by Maria Khan, Teniell Trolian and Thomas Gais
It has been twelve years since former President Barack Obama proposed a national “moon-shot” for college completion so that the United States could again be “first in the world” in the share of adults with college degrees. Although the President’s American Graduation Initiative (AGI) was not fully enacted, his words accelerated national interest in the completion agenda, leading to pledges by higher education leaders as well as new and expanded initiatives by foundations to improve graduation rates and reduce racial, ethnic, and economic inequalities.
Much has changed since President Obama’s proposal in 2009. Between 2010 and 2018, college degree attainment, including associate and bachelor’s degrees, increased from 36% of adults over 24 years of age to 41%.[i] Differences in college attainment between students of different races and ethnicities declined, though large gaps remain. College degree attainment among Black adults over 24 years of age was 68% of the rate for white adults in 2018, up from 64% in 2010. The gap between Hispanic and non-Hispanic white adults also narrowed.
Improved attainment resulted in part from increased completion rates. Six-year graduation rates for four-year colleges increased from 58% for the 2004 entering cohort of U.S. students to 63% for the 2013 cohort. The three-year completion rates for two-year institutions also rose, from 21% for students entering college in 2005 to 28% for those starting their studies in 2013.
Racial and ethnicity gaps in graduation rates also improved—though like attainment, only marginally. The completion rate for Black students was 67% of the rate for non-Hispanic white students in the 2013 cohort for four-year college programs, up from 64% for the 2004 cohort. The graduation rate for Hispanic students entering four-year institutions increased from 81% of the (non-Hispanic) white rate in the 2004 cohort to 87% in the 2013 cohort. By contrast, gender differences grew, as female students increased their graduation rates more than males, while differences in completion remained large with respect to socioeconomic status.
Despite improvements, the U.S. is still far from achieving the original goal of the AGI—increasing its international standing with respect to educational attainment. The increase in the percentage of U.S. adults with postsecondary degrees between 2010 and 2019 was less than the average increase among all OECD countries, leaving the U.S. as sixth among nations in the proportion of adults with degrees in 2019.[ii]
And the pandemic has almost certainly reversed some of the progress of the last decade. Persistence rates—the proportion of beginning students who return to college for their second year—have dropped.[iii] Undergraduate enrollment has also fallen as of spring 2021, especially for men and students between the ages of 18 and 24.[iv] Although the full effects of the pandemic on completion rates are not yet known, lower levels of college enrollment and persistence will make increases in overall attainment far more challenging.
In light of this mixed picture of gradual improvement, recent setbacks, and significant distance from overall goals, it is worth taking stock of what we have learned, and what we still need to learn and do to continue or resume progress.
We have learned that student progression and inequalities in college completion are attributable in part to the types of institutions they attend. Because institutional characteristics change slowly if at all, their primary impact on college completion comes from where students matriculate. Public four-year institutions yielded six-year completion rates of 67% for the 2013 cohort, compared to only 42% of students entering private for-profit institutions; and only 33 percent of students who initially enrolled in public 2-year institutions completed associate degrees within three years (150 percent of normal time).[v] Selective institutions are also more likely to have higher completion rates than colleges with less selective or open admissions, even after controlling for student characteristics associated with college success, such as better grades, standardized test scores, and more rigorous high school course selections.
We also know that most students benefit from attending more selective and rigorous institutions. Research has found little evidence of “overmatching,” that is, students failing to persist and complete programs when their college preparation is weaker than that of most of their peers, while there is significant evidence of “undermatching,” of many students who are prepared for selective institutions but who matriculate to less selective colleges. There has been less undermatching in recent years: fewer undergraduate students have enrolled in open-admission community colleges and for-profit institutions, while more have attended four-year public and nonprofit institutions, which are more selective and generate higher completion rates. Research suggests that undermatching may be further reduced by clarifying and standardizing admission practices and implementing test-optional policies.
But there are limits to what reduced undermatching can accomplish for overall completion and attainment. Few institutions are highly selective; only about one out of eleven colleges and universities accepted less than half of their applicants.[vi] A “modest reshuffling” of students for a better match to institutional selectivity would produce only a small increase on aggregate graduation rates.[vii] Further reductions in community college enrollment could increase completion rates but perhaps at the expense of student access. There is thus a need to increase graduation rates in less selective and open-admission institutions.
Several strategies have showed promise in reforming non-selective colleges and universities in ways that can boost completion rates. Academic pathways in community colleges—which have typically offered a “cafeteria model” in programs and courses—can be simplified and better aligned with subsequent employment and educational opportunities.[viii] Wrap-around student supports, such as CUNY’s “Accelerated Study in Associate Programs” (ASAP)—which combine intensive advisement, tutoring, as well as extensive financial assistance—have shown significant impacts on completions in rigorous evaluations.[ix]
Remedial and developmental education courses in the first year of college can expand higher education access to underprepared students. However, such classes have shown low retention rates in the past. To reduce drop-outs, colleges have increasingly enrolled students in regular college classes while they take developmental courses to reduce boredom and minimize the feeling among students that they are making little progress toward their degree. Dual enrollment programs, where high school students enroll in college classes, also help students prepare for college and have been found to improve college completion rates.[x] In addition to these strategies, a “culture of evidence” can be built within a college. By collecting and using data to identify barriers, analyze variation, and monitor the implementation of interventions, institutions can use their own evidence to guide decisions regarding efforts to improve student success.
