New Postsecondary Data Includes Expanded Look at College Completion

Title: New Postsecondary Data Includes Expanded Look at College Completion

Source: National Center for Education Sciences (NCES)

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has released a new report providing data on degree-seeking undergraduate students and their completion outcomes.

The report includes graduation statistics by race, ethnicity, and gender and is further organized by institutional type and student status (i.e., first-time, full-time vs. part-time students). Overall, the data indicated a 53.6 percent completion rate for students attending 4-year intuitions and a 31.6 percent completion rate for students attending 2-year institutions over a span of eight years.

Transfer students, also identified in the report as non-first-time students, experienced completion rates of 66.4 percent for those attending public 4-year institutions full-time and 35.6 percent for those attending public 2-year institutions full-time.

Graduation outcomes by race echoed current data on widening completion gaps for minority students. Among first-time, full-time students who attended a 4-year institution and were seeking a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, 68 percent of white students earned their degrees within six years, as compared to 39.7 percent black students and 38.7 percent of American Indian students.

To read the full report, please see NCES’s website.