College-Completion Rates Remain at Last Year’s Pace

Despite aggressive efforts to push more students through to the finish line, college-completion rates remained unchanged this year, with 54 percent of those entering college for the first time in 2007 earning a degree or certificate within six years, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported on Thursday.

The center’s report tracks students even if they transfer to a different college, sector, or state. It offers an alternative to the federal government’s college-completion measure, which doesn’t count transfer or part-time students.

As in last year’s report from the clearinghouse, the new data show that working students, parents, and others who could attend only part time were the least likely to graduate within six years.

Only 22 percent of students who attended exclusively part time earned credentials within six years, compared with 76 percent of those enrolled full time.

The center noted a slight uptick for students who started at four-year public institutions. Their completion rate inched up 1.3 percentage points, while the rate for those who began at two-year public institutions was up 1.1 percentage points.

Not surprisingly, students who started at four-year private, nonprofit colleges had the highest completion rates, at 72 percent. The lowest rate, 37 percent, was for those who started at two-year public colleges.

The research center will issue its full report next month, and it will include students who had previously earned college credits while still in high school. Those students weren’t included in the figures released on Thursday in order to make an apples-to-apples comparison of completion rates over the last two years.