Completing College: National and State Reports — from nscresearchcenter.org
With Six- and Eight-Year Completion Rates Dashboards
Highlights
- Progress in the national college completion rate has stalled. The six-year completion rate for the fall 2017 cohort was 62.2 percent, essentially unchanged since 2015.
- Six-year completion rates increased in over half of states, with nine states increasing 1 percentage point (pp) or more. This is up from the previous year when only five states had gains of at least 1 pp.
- Completions rates stalled or declined across all ethnicities, with Native American (-2.0 pp) and Black students (-0.4 pp) posting the largest decreases.
- The gender gap in completion rates continues to grow and is the widest seen since 2008 (7.2 pp)
- Traditional-aged students entering college in fall 2017 saw declines in their overall six-year completion rate. Older students continue to make gains, but they still lag behind traditional aged students.
- The national eight-year completion rate for the fall 2015 cohort declined 0.5pp from 2014. Only 2.4 percent of the cohort completed in the seventh and eighth years.