New Report Details How Often Pell Recipients Fail to Graduate

An expansive article by the Hechinger Report details just how often Pell Grant recipients fail to graduate at America’s largest colleges. The publication asked the country’s 50 largest public colleges and the 50 largest private colleges to disclose their six-year graduation rates for Pell-Grant recipients. (Federal law requires that information to be granted upon request, but it’s not publicly reported.) Thirty colleges provided the information.

Among the top-line findings:

• At the colleges that responded, the average six-year graduation rate for Pell recipients was 66 percent. (The average six-year graduation rate for all students at those institutions was 70 percent, higher than the national average of 59 percent.)
• In general, the more Pell recipients an institution enrolls, the lower their chance of graduating within six years.

The publication also published a table detailing the responding colleges’ percentage of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants, their six-year graduation rates, and the six-year graduation rates for the entire student population.

Read the article.