Higher Education Enrollment and Graduation Rate: Initial Thoughts

One of my research interests is higher education enrollment. What I mean by this is how many students are enrolled at the many different types of higher education institutions in the United States . This interest stems from my job where the vast majority of students who attend the university I work and teach at are students with many risk factors that contribute to the difficult task of completing a traditional 120 credit undergraduate degree within four to six years. I also taught at community colleges in Arizona where the student demographic has a similar student profile.

Institutions who educate at-risk students are often harshly criticized in the higher education community for poor graduation rates while other institutions are lauded for high graduation rates. Articles at The Chronicle and Inside Higher Education seem to reflect an inherent bias towards associates education and focuses on higher performing undergraduate and graduate institutions, faculty, and students. In this article I will merely present data about higher education enrollments as I work on where to take my initial thoughts and observations.  

Higher Education Enrollment Data:

Using the IPEDS Data Center I downloaded data for all higher education institutions in North America for the academic year 2013 (the most recent available). There are dozens and dozens of reports you can create using IPEDS and for this initial investigation I downloaded: total enrollment, undergraduate enrollment, graduate enrollment, 4, 5, and 6-year undergraduate graduation rate, and the 2010 Basic Carnegie Classification for all institutions.

There are a lot of higher education institutions in the United States. There are 7,764 institutions with a total enrollment of 22,180,669; 18,233,606 undergraduate and 2,947,063 graduate students.

First observation: 86% of the learning occurring at higher education institutions is undergraduate education.

Chart 1 uses the Carnegie 2010 Basic classifications; I divided the higher education landscape into four simple categories; institutions that focus on four-year undergraduate and graduate education; institutions that primarily focuses on associates education; other or specialized institutions; and not applicable (using the exact Carnegie classification).

Chart 1: Number of Institutions and Enrollments

Second observation: The majority of undergraduate education occurs at schools that focus on four-year baccalaureate degrees or schools that also have graduate education (51.03%) but not far behind are schools that almost exclusively focus on associates or undergraduate education (42.15%).

Ivy and Ivy Equivalents:

The Ivy League and Ivy League equivalents get a lot of press. This is understandable because of the prestige, the notoriety, and the sheer wealth of these institutions. When I read higher education articles it seems that these institutions set the bar when it comes to higher education which in my opinion, is not right, is not feasible, and not realistic.

I went through the 7,764 institutions and categorized schools as part of the Ivy League, Ivy EQ (equivalent and private), Ivy EQ State (equivalent state schools), or Baby Ivy (primarily undergraduate). Chart 2 shows the 80 schools I, and others would consider to be part of the top tier of higher education institutions in the United States and their undergraduate and graduate enrollment.

Chart 2: Enrollments at Ivy and Ivy Equivalents

Third observation: Higher education press focus way too much attention on the 1% of the institutions that educate 3.83% of all undergraduates. It doubly focuses way too much time and energy on the Ivy League; those 8 institutions educate 0.36% of all undergraduates.

Graduation Rates:

Graduation rates are important but the problem with graduation rates is the limited manner in which it is measured. The government provides an excellent definition of the very specific metric it uses to measure 4, 5, and 6-year graduation rates.

When looking at the graduation rates for higher education it is nearly impossible to observe graduation rates for over half of the institutions. The institutions that are Carnegie classified as Associate's primarily focus is on associates level education and do not directly contribute to the 4, 5, or 6-year graduation metric. That means that we cannot use Graduation Rates to define the effectiveness of 1,826 institutions that teaches 42% of all undergraduates (there are other ways but Graduation Rate is always in the press).

This leaves the other half of higher education with mostly useable data about graduation rates. Chart 3 contains the Carnegie classified Baccalaureate, Masters, Doctoral, and Research institutions and their average Graduation Rate, mean Graduation Rate, and High(est) Graduation Rate for 4, 5, and 6-years. I did not put the lowest Graduation Rate because it was always in the single digit or teens. I also included the row, 'Ivy and Ivy EQ' as a comparison.

