The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center has released the 2024 High School Benchmarks report, which shows small improvements in college enrollment and persistence in public high school graduates. Data showed no change between 2022 and 2023 high school graduates when it came to immediately enrolling in college, but there was an increase of 3.2 percentage points between 2021 and 2022 graduates across nearly all high school characteristics in terms of enrolling in college within a year of graduation.
“The report doesn’t grab the motivations of the students,” said Jennifer Causey, a senior research associate at the National Student Clearinghouse. “It could be with COVID and with the gap year, you’re seeing some different trends.”
Unfortunately, there remains a persistent gap between low-income students and students at low poverty high schools. In 2023, 50.5% of students graduating from high poverty high schools immediately enrolled in college versus 73.3% of students from low poverty high schools. There was improvement for high poverty high school graduates when it came to enrolling within a year, increasing from 50.5% from the class of 2021 to 53.7% for the class of 2022. High minority high schools showed a similar upward progression from 55.9% for 2021 graduates to 58.1% for 2022.
Paula Dofat
Paula Dofat, a long-time college counselor, college funding strategist and founder of the HBCU Money Guide™, said that the data corresponds with her personal experience. Dofat was senior director of college counseling at Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (a charter school) and has worked at both low-resourced schools and at an elite country day school.
“There’s a disparity because of dollars,” Dofat said, noting that resources for students at an urban school would be limited to what was available at the school and there is a disparity in resources provided to schools based on location. At the country day school, in addition to school resources students’ parents would utilize private tutors and other outside support services. Those students also had access to test preparation for ACT and SAT examinations.
The report showed that first to second year college persistence rates also trended upward from class of 2020 to class of 2021, but a gap between the graduates of high minority high schools and low minority high schools continued. When it came to six-year college graduation rates, 2017 high school graduates from high minority schools graduated college at 31.5% and those from low minority schools at 48.5%.
“It’s one thing for students to enroll and step foot in college; it’s a completely different story to make sure that a student stays enrolled and ultimately decides to complete a college credential,” Causey said. “Persistence is a notion of optimism because seeing more students decide to stay in post-secondary education means that there could be signs that they’re continuing to try to get that degree.”
