While high school students are all about what college they want to get into, a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center looks at how many actually finish—and the outcomes vary widely by the type of postsecondary institution students attend.
The report, drawing on a database that tracks 96 percent of the nation’s total college enrollment, looks at the six-year paths of first-time students enrolled in college in 2008. It finds that 2.7 million students enrolled in college in 2008, an increase of 12 percent from the previous year. Yet just 55 percent of those students earned a degree or certificate by fall 2014, down from 56.1 percent the previous year.
