Slow Growth in College Completion and College Success

We are puzzled by the slow growth in college completion despite burgeoning college enrollment in the past 20 years. The National Center for Higher education and Public Policy{measuring up.highereducation.org} documents the number of students is growing much faster than the percentage of students ages 25-34 who have a college degree.

The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance (ACSFA), a nonpartisan panel that advises Congress, recently concluded that in the 1990s between 800,000 and 1.6 million low and moderate high school students failed to earn a bachelors degree, in spite of being academically prepared for college and intent on attending a four-year college. (ACSFA, Mortgaging Our Future. Washington, D.C : US Department of Education, 2006. ACSFA@ed.gov)

In our book, From High School to College, Andrea Venezia and I speculated about how college non-completion was caused by different factors, such as college preparedness, cost, time management, personal commitment and more. We know that a significant percentage of non-completion is caused by a lack of college preparation. Yet, the ACSFA study tried to include only students who were well-prepared. All of the students in its study completed algebra II or trigonometry. These mathematics courses are crucial predictors of college completion in studies by Clifford Adelman, formerly with the U.S. Department of Education. Moreover, all the students in 10th and 12th grade planned to get a bachelor’s degree. (Michael Kirst and Andrea Venezia. eds. From High school to College. Jossey Bass, San Francisco, 2004.)

Although students fail to move through the higher education system for many reasons, the ACFSA study included only students for whom finances were the deciding factor in not getting a four-year degree. Thus, while I am not certain that the ACFSA study adequately controlled for all factors that hinder success in college, inadequate finance is clearly a major factor or impediment to graduation.

Now we need a study that examines how many students do not get degrees because of inadequate academic preparation. This also will be hard to measure precisely because student commitment to study and student perseverance are also important factors in college completion.

Subsequent blog entries will discuss commitment and other factors that comprise the puzzle of college completion. Also, please visit us at MyCollegePuzzle.

Labels: College Completion