Chart 3: 4, 5, & 6-Year Graduation Rates

Fourth observation: Most higher education institutions struggle with graduation rates, the average 4-year Graduation Rate is 35.24% for the observed schools, and too much attention is given to the highest performing schools.

Chart 4 shows how the Graduation Rates for the for Carnegie classified Baccalaureate, Masters, Doctoral, and Research institutions are distributed. I divided the 100 point scale evenly with the number of institutions per row and the percentage of the total per 4, 5, & 6-year Graduate Rate. Some institutions did not provide Graduation Rates and some data was missing from IPEDS (Blanks).

Chart 4: Distribution of Graduation Rates

Fifth observation: The 6-year graduation rate is more applicable to today's college student.

Finally I graphed the Graduation Rate distribution but did not include the blanks. Graph 1 shows the Graduation Rate distribution for Carnegie classified Baccalaureate, Masters, Doctoral, and Research institutions (does not include Blanks).

Graph 1: Graduation Rate Distribution

Sixth observation: The six-year Graduation Rate is more akin to a bell curve than the 4 or 5-year Graduation Rate.

Conclusions:

My findings from this article is that the higher education community should: 1) use the 6-year Graduation Rate as a more realistic metric for institutions; 2) institutions with 'poor' Graduation Rates should get most of the attention to help improve their Graduation Rates; and 3) stop talking about the Ivy League and Ivy League equivalents, they are fine.

Besides those three broad statements I do not have any solid conclusions yet. Since this is my first foray into higher education enrollments in the United States I am curious to see where my research will go from here and how my observations and conclusions will change over time. 

College ROI

Over the last decade costs associated with higher education have been under intense scrutiny by pretty much everyone. This has led some writers and commentators to look at higher education in relation to the private sector and for some, as an investment. This led to the 2014 College ROI Report for undergraduate education, a service of to Payscale.com. Below is what Payscale states about the College ROI Report:

“How do you measure the value of a college education? PayScale has the salary data to rank hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities based on total cost and alumni earnings. Find the best returns on investment by school type, location, major and more.”

Return on investment is a simple concept; how much of a return did you get versus how much invested. Great when you are talking about how much you invested in Ford or Apple but does it work with a college education? As PayScale states in their methodology; the College ROI is based on the costs associated with attending college, easy to find; and the return, or earnings is based on having surveyed 1.4 million alumni. I will not comment on surveying alumni earnings, I will assume the data is solid.

For my evaluation of the College ROI Report, I used the following criteria when I used the ROI in May of 2014:

- With financial aid (most people get some sort of help when going to college);

- On campus housing (assuming you have the typical college experience);

- All institutions (looking at all institutions);

- Deleted all Out-of-State costs (assuming you are going in-state or will get a scholarship/aid to make tuition equivalent to in-state).

Chart 1: All Schools; Cost per Year with Financial Aid.

Chart 1 contains where all 897 schools fall in relation to cost per year. This chart is pretty close to what one would expect; most schools are below $25k per year with the median $19,192 and the average $20,271.

Next, I am going to look at the College ROI Report and focus on the top-100 20 Year Net ROI and top-100 Annual ROI schools and compare the two lists. Note; 57 schools are shared from the top-100 20 Year Net ROI to the top-100 Annual ROI.

The reason I decided to look at the top 100, or top 11% of the College ROI Report is to get an idea of what prospective students and parents see when they peruse the report. Most people, when presented with data that contains over 1,000 rows and several columns will not look over every single datum; they look at the top, the bottom, what is around them locally, and what is already on their ‘radar’.

Chart 2: Cost per Year; Top-100 20 Year Net ROI and Top-100 Annual ROI

Chart 2 shows where the top-100 20 Year Net ROI and top-100 Annual ROI schools fall when looking at cost per year. The results are standard: schools with better 20 Year Net ROI are more expensive while schools with better Annual ROI are varied with most many being less expensive.

Chart 3: Size of Schools; Top-100 20 Year Net ROI and Top-100 Annual ROI

Chart 3 shows the enrollments, or size of the schools of the top-100 20 Year Net ROI and top-100 Annual ROI. Again, pretty standard. Schools with higher 20 Year Net ROI are more often than not smaller compared to schools that have better Annual ROI with the exception of the large flagship and large private institutions.

