With all the attention and focus on college education by both the government and private sector, college graduate rates have actually stalled, a new study has found.
About 56% of students who entered college as freshman in 2007 had earned a degree six years later, according to a report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That rate is the same as it was in 2006.
The report found that those who attend college full-time have the best chance of graduating – 78% of incoming freshman in 2007 who went to school full-time attained a degree. That number dropped to 22% for part-time students. Only 11% were still trying to attain a degree in the sixth year since they started school.
Even so, more students are part-time than full-time. The report found only 41% of those who entered school in 2007 were full-time students.
The report found that students are increasingly using different pathways to attain their degrees, including community colleges and online classes. That’s good news for those thinking of entering school, as the pathways to attaining a degree are much more varied than they used to be.
The study found that some pathways can be more complicated than others. For example, only 17% of those who first entered a community college ended up getting a four-year degree.
The best graduate rate came from “dual enrollment” students who started taking college courses while still in high school. For those students who then went on to attend college full-time, the graduation rate was 85.4%.
The study authors noted that 23% of those who attained a four-year degree did so at an institution different than the one they started in their freshman.
“The results suggest that conventional approaches to understanding college effectiveness and student success, limited to students’ enrollment at the starting institution only, fail to fully capture national completion rates,” the reported stated.
“It also demonstrates that, as students attend multiple institutions on the way to their first completion, each of these institutions is likely to have contributed, in its own way, to each student’s pursuit and achievement of their educational goals.”
Students who enrolled at private, non-profit schools had the highest completion rate, with almost 73% attaining a degree. The lowest completion rate came from students who enrolled in four-year private for-profit institutions – 33.5%.
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