A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

National Institute on Postsecondary Education, Libraries, and Lifelong Learning (PLLI)

Quick Facts

What percentage of traditional students earn a B.A. by age 30?

Sixty-eight percent. But here's the surprise: Though the number of students entering four-year colleges directly from high school has risen by 30 percent over the last 25 years, the percentage completing degrees by age 30 hasn't changed at all.

Students today engage in all sorts of nonstandard attendance patterns: dual enrollment (attending college courses while in high school), alternating and simultaneous enrollment after entering higher education, multi-institutional attendance, etc. Which group, by race/ethnicity, has the highest rate of nonstandard attendance?

Asian Americans - about 21 percent of them have nonstandard enrollment patterns, double the rate of everybody else.

African-American students are more likely to attend community colleges - true or false?

False: Fifty-three percent of African-American high school graduate come from the south, in which most of the historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are located. Many of these grads attend HBCUs, few of which are two-year schools. Nationally, this has produced almost identical proportions of black and white students entering community colleges: 33 percent for whites and 32 percent for blacks in 1992. The group that stands out is Latinos: 49 percent attended community colleges as first institutions of attendance.

Which form of financial aid contributes most to degree completion after the first year of attendance? Why?

When bachelor's degree completion is the dependent variable and the universe is limited to those who attended a four-year college at any time in their undergraduate careers, college work-study and its analogs (working on campus for purposes of contributing to the costs of one's education) edge out grants-in-aid in regression models controlling for just about everything else, including first-year academic performance. This is a matter of common sense: Grants-in-aid help the initial enrollment decision; after a year, they fall off in importance while those forms of financial aid that are tied to the campus keep students involved.

Once receiving a bachelors's degree, which race/ethnic group is most likely to apply to graduate or professional school within four years of college graduation? Which group is most likely to enroll?

At 50.1 percent of graduates, African Americans have the highest rate of application to graduate or professional school. At 29.8 percent of grads, Latinos have the highest enrollment rate.

Source: Adelman, Clifford, Answers in the Tool Box: Academic Intensity, Attendance Patterns, and Bachelor's Degree Attainment

This page last modified March 17, 2000 (kj)