A Historic Drop In College Persistence Rates

College retention declined, another sign of the widespread impact the pandemic had on students … [+] at the highest rate in a decade. (3D rendering)

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Factor in another bad college statistic for the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. College student persistence rates fell two percentage points last year, the largest drop since 2009 when the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) began reporting the measure.

Of the 2.6 million people who first attended college in fall 2019, 73.9% continued their studies at a U.S. institution in fall 2020. That is the measure of the NSCRC’s tenacity. Similarly, college retention rate – the proportion of freshmen returning in their sophomore or first year graduation from the college they started at – saw its biggest drop, a 0.7 percentage point drop 66.2%.

First-year students who left school in the first year fell slightly more than those who stayed at their initial institution (-1.2 percentage points vs. –.7 percentage points). This pattern reflects the limited student mobility that the NSCRC documented in its previous COVID-19 transfer report.

These are some of the key findings from the latest Persistence and Retention Report released today by the NSCRC. “We can now add increased newcomer churn in 2019 to the grave impact of the pandemic,” said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “These losses negate the recent improvements universities have made to keep learners on the right track early on. You will drag yourself through higher education for years. ”

Results by higher education sector

Community colleges recorded the largest decrease in the persistence rate of all institutional sectors year-on-year (minus 3.5 percentage points to 58.5%). In the community colleges sector, too, retention rates fell the most (minus 2.1 percentage points to 51.6%).

In contrast, the persistence rate at public four-year colleges fell year-on-year by 0.6 percentage points to 84.1 percent, while the retention rate in the first year at public four-year colleges even rose (from 75.6% to 76.3%). This growth was largely due to a nearly one percentage point increase in retention rates among full-time beginners, who make up 89% of the cohort for this sector.

Private, not-for-profit four-year colleges saw a decline in both their persistence and retention rates, down 2 percentage points and 1.3 percentage points, respectively, compared to the previous year.

Finally, persistence rates at for-profit four-year colleges decreased 0.9 percentage points year over year, with most of that decrease being concentrated in full-time students. The retention rate, however, increased by 0.2 percentage points to 40.3% compared to the previous year.

Differences by age, race and ethnicity of the students

The first year persistence and retention rates differed significantly depending on the age at which students attend college. In the current cohort, students aged 20 or younger had the highest persistence and retention rates at 78.5% and 70%, respectively. The rates of older students were about 30 percentage points lower – 46.8% and 43.1% for students aged 21 to 24; and 44.5% and 42.2% for ages 25 and over, respectively.

There were large differences in persistence rates by race and ethnicity of students.

1. The difference between the highest retention rate (86.5% for Asian students) and the lowest (64.9% for black students) was almost 22 percentage points.
2. White (79.3%) and Latinx (68.6%) students had a difference in persistence rate of nearly 11 percentage points.
3. The overall persistence rate in the first year declined the most among Latinx students (minus 3.2 percentage points from 71.8% to 68.6%).

Persistence from Major

Among the Bachelor students, engineering courses had the highest persistence rate of the five best courses at 92.2%. This was followed by the bio- and biomedicine courses with a persistence rate of 91.3%, health sciences with 89%, humanities and general studies with 88.1% and business-related courses with 85.6%.

Both the biological and biomedical sciences and the health sciences recorded significant increases in their retention rates compared to the previous year (+1.4 and +1.8 percentage points to 82.3% and 78.9%, respectively). The greatest decrease in the persistence rate was recorded in the main subjects of the humanities (-1.6 percentage points to 88.1%).

Among the students aiming for an AA degree, the humanities and general studies had the highest persistence rate at 61.9%, followed by computer and information sciences (60.3%), health professions (59.4%), business-related courses ( 56.7%). and security and protection services (54.1%).

Consistent with the sharp declines in enrollment the community college sector has faced since the pandemic began, all of these associate degree majors saw first year persistence rates decrease by at least 2 percentage points year over year. The largest decreases in persistence and retention were recorded in computer science and information sciences (-3.3 and -2.3 percentage points, respectively).

Effects

As the picture of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic completes, universities are still faced with numerous uncertainties and threats for the coming fall semester. Even if the decline in enrollments in the past year was overall less pronounced than generally expected, it is not at all clear how much the enrollments will recover.

Will more students be lured back to college with the promise of more normal campus life? Can colleges reverse this newly documented drop in college dropouts? How disruptive will the new, more contagious and serious Covid-19 variants be? Will universities be able to respond to new public health emergencies at their own discretion, or will local politics intervene and thwart effective precautionary measures? Will international students return to the US for college education? Will community colleges regain a foothold after unprecedented enrollment losses? Can colleges help overcome the particularly harsh impact of the pandemic on college plans for low-income and minority students?

These are the most pressing questions universities still face as they prepare for a crucial – and for some institutions – a crucial year.

Via the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center

The NSCRC is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. It works with universities, federal states, school districts, high schools and educational organizations to collect precise longitudinal data that can be used for educational policy decisions. The NSCRC analyzes data from more than 3,600 post-secondary institutions in the U.S., representing 97% of the country’s post-secondary enrollments in institutions with Title IV degrees as of 2019.

source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/a-historic-drop-in-college-persistence-rates/