Dive Brief:
- New data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows that a third of students who enrolled in a two-year college in 2008, for the first time and with the goal of attaining a degree, completed college at a different school.
- Of the students who started at a four-year college in 2008, 13% completed college at a different institution.
- Because traditional measures of graduation rates don’t count students who complete their schooling at a different college, some states’ calculations on student persistence are estimated to be off by 20%.
Dive Insight:
The research center’s data is considered valuable because it is more complete than any other source. For most states, students who enrolled in four-year public colleges at the traditional age had a better chance of completion than students in 21-and-older age groups. But in Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, and North Carolina, the completion rate was higher for the older students. For 11 states, 20% or more of the women who started at a two-year public college ended up completing at a four-year college. But the same held true for men in only two states.