{"id":20550,"date":"2024-04-01T00:00:46","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T00:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/?p=20550"},"modified":"2025-09-15T21:26:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T21:26:13","slug":"pell-recipients-and-the-interesting-case-of-transfer-student-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/2024\/04\/01\/pell-recipients-and-the-interesting-case-of-transfer-student-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Pell Recipients and the Interesting Case of Transfer Student Success"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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We continue our blog series on student success\u00a0using the<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>IPEDS Outcome Measures (OM)<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>data with a look at outcomes for Pell versus non-Pell grant recipients<\/span>. The Pell Grant program “provides grant assistance to eligible\u00a0undergraduate\u00a0postsecondary students with demonstrated financial need to help meet education expenses” (NCES<\/a>). As previously discussed, the OM data includes categories for all combinations of first-time and transfer, full-time and part-time, and Pell grant and non-Pell grant students, making it a unique source for more granular data from the federal government. This post will cover national trends <\/span>across all public 4-year institutions in America and will answer an important question: Is it true that Pell recipients take longer to attain an award than non-Pell recipients?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Note<\/u><\/i>:\u00a0<\/span>Because the OM data includes 8-year graduation rate data, we continue to use the most recent data from the 2014 cohort in our analysis<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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National OM Data for Public Universities: Overall<\/u><\/b>
For the 2014 national cohort, there were 2.7 million first-time-in-college (FTIC) and transfer students who entered public 4-year institutions in America that are included in the OM data, with approximately 40% of those entering students receiving Pell grants. All students in the 2014 cohort were tracked through AY2022 to determine their 8-year outcome status across one of six categories: enrollment unknown, still enrolled at original university, enrolled at another institution, certificate earned, associate’s degree earned, or bachelor’s degree earned. For the three award status categories, only the highest award is counted per student.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

  • The first visualization below (“Overall”) shows how Pell grant recipients fared in 8-year outcomes compared to non-Pell grant recipients.\u00a0<\/li>
  • More than one-quarter (26%) of Pell grant students were categorized as “enrollment unknown” after 8 years, meaning they had not earned an award and were not still enrolled somewhere in higher education. That percentage for non-Pell recipients was 20%.<\/li>
  • When adding the award categories together, 49% of Pell recipients completed either a certificate (1%), an associate’s degree (9%), or a bachelor’s degree (39%) within 8 years of enrollment. By comparison, 56% of non-Pell recipients received<\/b> an award within 8 years (1%, 8%, and 47% respectively across award categories)<\/b>.<\/li><\/ul>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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    Overall<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
    Enrollment + Pell<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t
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    Overall<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t