Decreasing graduation completion rates in the United States

The Graduation completion rate is the measure reflecting the number of students who complete their graduation and receive a degree from an educational institution. The drop-out rate is the measure reflecting the number of students who disengage with the educational institutions they are enrolled in. Those measures are calculated by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education. The US Department of Education - Institute of Education Sciences and the National Center for Education Statistics use those measures to analyze the success or the failure of the students and of the American educational system.

Graduation rate has become a growing concern in the United States as it has been decreasing over the past decades.High-school dropout and College dropout affect the completion rate as well as the system at large. The percentage of dropouts among 16- to 24-year-olds has shown some decreases over the past 20 years. However, the substantial growth in college enrollment among high school graduates has not been matched with a comparable expansion in college degree attainment. The decrease of completion rate among college students has economical, educational and political implications. At a time of historic budget shortfalls, increasing the college completion rate has been a challenge in the United States. To help colleges and universities in particular improve rates of degree completion, states try to find more efficient ways to spend.

Degree completion has been decreasing since 1970. Bound, Lovenheim and Turner (2010) studied why the college completion rate declined. Their main explanations of the decreasing rate are the changes in student preparation and the collegiate resources. The authors explain that between 1970 and 1999, post-secondary institutions saw a significant increase in enrollments and, at the same time, a decrease in college completion. “Partly as a consequence of the substantial increase in the college wage premium since 1980, a much higher fraction of high school graduates enter college today than they did a quarter century ago. However, the rise in the fraction of high school graduates attending college has not been met by a proportional increase in the fraction who finish.”

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