None of the Chicago-area four-year public universities, as of 2016, has been able to graduate more than half of their Black and Latinx students.
The Partnership for College Completion shared this and other findings in a report released Thursday based on a regional study of college enrollment and graduation rates for slow-income and minority students in and around Chicago.
The seven-county Chicago area is home to 54 schools – including public, private, non-profit two- and four- year institutions – which enroll 319,000 undergraduates.
“One of our goals as an organization and in our work is, number one, lifting up data, research and information to really highlight the college completion crisis in the state of Illinois, and that reflects a broader college-completion crisis across the country,” said Lisa Castillo Richmond, the managing director of the Partnership for College Completion. “We want to drive action.”
While many reports explore national trends in college enrollment and completion, this report is unique in its local focus, analyzing data county by county.
“We’re really interested in hyper-localizing issues of reform,” said Kyle Westbrook, the executive director of Partnership for College Completion. “We do feel really strongly that most of the changes that we need to see happen will happen at the state and local level, where folks are closer to the issues, closer to the solutions and closer to our students.”
Based on data from financial-aid applicants in the region, among other sources, the study found that a large number of students from the Chicago area are leaving the state for college, or debating whether to attend college at all because of affordability concerns.
