Lumina Foundation-backed project winds down, some participating schools plan to continue the effort on their own. (Huffington Post, 03/17/13)

A new National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report digs deeper into college graduation rates. It finds that of the 1.9 million students enrolled for the first time in all degree-granting institutions in fall 2006, 54% had graduated within six years. Another 16.1% were still enrolled in some sort of postsecondary program after six years, and 29.8% had dropped out altogether

Record shares of young adults are completing high school, going to college, and completing degrees, newly analyzed data from the Census Bureau reveals. Of the nation’s adults ages 25-29, data show that 90% have finished at least a high school education, 63% have completed at least some college, and 33% hold at least a bachelor’s degree. (Education Week

A National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report takes account of the circuitous but ultimately successful routes that students often take toward a college degree. When nontraditional patterns of enrollment are considered, the national completion rate jumps to 54%, from 42%. Among full-time students, 75% earn a degree or certificate within six years, but part-time students have much lower completion rates. (Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/15/12)

COMMITTING TO COMPLETE
If an incoming community college student were asked right off the bat to pledge to complete a degree or credential, in a moment of truth, would that student think of his promise before transferring or dropping out? What if thousands of others signed the same pledge? What if faculty and the president had signed one promising to do all they could to help the student complete?  There’s no telling yet, but if all those components come together the way pledge architects hope they do, completion rates will be on the upswing within a couple of years. By that time, the first cohort of students to sign such a pledge will be due to earn associate degrees. The pledges are part of the commitment that six national community college organizations made in April 2010 to boost student completion rates by 50 percent during the next decade. About a year after those groups signed their own “Call to Action,” three of them — the American Association of Community Colleges, the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development, and Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society — drafted versions to take to presidents, faculty and staff, and students, respectively. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.

To take stock of where the college completion effort stands, the American Enterprise Institute pulled together essays from 11 researchers and policy analysts. The final product is the book Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education. In an e-mail interview, the editors jointly answer questions about what they see as key takeaways and common themes from the book.

Facing Facts
The college completion agenda has helped community colleges face facts about where they fall short. But if the focus on completion gets too singular, two-year colleges run the risk of neglecting student access and even the quality of learning on their campuses. That was the message of a panel of community college leaders who spoke at a  meeting

By Carla Rivera

Colleges should examine a wider set of social, economic and personal characteristics to determine how they can help students remain in school and graduate, a new report has found.
Aside from SAT scores and high school grade point averages, students’ success in college relies on a number of other factors — often overlooked — that more accurately predict whether they will stay in school, according to the report scheduled for release Tuesday by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA.

Using information from a national survey of college freshmen in public and private institutions as well as graduation data, the report found, for example, that students who visit a college before enrolling, participate in clubs and other activities and those who have used the Internet for research and homework are more likely to complete a degree earlier than others. The costs of attending a college and the institution’s size also contribute to students’ success, the report found.
Overall graduation rates are up from a decade ago — nearly four in 10 students (39%) graduate in four years today compared to 36% of students who started college in 1994, the report showed. But 56.4% of students now take five years to graduate.
Disparities in graduation rates by ethnicity and gender persist and the gaps are increasing, according to the report. First-generation students are especially at a disadvantage: Only 27.4% of these students earn a degree after four years compared to 42% of students whose parents attended college.
“The message to colleges is to use as much information as possible about their incoming students to assess what their probabilities are in terms of completion and think about services and programs that need to be addressed,” said Sylvia Hurtado, director of the research institute and one of the report’s authors.
(Lower in article)The report found that private schools graduate more students in four years than public institutions. But the study suggests that much of that success is because private schools are more selective in the types of students they enroll. But public universities, which are likely to enroll more low-income and first-generation students, graduate more of their students than would be expected, the report also found.

For the past six months, Complete College America has been compiling data from 33 states to produce a report that paints – for the first time ever – a comprehensive picture of today’s college student, the challenges students face and the reasons why they are not completing their degrees and certificates.

You won’t want to miss the story in this morning’s New York Times about the report and what it means.

“One Degree of Separation: How Young Americans Who Don’t Finish College See Their Chances for Success” provides compelling insight into the barriers young adults face when considering higher education. The study compares the perceptions of young people who completed a college degree and those who obtained only a high school diploma. It found that many lack critical information necessary to further their educations, such as how to identify and apply for financial aid. Disturbingly, 72 percent of those have only a high school degree were unable to identify the FAFSA – the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

The survey examined the views of a random sample of more than 600 young adults aged 26 to 34 years old, both those who completed either a college degree or postsecondary certificate and those whose highest credential is a high school diploma.

The report is available for download at www.publicagenda.org/files/pdf/one-degree-of-separation.pdf. Researchers also found a growing skepticism about whether college is worth it, especially among those students who need to borrow money to pay for it. Only 37 percent of those with only a high school diploma “strongly agree” that, even if you have to take out a loan, going to college is worth it in the long run.

Yet those with only a high school education also have a darker view of their economic future. Only 36 percent of high school graduates say it’s “very likely” they’ll be financially secure in their lifetime, compared to 55 percent of college graduates.

Nationally, fewer than half of students who enter four-year colleges complete a degree in six years. At community colleges, only 20 percent complete with a two-year degree in three years. This report examines in depth the outlook of the non-graduating majority.

“One Degree of Separation” is the third in a series of Public Agenda surveys probing young people’s attitudes on higher education and college completion. Previous reports, also funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, can be found at www.publicagenda.org/theirwholelivesaheadofthem.