Chart 4: Graduation rates; Top-100 20 Year Net ROI and Top-100 Annual ROI

My final chart, Chart 4 shows the graduation rates for the top-100 20 Year Net ROI and top-100 Annual ROI. Expected. More Annual ROI schools have lower graduation rates while 20 Year Net ROI schools have better graduation rates.

Table 1: Private or Public; Top-100 20 Year Net ROI and Top-100 Annual ROI Ranked

Table 1 shows the top-100 20 Year Net ROI and top-100 Annual ROI and divides them in top 25, 50, and 100 to see the division between public and private institutions. By far the majority of schools on the 20 Year Net ROI are private and the majority of schools on the Annual ROI are public. I assume graduates of these private institutions get an income bump giving them a higher 20 Year Net ROI while graduates of these public institutions do not benefit from an income bump but have a higher Annual ROI because their schooling did not cost as much.

Table 2: Majority Undergraduate or Graduate? Top-100 20 Year Net ROI and Top-100 Annual ROI

Table 2 shows if the top-100 20 Year Net ROI and top-100 Annual ROI have majority undergraduate or graduates. The majority of the institutions for both lists are, by enrollment, majority undergraduate. This is good but this does not mean that all of these schools solely focus on undergraduates; Vanderbilt has more undergraduates than graduates but most of the money the school has goes to research rather than purely undergraduate education.

Table 3: Sci/Tech or Traditional/Liberal Arts? Top-100 20 Year Net ROI and Top-100 Annual ROI

Table 3 contains how many of the top-100 20 Year Net ROI and top-100 Annual ROI have a science or technology focus rather than being a traditional or liberal arts college. Science and technology jobs generally pay more so it makes sense that schools like Harvey Mudd College and Rose-Hulman are on the top-100 20 Year Net ROI while a few of them would not be on the top-100 Annual because they are more expensive to attend.

Discussion:

Payscale’s College ROI Report is a nice tool; it allows prospective students and parents to look at schools around the country and compare them to each other when it comes to simple financial means.

With that said the schools that occupy the ‘top’ spots are all the usual suspects; Ivy League, Ivy League equivalents, baby Ivies, Sci/Tech schools and flagship public schools. The information that the College ROI Report tells us is not that unique; Harvey Mudd College, Ivy League schools, Cal Tech, Williams College, and John Hopkins deliver excellent 20 Year Net ROI and the University of Virginia, Ivy League Schools, Cal Tech, Williams, and John Hopkins deliver excellent Annual ROI (57 schools are the same from 20 Year Net ROI to Annual ROI).

How you use the College ROI Report depends on what schools you are looking at. If you are looking at the Ivy League, Ivy League equivalents, or baby Ivies then this report will bolster your already high opinion of these schools. If you are look at the flagship publics then this report will help you see subtle difference between them. If you are looking at this report for provincial schools or smaller not as ‘well known’ private institutions then this report will confuse you and/or discourage you from looking at some schools.

When you go to the bottom of the 20 Year Net ROI and see Seton Hall, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Morehead State University, and Savannah State University are you not going to look at these schools because they are at the bottom of this list? They could be at the bottom of this list because Payscale did not survey enough of their graduates to get a true picture of alumni earnings. What if the school you want to attend is not on this list?

Conclusion:

Like all tools out there Payscale’s College ROI Report is just one of many. Use it to get a snapshot of potential ROI of a college degree from specific college but understand that like many predictive tools, it is helpful only to a point.

Addendum:

The following are all the tables that I used to create the charts used in the article.

Table 4: All Schools with Cost per Year Ranges

Table 5: Cost Per Year for the Top-100 Schools 20 Year Net ROI and Top-100 Schools Annual ROI

Table 6: Size of Top-100 20 Year Net ROI and Top-100 Annual ROI schools

It’s Not Just a Physics Problem

Colleges and Universities cannot continue to operate as if it were the good ol’ days.

