{"id":20534,"date":"2024-01-15T00:00:03","date_gmt":"2024-01-15T00:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/?p=20534"},"modified":"2025-09-15T21:09:58","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T21:09:58","slug":"are-outcomes-improving-at-public-universities-it-depends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/2024\/01\/15\/are-outcomes-improving-at-public-universities-it-depends\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Outcomes Improving at Public Universities? It Depends"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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In our previous blog post<\/a>, we explored data from the National Student Clearinghouse’s (NSC)<\/a>\u00a0annual update to the “Completing College: National and State Reports” series. In general, the national six-year graduation rate\u00a0for the fall 2017 cohort was 62.2%. This cohort included\u00a0full-time and part-time students who were\u00a0first-time enrollees at two- or four-year institutions, and who completed a degree at any degree-granting institution in the United States by AY2022-2023. This overall percentage remained essentially unchanged for the third consecutive year.\u00a0<\/p>

Although the NSC data in our previous post combined all institution types into the state-level calculations, we narrow our focus to better understand six-year outcomes for just four-year public universities in the US.\u00a0The first visualization below (<\/span>2017 Cohort<\/span>)\u00a0<\/span>shows six-year outcome rates by five categories: Completed at Original Institution, Completed at Other (4-Year) Institution, Completed at Other (2-Year) Institution, Still Enrolled, and No Longer Enrolled. The first category, Completed at Original Institution<\/i>, is the traditional metric that most in higher education associate with the typical “graduation rate” calculation. Of the other four NSC designations, No Longer Enrolled<\/i>\u00a0represents the main negative outcome for students who leave school without earning an associate’s degree or higher.<\/span><\/p>

2017 Cohort<\/u><\/span><\/p>