The 2008 economic downturn may have made paying for college more difficult, but the students who started high school in the teeth of the downturn are still pushing into higher education, according to new federal data.
Of the students who entered 9th grade in fall 2009, the overwhelming majority graduated and moved on to higher education in four years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics’ latest update of the 2009 High School Transcript Study, released last month.
NCES researchers tracked 20,000 9th graders in 944 schools nationwide and updated the survey in 2013. They found that nearly nine out of 10 students had graduated by 2013 and more than a third had earned Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate credit. Seventy-three percent were taking at least some postsecondary courses; an additional 8 percent had been accepted or registered for classes but had not yet started.
