State-Level Completion and Transfer Rates: Harnessing a New National Resource
| Title: | State-Level Completion and Transfer Rates: Harnessing a New National Resource |
| Author: | Ewell, Peter T. Kelly, Patrick J. |
| Date: | 2009 |
| Catalog #: | |
| Price: | FREE |
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| Description: |
For a long time, the nation did not possess the ability to effectively monitor and report on
one of the most important aspects of higher education: student progress and success in
completing educational credentials. The standard method for examining student success
with respect to degree completion is the Graduation Rate Survey (GRS) established by
the National Center for Education Statistics, which requires four-year institutions to
report six-year graduation rates and two-year institutions to report three-year graduation
rates. But these calculations are limited to students who enroll on a full-time basis during
their first term. While colleges and universities can potentially track the progress and success of their own students regardless of their credit load as long as they are enrolled, little information is available about the progress of those who change institutions or stop out several times in the course of earning a degree. For the forty-two states that maintain state-level Student Unit Record (SUR) databases, it is possible to track students from institution to institution within the boundaries of the state (Ewell and Boeke 2007). But the ability to link state SUR databases together to examine student mobility is limited and awkward. Furthermore, efforts to remedy this condition by creating a national student unit record system under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education have been stalled for more than three years. To explore an alternative, the Lumina Foundation for Education supported the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (NCPPHE) to work with the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) in utilizing NSC’s extensive student data holdings to create state-level degree completion rates on a national basis. |