Community college completion rates and overall success rates (completion or transfer or still enrolled at the same institution) showed an increase in data recently released by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES).
The data represent the rate of first-time, full-time students who began their education at a public, non-baccalaureate degree-granting community college. Graduation (completion) includes students who earned their credential within 150% of normal time (i.e., three years for an associate degree). Completion or transfer are students who earned a credential with 150% of normal time or transferred to another higher education institution within three years. Finally, for the purposes of this DataPoints, success is any student who earned a credential (within 150% of normal time), transferred or was still enrolled in the third academic year.
Community colleges that offer a baccalaureate report on a six-year time frame, rather than the three-year time frame for non-baccalaureate degree-granting community colleges, so they are not included. All the data reported are the average institutional graduation rates for the public non-baccalaureate degree-granting community colleges.
Community colleges began to focus on the completion agenda around 2010, with the goal of significantly increasing community college completion rates. As shown in Figure 1, two-year college completion rates climbed from the fall 2010 entering cohort (22.0% completion rate) through the fall 2018 entering cohort (32.3%). Students who entered in fall 2019 had slightly lower graduation rates (32.2%), which may reflect the challenges associated with the pandemic that began in their second academic term (spring 2020). However, for students who began in fall 2020, graduation rates jumped up to 34.8%.
Unlike completion rates, the percentage of students transferring prior to earning a credential remained relatively flat for first-time, full-time students who entered in fall 2010 through fall 2016, after which transfer rates dropped to a low of 14% for students who began in fall 2019. However, similar to completion rates, the rate increased again for students who began in fall 2020. There was a downward trend prior to the pandemic, but these data suggest transfer rates were also negatively impacted by the pandemic.
The trend for students still enrolled in their third academic year who had not earned a degree or transferred has been steadily decreasing since it reached its peak for the 2012 entering fall cohort (13.3%), with only 9.5% of the 2020 entering fall cohort still enrolled in their third academic year. This may be the result of more students receiving their credential within 150% of normal time, resulting in fewer students still enrolled at the end of the three years.
Taken together, these data show the community college success for first-time, full-time students has increased from 51.2% of students entering in fall 2011 earning a credential, transferring or persisting, to 59.3% for students who began in fall 2020. The entering cohort of 2019 appears to have been impacted by the pandemic, however, success rates for students entering the following year appear to have rebounded.
While these data do provide insight into how community colleges are improving student success rates, it is important to note that the first-time, full-time students represent a small percentage of all students who begin in community colleges, therefore providing a somewhat limited perspective on overall student success rates in community colleges. The department also collects outcomes for all entering students on their outcomes measures survey; however, those reflect an eight-year time period, so the most recent starting cohort is from 2015-16 academic year.
For a comparison of similar years, Figure 2 shows the credential completion rate and overall success rate for the Graduation Rate survey (first-time, full-time students entering in a given fall) and the Outcome Measures Survey (all students beginning at the institution during the academic year regardless of enrollment status [full-time or part-time] or prior postsecondary experience at another college [transfer-in students]).
These data show a similar pattern of increasing completion and graduation rates for both populations. However, even with part-time students included in the Outcome Measures, the credential completion rate and overall success rate is higher in the Outcomes Measures survey. The impact of Covid is less evident in these data, as the pandemic occurred longer after these students first began their community college experience (the fifth year for the most recent cohort reported on).