Still other strategies involve policies and initiatives implemented at the federal, state, and system levels. Chief among these are financial aid policies. Reducing the cost of college is positively correlated with increased college completion rates.[xi] Financial assistance programs based on student performance—such as Opening Doors programs, which target low-income parents attending community colleges—have shown particular promise in encouraging students with multiple challenges to persist in college.[xii]
Although we have learned a lot about programs, reforms, and policies that can improve college completion, we will face big challenges in implementing evidence-based practices. Simplifying and aligning academic pathways is difficult, particularly as such reforms require reallocating scarce resources affecting faculty and staff. Creating the “data-driven college” has also been found to be “more challenging and much harder than was [originally] envisioned . . . .”[xiii] Wrap-around services for underprepared students requires more resources for community colleges, which have seen reductions in per-student revenues in recent years.
Many states have established financial incentives for public colleges and universities to adopt measures aimed at increasing graduation rates, but the research to date has not found those measures to have significant effects, except to encourage community colleges to increase their use of short-term certificates.[xiv] A large number of completion networks of universities, colleges, and other institutions have been established over the past 12-13 years, generally aiming to develop, diffuse, and support initiatives to improve college completion and related outcomes.[xv] Many colleges and universities are members of these networks, yet it is unclear how deep the commitments are among staff and faculty, nor is there comparative evidence on how much change they have brought about and with what effects. And though some of the networks offer grants and in-kind assistance, they do not command the resources to finance extensive reforms in finance-strapped community colleges, where so many students fail to finish their degrees.
Systems may help in many ways, though one yawning need stands out. Little systematic and comparative data are collected and analyzed regarding what colleges and universities are actually doing, if anything, to improve completions. One analysis concluded that recent increases in graduation rates were the result of grade inflation; colleges reduced academic rigor to move students along.[xvi] Although the study had no direct measures of reduced learning, without data on what institutions are actually doing, interpretations of unexplained variance may go in many directions.
To ground discussions of why change occurs in academic outcomes in the post-COVID period, systems would make a valuable contribution in being able to explain to policymakers, students, families, and researchers how their campuses are trying to improve graduation rates. What practices and reforms are actually implemented, and what are the costs, time-frames, and challenges in making these changes? If college completion and attainment is to be a national objective, we need more than outcomes. We also need more than evaluations of specific policies and practices. We need to understand what our higher education institutions are doing, and systems are as well positioned as any institution to take on that role.
[i] National Center for Educational Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics (Washington, DC: NCES, 2019): Table 104.40.
[ii] National Center for Education Statistics, “International Educational Attainment,” The Condition of Education 2021 (Washington, DC: NCES, 2021): 5.
[iii] National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, “Persistence and Retention: Fall 2019 Beginning Cohort” (July 2021), https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/PersistenceRetention2021.pdf.
[iv] National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, “Overview: Spring 2021 Enrollment Estimates” (June 2021), https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/CTEE_Report_Spring_2021.pdf.
[v] National Center for Education Statistics, “Characteristics of Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions.” The Condition of Education (Washington DC: NCES, May 2020). https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_csa.asp.
[vi] National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics (Washington, DC: NCES, 2020), Table 305.40.
[vii] Matthew M. Chingos, “Graduation Rates at American Universities,” in Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education, ed. Andrew P. Kelly and Mark Schneider (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).
[viii] Thomas R. Bailey, Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Davis Jenkins, Redesigning America’s Community Colleges (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
[ix] Susan Scrivener, et al., Doubling Graduation Rates: Three-Year Effects of CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) for Developmental Education Students (New York: MDRC, 2015).
[x] Brian An and Jason Taylor, “Are Dual Enrollment Students College Ready? Evidence from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education.” Education Policy Analysis Archives 23 (2015).
[xi] Sara Goldrick-Rab, et al., “Reducing Income Inequality in Educational Attainment: Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Financial Aid on College Completion, American Journal of Sociology 121, no. 6 (May 2016): 1762-1817; Susan Dynarski, “Building the Stock of College-Educated Labor,” Journal of Human Resources 43, no. 3 (2008): 576-610.
[xii] Susan Scrivener and Erin Coghlan. “Opening Doors to Student Success: A Synthesis of Findings from an Evaluation at Six Community Colleges,” MDRC Policy Brief 27 (New York: MDRC, 2011).
[xiii] Alexander K. Mayer, et al., Moving Ahead with Institutional Change: Lessons from the First Round of Achieving the Dream Community Colleges, Report by the Community College Research Center (New York: MDRC, 2014).
[xiv] Nicholas W. Hillman, Alisa Hicklin Fryar, and Valerie Crespin-Trujillo, “Evaluating the Impact of Performance Funding in Ohio and Tennessee,” American Educational Research Journal 55, no. 1 (February 2018): 144-170.
[xv] Alene Russell, “A Guide to Major U.S. College Completion Initiatives,” Policy Matters (Washington, DC: American Association of State Colleges and Universities, October 2011).
[xvi] Jeffrey T. Denning, Eric R. Eide, and Merrill Warnick, “Why Have College Completion Rates Increased?” Discussion Paper Series, No. 12411 (Bonn, Germany: IZA Institute of Labor Economics, June 2019).