Students and their families, policy makers, and colleges themselves need better and more comprehensive graduation statistics like these. More than ever, there is so much at stake for those who pursue higher education. It is hardly news that more education leads to higher salaries. Less well known is that the earnings differential between workers with and without a bachelor’s degree has been growing for decades. Bachelor’s degree recipients also have higher job satisfaction, better health, and greater happiness than individuals who only completed high school. College graduates also contribute benefits to society. They are more likely to vote, less likely to go to prison, and less likely to receive public assistance. At the same time, the inflation-adjusted price of college has been increasing even after subtracting grant aid. And the growing share of students who finance their education with loans makes it even more crucial that they graduate.
A college’s graduation rate is arguably the most important measure of how well it serves its students, yet until now the available data have been fragmentary. Since the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Education has collected from each college the percentage of students who graduated from that college within a specified period of time for IPEDS. But these institutional graduation rates exclude the large and growing proportion of students who initially enroll part time or in a term other than the fall term or who previously enrolled in a different college. National longitudinal surveys fill in some of these gaps, but these nationally representative graduation rates cannot be used to measure the performance of individual colleges. More recently, state longitudinal data systems and the National Student Clearinghouse have calculated completion rates including students who transfer colleges. However, these emerging sources do not cover all colleges in the nation.
The OM data address many limitations of these existing sources. In particular, OM includes populations not covered by existing institutional graduation rates, including those students enrolled part time and those students who previously enrolled in postsecondary education. Additionally, statistics include the proportion of students transferring out, which was previously limited to colleges with a transfer-oriented mission. Unlike other sources that track students across colleges, OM data are disseminated annually and reported for each individual campus. Users can calculate values nationally, by state, or by type of college (for example, public research universities or minority-serving institutions).
These new measures are particularly useful for understanding the experiences of non-traditional populations like students at community colleges and for-profit colleges—that are not always adequately captured by existing graduation statistics—and may change how we view these institutions’ performance. For example, nearly half of community college students initially attend part time for reasons such as work or family obligations and historically have not been included in federal graduation statistics. The new OM data reveal that at least 18 percent of part-time community college students complete a certificate or associate’s degree at their original institution within eight years. Even for full-time community college students, following students for eight years represents a more realistic time frame for completion because over 60 percent of community college students must complete remedial courses before they can take college-level classes, and many who start full time switch to part time in a later term. Previously, statistics could only tell us that 21.7 percent of full-time, first-time community college students completed a certificate or associate’s degree within three years and 27.3 percent complete within four years. Now, with the inclusion of both first-time and non-first-time students, the OM data show that the completion rate for all full-time community college students is 30.9 percent after six years and 32.9 percent after eight years. Additionally, 29.0 percent had transferred to another institution. Together, this means that 34.6 percent of full-time community college students—accounting for approximately 222,700 students—experienced successful outcomes that were overlooked by previous graduation rate metrics.
As might be expected, OM does have its limitations. Non-degree-granting institutions, which offer only certificates that typically require one to two years or less of full-time enrollment, are not included. Results are not disaggregated by student characteristics such as race/ethnicity or gender. And not every college has the ability to track every student who leaves without completing. Caveats aside, these data constitute a valuable new tool for researchers, students and their families, and campus staff. There is now information on student outcomes that covers all students—and, like taking a medication with quantifiable long-term benefits, that is something that you can feel good about.
The authors are from RTI International, a nonprofit research institute based in North Carolina. RTI works with the U.S. Department of Education to collect and disseminate the annual IPEDS data collections.
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