New data show the impact of dual enrollment on college completion rates, particularly at community colleges.
For public two-year colleges, students in the 2019 cohort who had prior dual-enrollment experience had a six-year completion rate of 57%, compared to 39.6% for students in the cohort who didn’t take any dual enrollment — that’s a difference of 17.4 percentage points, according to a new report on progression and completion rates from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) Research Center.
Primarily associate-degree-granting baccalaureate institutions (PABs) had similar results for students with dual-enrollment experience. Their completion rate for the 2019 cohort was 57.9%, compared to 41.2% for those with no dual-enrollment background — a difference of 16.7 percentage points.
At public four-year institutions, the completion rate for former dual-enrollment students was 77.1%, compared to 67.7% for those with no dual-enrollment experience — a difference of 9.4 percentage points.
Overall flat rate
The overall national six-year completion rate for public two-year colleges didn’t budge among the latest student cohort, staying at 43.9%, the report says. The six-year rate had slowly increased since the 2008 cohort, edging up to 43.9% last year, from 42.8% for the 2017 cohort, the data show.
However, PABs saw another drop, decreasing to 45.3%, from 46% the previous year. PABs have seen a slow decline since the 2015 cohort, which had a 48.6% completion rate.
The report also provides eight-year completion rates, which historically add a 4% to 5% bump to the rates. The 2017 cohort had a six-year completion rate of 42.8%. With the extra two years, the completion rate increased 4.2 percentage points to 47%.
For PABs, the six-year completion rate for the 2017 cohort was 48.3%. Its eight-year rate was 51.8% — a 3.5 percentage-point bump.
The NSC Research Center report also provides state-level data by sector. For public two-year colleges, South Dakota had the highest recent six-year graduation rate at 72.4%, followed by Iowa (56.3%) and Mississippi (55.2%). Connecticut had the lowest at 29.4%, followed by Louisiana and Oregon at 36%.
The report also includes data parsed by gender, race/ethnicity, age and part-time/full-time enrollment.
