GOSA Postsecondary Enrollment Report August 2009
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GOSA Postsecondary Enrollment Report August 2009 First Annual Report of Georgia Students’ High School to College Transition Introduction Contents of Report One clear accountability measure for the public school system is the ability This report contains two sections. The to prepare students for study in postsecondary education institutions. first section details aggregate college Whether they attend 4-year academic institutions, or technical colleges enrollment data by school system for focused on specific careers, American students are being encouraged to the high school classes of 2000 through pursue more formal education than ever. 2007. Each school system’s report shows: Postsecondary enrollment is an accountability measure for high schools that has an independence beyond traditional measures such as test scores -The number and percentage of or graduation rates – it is an outside measure of the value of a particular students enrolling in a postsecondary high school’s diploma. institution in Georgia, compared to the number and percentage enrolling out Accurately tracking students as they transition from high school and into of state; college has been technically difficult. Traditional methods of tracking students from high school as they cross into college have included exit -The number and percentage of interviews with graduates, follow-up surveys of graduates, and reports students enrolling in public produced using existing state data on public institutions. postsecondary institutions compared to the number and percentage The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) offers a more accurate way to enrolling in private institutions; address this issue. It tracks and verifies students’ postsecondary enrollment through agreements with over 3,000 public and private colleges and -The 10 most popular (by enrollment) universities across the country. NSC’s institutional partnerships cover over postsecondary institutions for each 90% of the nation’s postsecondary enrollment. school system from 2000-07; In 2008, the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) entered into -The 10 most popular (by enrollment) a contract with the National Student Clearinghouse to study postsecondary out of state postsecondary institutions enrollment and other outcomes of Georgia’s public high school graduates, for each school system from 2000-07; using official graduate class data obtained from the Georgia Department of Education. GOSA’s contract allows every school system in Georgia to work -The percentage of graduates in each independently with NSC to do their own analyses, at no cost to the systems. school system who enrolled in any postsecondary institution. Because of the unique nature of NSC’s database, GOSA has the ability to provide information on Georgia’s graduates available nowhere else. For The second section details similar example, using these data, it is possible to know not only how many students information for the most recent class attended institutions in the public University System of Georgia (USG) or the history available: the class of 2008. Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG), but also that Georgia sent 21 This section includes all of the students to Harvard last year, 12 to Stanford, 11 to Notre Dame and 194 to information above at the state level Emory – information previously obtainable only with great effort and less along with more local details. accuracy. Data GOSA obtained graduate files for the high school classes of 2000-08 from the Georgia Department of Education, and worked with NSC to match those records to enrollment records provided by the colleges in NSC’s database. NSC began its enrollment search for each year on September 30th following each high school graduation. These results are based on the aggregate files returned to GOSA from NSC. GOSA did not differentiate in this report between students who enrolled in college immediately after high school and those who enrolled at later dates. Therefore, if a student took a year off (or longer) between high school graduation and their first postsecondary enrollment, that student would still count as a postsecondary participant for his or her school system. These summary data from NSC include results for each individual student’s first postsecondary institution of enrollment after high school; while many students have multiple enrollments at various institutions, or even at the same institution, for the purposes of this report only the first institution of enrollment is counted. The degree totals, however, are not unduplicated counts; in other words, a student who earned multiple degrees is included multiple times. Finally, GOSA did not differentiate between public or private, two year or four year, in-state or out-of-state institutions; if a student enrolled in any type of postsecondary institution at any time after graduating high school, he or she is included in the total for his or her school and system. Nearly all public and private postsecondary institutions in Georgia currently work with NSC. As of 2008, the only institutions in Georgia which enrolled 1,000 or more students and which did not report attendance and completion data to NSC were: - American Intercontinental University - South University - Art Institute of Atlanta - Luther Rice Bible College and Seminary - Bauder College This report is intended to give a broad, at-a-glance picture of postsecondary enrollment of Georgia public high school graduates across the country, in a way that has not been done before. While the intent is to give a high-level view of postsecondary enrollment, this report still presents details on out-of-state and private enrollment that cannot currently be found anywhere else. 2 Findings At the highest level, following are basic data on the postsecondary destinations of Georgia’s public high school graduates: - Between 2000 and 2007, 69.4% of Georgia’s high school graduates enrolled in college somewhere after high school; - In 2008, 64.7% of graduates enrolled in a postsecondary institution the following fall; - Most high school graduates who attend college stay in Georgia; - Most high school graduates who attend college do so in public institutions. USG and TCSG Institutions Other findings for high school graduates from 2000-08 include the fact that Georgia’s research institutions remain popular for many students in many school systems across the state. The University of Georgia, Georgia Tech and Georgia State University were among the top 10 most popular institutions in 141 school systems between 2000 and 2007. In 2008, all three research institutions were among the 10 most popular in the state in terms of the number of students in the class of 2008 enrolled. Technical Colleges have also been very popular as institutions of first enrollment for Georgia students. In fact, the NSC data showed a TCSG institution as a top 10 most popular institution in 165 school systems from 2000-07. Of those 165, a TCSG institution was the most popular institution in 62 school systems. However, though their popularity is widespread across the state, no TCSG institution was among the top 10 postsecondary institutions in terms of enrollment of the class of 2008. This seems to indicate that large numbers of smaller school systems tend to send their students to TCSG institutions. Out-of-State Institutions As for students who go out of state for college, most students go to neighboring states, and of these, Alabama has been easily the most popular destination. From 2000-07, Alabama was home to the most popular postsecondary institution for 43 school systems, followed by Florida (8), South Carolina and Tennessee, (7), and North Carolina (3). For the class of 2008, the top 5 most popular out-of-state institutions were all in Alabama, enrolling a total of 1,452 Georgia high school graduates. Auburn University was the most popular out-of-state destination in 2008, enrolling 428 Georgia graduates. Four of the top 10 most popular out-of-state schools in 2008 were Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs): Alabama State University (212 graduates), Tuskegee University (165 graduates), Florida A&M University (148 graduates), and South Carolina’s Benedict College (114 graduates). Some of Georgia’s private HBCUs in the state enrolled similar numbers of public high school graduates compared to their out-of-state counterparts: Spelman College (188 graduates); Clark Atlanta University (187 graduates); and Morehouse University (155 graduates). Finally, the University of Phoenix, technically headquartered in Arizona, which administers online and private brick-and- mortar campus courses and degrees, was among the 10 most popular institutions in 31 school systems between 2000 3 and 2007, and it was the most popular “out-of-state” institution in 8 of those systems (though many students attended physical locations in Georgia). The University of Phoenix was the 6th-most popular out-of-state institution for the class of 2008. Overall, the enrollment patterns of the class of 2008 are shown below: Poverty and High School Graduation Rates GOSA conducted regression analyses with the results for the class of 2008 (shown below), using system postsecondary enrollment rates against the percentage of students by system eligible for free and reduced lunch (FRL), and against each system’s high school graduation rate (HSGR). Both variables were moderately strong predictors of a system’s postsecondary enrollment rate, but the correlations ran in opposite directions, with FRL showing a negative relationship to postsecondary enrollment (-.503) and HSGR showing a positive relationship (.468). This generally means that the higher a school system’s FRL population, the less likely it is for those students to enroll in college. Conversely, the higher a school system’s high school graduation rate, the more likely it is for those students to go on to enroll in college. Some school systems performed above the levels the regression would predict. 23 systems had postsecondary enrollment rates 10 points higher than their FRL rate would predict. Of these, 4 were above the state FRL average for 2007-08 and 19 were below the state average.