College Enrollment Rates Rebound Slightly

New data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center paints a classic good news/bad news picture for higher education.

The good news is actually very good: Enrollment rates continue to tick up ever so slightly, suggesting that attending college is becoming increasingly popular among new high school graduates.

The bad news is that rates among low-income students continue to trail national averages, and overall completion rates have fallen.

For the class of 2022, immediate enrollment in college increased by “as much as 3.2 percentage points across nearly all high school characteristics,” the report notes. What it doesn’t note is the overall percentage of students who marched directly to college, nor does it clarify what “as much as 3.2 percentage points” means. Is that the actual increase or a top-end outlier for a particular population?

Regardless, it’s essentially positive news. College attendance rates have been falling since 2010. That year, the rate was just over 70%. By 2022, it had dropped to 62%.

Higher education’s popularity among the class of 2023 increased slightly as well, though by a smaller increment. Here again, we don’t get overall figures, but instead enrollment percentages based on certain characteristics.

Among “high-poverty high school” students, immediate college attendance increased from 49.9% in 2022 to 50.5% in 2023. For “low-poverty” students, those corresponding figures were 71.3% and 73.3%.

Separating statistics by race yields similar results. Within “high-minority” high schools, the college attendance rate rose from 54% in 2022 to 54.5% in 2023, while in “low-minority” schools it increased from 63.7% to 64.3%.

One statistic remains constant across all socioeconomic populations — attendance at four-year colleges continues to outpace that at community colleges.

Also constant are persistence rates, the percentage of students who continue from the first to the second year of college. Rates inched up across all sociodemographics and institutional types, though unevenly.

“The improving persistence rate is an optimistic sign for high school graduates who are choosing to enroll in college,” said Doug Shapiro, the center’s executive director. “Large and widening gaps for low-income students continue to be a cause for concern, however, throughout the postsecondary journey.”

Unfortunately, the news about six-year graduation rates wasn’t as positive. Among low-poverty high schools, the rate actually declined for the high school class of 2017, dropping to 59.4% from 59.9% for the class of 2016. For high-poverty students, the graduation rate increased slightly for the 2017 cohort, offering little comfort given that the figure is only 25.1%.

“The disparities across low and higher-income high schools are prevalent throughout the postsecondary journey,” the report says, “with graduates from higher-income high schools enrolling, persisting, and completing a degree at higher rates compared to graduates from low-income schools.”

In fact, income proves to be more of a determinant than race. For enrollment, persistence, and graduation rates, higher-income students in high-minority schools performed better than low-income students in low-minority schools.

For graduates of both types of schools, “liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities” were the most popular fields of study at two-year and four-year colleges. Health professions and business also ranked high across high school types and income levels.

Six-year degree completion rates within science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields also varied by income and race. Only 7.8% of class of 2017 graduates from high-poverty high schools earned STEM degrees, while that figure was 22.5% for their counterparts from low-poverty schools. For high- and low-minority high school graduates, those rates were 10.6% and 16.9%, respectively.

While presenting a somewhat incomplete picture of college attendance and completion, this report reinforces the narrative that income and race — especially the former — continue to dictate outcomes. More kids are choosing college, but many are still left behind.