Six-Year College Completion Rate Hits Record High
Credit: Boy_Anupong / Moment / Getty Images- Six-year college completion rates have reached 61.1%.
- While the share of eight-year college completers fell over time, eight-year completion rates are the highest they’ve been since tracking began.
- Across the 50 states, Alaska had the lowest college completion rate, and Rhode Island had the highest completion rate.
A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) Research Center sheds some positive light on college success.
The report, released Dec. 4, shows that the six-year college completion rate for those in the fall 2018 student cohort has reached 61.1%. This is the highest the six-year completion rate has been in the 12 years since NSC has tracked the data.
The NSC report said this growth was due to a decrease in students stopping out and improvements in the public two-year sector.
“Higher completion rates are welcome news for colleges and universities still struggling to regain enrollment levels from before the pandemic,” Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, said in a press release.
“Even as fewer students are starting college this fall, more of those who started back in 2018 have stayed enrolled through to the finish.”
Additionally, seven- and eight-year completion rates have also improved. For the cohort that started in fall 2016, the eight-year completion rate reached 64.7%, another record high.
These rates include those who earned a credential after transferring to any U.S. degree-granting institution and those enrolled part time or full time in a two-year or four-year program.
But this improvement wasn’t consistent across every student population.
Full-time students from the fall 2018 cohort were more likely to earn a degree (67.2% completed in six years) than part-time students (33.7% completed in six years). Part-time students were more likely to stop out.
Additionally, for students over the age of 25, the six-year completion rate declined compared to the previous cohort.
No matter the year, students from affluent neighborhoods had higher completion rates than students from lower-income backgrounds.
Completion rate growth for the fall 2018 cohort was pretty much the same across the country, with just 10 states seeing improvements of 1 percentage point or more, according to the report. Alaska had the lowest completion rate at 35.1%, and Rhode Island had the highest completion rate at 72.2%.
The NSC has previously released data showing the number of students with some college and no credential — students who stop out — has been growing, with men and Hispanic, Black, and Native American students overrepresented in this population.
In October 2024, NSC released a report showing enrollment is on the rise at the undergraduate and graduate level, despite a drop in first-year student enrollment. Historically Black colleges and universities and online institutions both reported strong enrollment growth.
Enrollment data coming out of the pandemic was bleak. And while higher education has seen a rebound and upward trend, a Dec. 2 NSC analysis shows a drop in 18-year-old first-year student enrollment in fall 2024.
Starting next year, colleges are expecting an even more dire threat — the enrollment cliff, where many colleges are forecasted to begin seeing dramatic drops in 18-year-old student enrollment.