Student Pipeline - Of 100 9th Graders, How Many Graduate from High School on Time, Directly Enter College, and Graduate within 150 Percent of Required Degree Time?
Why is this measure important?
This is a measure of student progression and educational attainment from 9th grade to college completion - using statistics for on-time high school graduation, direct college entry, and graduation within 150 percent of time required by degree program (6 years for bachelor's and 3 years for associate). It also indicates relative strengths and weaknesses of states at each stage of transition in the education pipeline.
What policy issues are associated with it?
States with high values on this measure have higher proportions of students who persist to a college degree. However, states can perform relatively well at one stage of transition while performing poorly on another. These data are useful in detecting which transition stage warrants the most policy attention - whether it be high school graduation, college-going, first-year retention, or college graduation.
On the data table provided there is a column that displays, for each state, the “percentage of 25 to 44 year olds with a bachelor's degree or higher”. As you'll see, state that have relatively high proportions of students who persist to a college degree also have high levels of educational attainment.
What other factors should you consider?
See all of the measures linked to the “Student Pipeline” diagram.
Also see (coming soon), Conceptualizing and Researching the Educational Pipeline, Peter T. Ewell, Dennis P. Jones, and Patrick J. Kelly, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS)
Data Sources/Related Links
http://www.nces.ed.gov
http://www.postsecondary.org
