{"id":20531,"date":"2023-12-15T00:00:27","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T00:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/?p=20531"},"modified":"2025-09-16T13:42:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T13:42:05","slug":"stagnancy-in-success-6-year-graduation-rates-fall-slightly-in-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/2023\/12\/15\/stagnancy-in-success-6-year-graduation-rates-fall-slightly-in-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Stagnancy in Success: 6-Year Graduation Rates Fall Slightly in 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC)<\/a> recently released its annual update to the “Completing College: National and State Reports” series. The primary metric used by the NSC is six-year graduation rates for first-time enrollees, including both full-time and part-time students, at two- or four-year institutions, who complete a degree at any degree-granting institution in the United States. <\/p>\n

Overall Trends<\/b><\/u>: The updated report includes completion rates for the fall 2017 cohort (and therefore graduated by 2023) and accounts for transfer within its national and state-level data. Across all higher education sectors<\/span>, the national six-year graduation rate has remained essentially unchanged in the last three cohorts (62.2% for fall 2015, 62.3% for fall 2016, and 62.2% for fall 2017). <\/span>This stagnation follows a 7-year upward trend where the overall national six-year graduation rate increased almost 10 percentage points from 52.9% in the fall 2009 cohort to 62.2% in fall 2015<\/b>. Since 2015, public 2-year institutions are the only sector with an increase in six-year graduation rates, improving from 42.2% for the fall 2015 cohort to 43.4% for the fall 2017 cohort. Public 4-year institutions (69% in 2015 to 67.4% in 2017), private nonprofit 4-year institutions (78.3% in 2015 to 77.5% in 2017), and private for-profit 4-year institutions (46.4% in 2015 to 46% in 2017) all saw declines in graduation rates during this timeframe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Outcome Measures<\/u><\/b><\/span>: In addition to national completion rate data, the NSC also published data that show the percentage of students within the 2017 cohort across five outcome measures: completed degree at original institution, completed degree at another institution (4-year), <\/span>completed degree at another institution (<\/span>2-year), still enrolled, or no longer enrolled. <\/span>These five categories are shown by state in the visualization below. Because the NSC data include students who started at either a 2-year or a 4-year institution, completion of a degree within 6 years can be either an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree.<\/span><\/p>\n