Principal Indicators of Student Academic Histories in Postsecondary Education

A Forum — April 23, 2004

Background

The U.S. Department of Education recently released a new report, Principal Indicators of Student Academic Histories in Postsecondary Education, written by Senior Research Analyst Clifford Adelman.  This report provides a descriptive account of postsecondary academic experience and attainment of traditional-age students between 1972-2000, with an emphasis on the period 1992-2000.   At this American Youth Policy Forum, Adelman presented and discussed some of the major findings.  The full text of the study is available at www.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/prinindicat/prinindicat.pdf.

Forum Summary

Clifford Adelman, nationally recognized for his work in understanding and interpreting trends and patterns in complex longitudinal data sets, began his presentation with good news:  despite the stories that suggest otherwise, higher education in the United States is is doing a lot better than most people think.

Adelman argued that one could tell different types of stories (good, bad, or honest) using the available data about higher education in the United States.  His analysis is an attempt to tell the “honest story,” one that is “derived, as much as possible, from unobtrusive evidence, always tells you who is in the denominator and who is not in the denominator (that is, who the data are about), matches its universe against another external reference point (in effect, triangulating the data), does not mix people from different planets, and hence provides more accurate indicators of where problems may lie.”

The population that is the focus of this research consists of traditional college students (young adults between the ages of 18 and 26 in postsecondary education). These students continue to be the predominant demographic group in higher education and, as part of the “baby-boom echo,” their numbers will continue to grow over the next few years.  If we examine the population of recent undergraduates, we find that 67% in 1999 were 24 years old or younger; 73% of first-time undergraduates in 1995-1996 were less than 21 years old; and high school seniors who entered postsecondary education in 1992-1993 constituted 79% of all first-time undergraduates in that year.

For this research Adelman examined data from three longitudinal cohorts: the high school graduating classes of 1972, 1982, and 1992.  His analysis followed these cohorts to examine what happened to each in the years following high school graduation.  As we might expect, the most notable demographic change across cohorts is language background:  The proportion of postsecondary students from second language backgrounds doubled from 5% for the high school class of 1982 to 10% for the class of 1992.  Over 50% of both Latino and Asian students from the class of 1992 speak a first language other than English and, in grade 12, they spoke to their mothers most or all of the time in the first language.  The biggest increases in second language populations were in New England, and the Mid-Atlantic, West South Central, Mountain, and Pacific regions. 

Interstate mobility of students is significant.  During their postsecondary careers, 35% of students cross state lines and 38% of bachelor’s degree recipients later reside in a state other than that in which they earned their degree.  This mobility is of concern for researchers and policymakers for several reasons, said Adelman: it “mangles tracking of students and results in both over-estimates of intra-state demand and under-estimates graduation rates; it may (and probably does) create problems and pressures on credit-transfer policies and practices; and it may challenge state budgeting where there are large differences between in-state and out-of-state tuition.” 

Rates of basic access (those who graduated from high school and who enrolled in any postsecondary institution) varied for the three cohort groups and increased over time.  Overall access rates increased from 58% for the class of 1972 to 77% for the class of 1992.  Access rates for both men and women increased over time: 56% of women in the 1972 cohort enrolled compared with 80% of women in the 1992 cohort; 60% of men in the 1972 cohort enrolled compared with 70% in the 1992 cohort.

There were differences in basic access rates for various racial and ethnic groups both within and across each cohort group. The percentage of Whites enrolling increased from 60% to 79% between 1972 and 1992; the percentage of Blacks grew from 51% to 70%, and Latino students increased from 51% to 70%.   The difference in access rates for Blacks relative to Whites increased between the class of 1972 and that of 1982 but narrowed again between the class of 1982 and that of 1992.  There is some good news about the gap in access rates.  According to Adelman, “When the universe is confined to [data about] the students in the class of 1992 who earned standard high school diplomas within a year of scheduled graduation, the differences in access rates between White and both African-American and Latino students are statistically insignificant.”  However, on a less positive note, “differences by socioeconomic status quintile remain.”  The lowest socioeconomic in the class of 1992 had a basic access rate of 54%, while the highest socioeconomic quintile had an access rate of 94%. 

The percentage of students earning bachelor’s degrees remained fairly steady across the three cohort groups:  48% of the class of 1972 had attained the degree, 45% of the class of 1982, and 49% of the class of 2000.  Adelman warned that care is necessary when interpreting degree attainment data. When measuring college degree attainment some analysts use students’ own statements about their bachelor’s degree aspirations rather than the fact of their attendance at a bachelor’s degree-granting institution.   Using attendance rather than aspiration as a criterion, we find that two out of three traditional age students who attend a four-year college at any time will attain a bachelor’s degree by their late-20s. The average elapsed time-to-degree for those who earned bachelor’s degrees within 8.5 years of high school graduation in the class of 1992 was 4.56 calendar years, compared with 4.45 years for the comparable group in the class of 1982 and 4.35 years for the comparable group in the class of 1972.  The higher the number of W (no-penalty withdrawal) and NCR (no-credit-repeat) courses that students took, the longer it to took to achieve the degree.  Students who reported no Ws, for instance, had an average time-to-degree of 4.14 years; those who reported 7 or more Ws had an average time-to-degree of 5.97 years.

Data about remediation differ from public perception.  The proportion of students needing remediation in reading was stable between 1982 and 1992; the percentages needing remediation in other courses dropped slightly between the class of 1982 and the class of 1992. Overall, the proportion of students taking at least one remedial course dropped between the class of 1982 and the class of 1992; 51% of students in the class of 1982 took at least one remedial course; for the class of 1992, that figure was down to 42%. The decline in remedial course-taking took place primarily in the population of students who started their higher education experience in four-year colleges; 44% of the class of 1982 versus 25% of the class of 1992 who entered four-year colleges took at least one remedial course.  The percentages of students in other sub-baccalaureate institutions requiring remedial coursework increased slightly. 

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