National college completion rates are up after years of stalled progress.
Of the 2.3 million learners who began college in the fall of 2018, 61.1% earned a credential – degree or certificate – within six years, according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That’s the highest six-year completion rate of the 12 cohorts tracked for the report.
“Higher completion rates are welcome news for colleges and universities still struggling to regain enrollment levels from before the pandemic,” NSC Research Center Executive Director Doug Shapiro said in a press release. “Even as fewer students are starting college this fall, more of those who started back in 2018 have stayed enrolled through to the finish.”
The six-year completion rate increased this year by .5 percentage points following three years of stagnation. The increase is attributed to a decline in the number of students stopping out and was mainly driven by students who started at community college. For students starting in the public two-year college sector, the six-year completion rate was up 1.2 percentage points from the 2017 cohort to 43.4% for the 2018 cohort.
Public four-year institutions saw a smaller increase from the 2017 to 2018 cohorts – up .2 percentage points to a six-year completion rate of 70.7%. Meanwhile, the completion rate declined for students starting at primarily associate-degree granting baccalaureate institutions (PABs). The 2017 cohort had a 47.6% completion rate. For the 2018 cohort, that rate was 45.6%.
Looking out further, the eight-year national completion rate for the 2016 cohort is 64.7%. Most of the completers from the 2016 cohort earned a credential by year six.
Contributing factors
It’s no surprise that full-time students completed at higher rates than part-time students. Full-time students from the fall 2018 cohort were significantly more likely to earn a degree. More than two-thirds (67.2%) completed a credential by year six. Only about a quarter (25.4 %) stopped out.
Students who enrolled part-time had a completion rate of 33.7% by year six and a stop-out rate of 52.4%. More than a quarter of part-time students (26.2%) stopped out by the end of their second year.
A small percentage of part-time students in the 2016 cohort did go on to complete a credential in years seven and eight, bringing their eight-year completion rate to 38.3%.
Students with dual-enrollment experience also completed at higher rates. The six-year completion rate for these students was 57.1% compared to 39.9% for students who didn’t have that dual-enrollment experience.
In terms of transfer, most students (80.1%) who completed a credential within six years did so at the first institution at which they enrolled. For students that first enrolled at a community college, about a third (35.7%) of the 43.4% of six-year completers did not graduate from their institution of first enrollment.
Student demographics
Completion rates were higher for students from higher income areas. Less than half (48.2%) of college students overall in the 2018 cohort from the lowest income neighborhoods completed a credential in six years, as opposed to 75.8% of students from the top income neighborhoods completing.
Income continues to be a “highly stable predictor of completion rates,” Shapiro noted during an online briefing. However, the completion gap has narrowed slightly. For the 2010 cohort, there was a gap of 30 percentage points between the completion rates of the students from the highest and lowest income neighborhoods. That gap for the 2018 cohort is 27.6 percentage points. That shows “some progress – slow progress,” Shapiro said.
Completion rates for community college students from the lowest income areas have edged up. For the 2018 cohort, the six-year rate was 39%. That’s compared to a rate of 28.1% for the 2010 cohort.
Students from all four of the largest ethnoracial groups (Asian, Black, Hispanic and White) in the 2018 cohort saw improvement over the previous cohort.
At community colleges, completion rates for Black students increased from 31.5% for the 2017 cohort to 33.3% for the 2018 cohort. For Asian students, the rate increased from 53.2% to 55.4%, and for Hispanic students, the completion rate increased from 37.4% to 39.1%. White students had a completion rate of 50.8% for the 2017 cohort and 51.8% for the 2018 cohort.