I know, this is a silly statement that most would immediately shoot down because of the use of “good ol’ days,” but I stand by it. The decades after World War II saw the astounding growth of America’s colleges and universities; the US population grew, students from around the world started attending, and the government, federal and state consistently funded higher education. Colleges and universities all around the country were able to expand and start departments because of the needs of their localities and funding, although not plentiful, was there.

Fast forward to 2013; things have changed. The government, federal and state have limited resources to spread around and need to fund other things such as defense, primary and secondary education, IRS, veterans affairs, homeland security, justice, health-care, and the like before higher education takes precedence. Besides the intense scrutiny of for-profit education, all of higher education is being questioned, rightly and wrongly because of tight purse strings. This leads us to an article at Inside Higher Ed about how the University of Southern Maine is looking to eliminate their physics department.

Rewind to August 2012 and my article about classical music training in Arizona. In this article I predicted that classical music training at Arizona’s three large public institutions will drastically change by 2025. To summarize; Arizona State University will continue to have a robust school of music because of its location while the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University will slowly be bled dry, both being reduced to marching band departments (not a bad thing). To conclude the article I stated, “My prediction is not limited to Arizona. This prediction can be applied to countless content areas and replicated in every state in the union where higher education budgets are at the whim of lawmakers and the rise and fall of the economy. This is not just a music problem; this is the new higher education reality.”

Back to 2013 and the University of Southern Maine’s physics department. Because of low student enrollment the University of Southern Maine is looking to cut its physics department. If this goes into effect, the university will continue to offer electives in physics but if a student wants major in physics they will have to pack their bags and go to the University of Maine (as stated in the article). This would cause some hardship for students who were not intending on going to the University of Maine but if a school like University of Southern Maine has to cut physics then the University of Maine’s will only grow and the quality offered at that school will improve. At the end of the day students of Maine will still be able to study physics, Maine will most likely have a larger more renowned physics program at the University of Maine, and the needs of the people of Maine will be met.

As I stated in my article about classical music training, this scenario will be duplicated countless times in many different content areas where enrollment is small or shrinking. I greatly empathize with faculty members and staff that will be affected by department reductions and closures over the next ten years but there is no way to avoid this reality. The good news is that higher education is not going to suffer and America’s colleges and universities will continue to be the best in the world; individual colleges and universities and the state systems that support them have to adjust.

When it comes to which content areas will be affected, this will be decided by administrators, faculty, higher education boards, and politicians. Unfortunately I have to include politicians because as with everything, there is always a political element to higher education when it comes to money and the allocation of scarce resources. In my next article on this subject I will go over a scenario in which a state system tries to decide which content areas to reduce, which ones to consolidate, and which ones are cut.

Predicting the Future: An Introduction

I have never been in the business of predicting the future. Those who predict future events, even if they have solid research and years of first hand experience, get it wrong half the time. In my mind people who try to predict the future are soothsayers, alarmists, or hobbyists.

On television, soothsayers are often introduced as experts. This is handy because when talking-heads ask soothsayers to give their opinion the words they utter are held in high regard. Their legitimacy can vary from having a basket of degrees and decades of experience, to having made a name for themselves somehow. The predictions soothsayers make vary from who will win this weekend's football games to the outcome of the Syrian Civil War.

Next are alarmists. Alarmists want others to feel and believe the way they feel, fear what they fear, and act as they would act. Like soothsayers, alarmists’ legitimacy can be impressive and varied but they rarely have any subtlety, listen to other opinions, and most of the time go for shock and awe.

Finally are hobbyists. Hobbyists dedicate themselves to a given subject but instead of making predictions their full-time gig, it is their full-time hobby. Like the soothsayer or alarmist, they might have a great deal of experience but at the end of the day, hobbyists have other things to do.  

Of the three above I am most like the hobbyist. I have never claimed to be an expert at anything so I cannot be a soothsayer and it takes way too much energy to be an alarmist. This leads me to my predictions as a fun loving hobbyist. Over the next few months and years I will make a variety of predictions about the future of higher education. Some of my predictions I truly think  will come true while others...not so much.

Respice, adspice, prospice; coat of arms of Bootle, England, and the motto of the City College of New York.