Students served by a sample of NCAN member organizations enrolled in postsecondary education at slightly higher rates overall than a comparable national benchmark, which offers a bit of bright news to cap an otherwise difficult academic year. The findings
headline the sixth release from NCAN’s National College Access and Success Benchmarking Report series, released today.
The report reveals that 58.9% of NCAN member-served students from the high school class of 2020 enrolled in college in fall 2020 compared to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s 56.5% enrollment rate benchmark. The students come from a
sample of 37 NCAN member programs. By high school characteristics, NCAN member-served students exceeded the NSCRC benchmark in six of seven categories.
"The results from our most recent Benchmarking Report show that supports matter to our students and change outcomes, but they still speak to an unavoidable fact: there's more for us to do as a field,” said NCAN Executive Director Kim Cook about the report’s
release. “This report highlights NCAN's commitment to using data both to illuminate student outcomes and to understand where and how to focus on improving them."
These findings are bittersweet for NCAN, our members, and the field. It is clearly encouraging that NCAN member-served students’ outcomes still edged out those of students nationally, but the results herein also represent substantial declines in outcomes
compared to 2019.
Overall, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Centerestimates that 56.5% of class of 2020 high school
graduates enrolled in the fall 2020 semester. The NSCRC notes that the 56.5% enrollment rate was a decline of 4.1 percentage points compared to the class of 2019 (60.5%). This is a 6.7% decrease.
For NCAN member-served students, the decline was steeper. Member-served class of 2020 students’ 58.9% first-fall enrollment rate was a 10.6 percentage-point decrease and a 15.3% decrease from the class of 2019.
The steeper decline in enrollment rates from 2019 to 2020 for NCAN member programs is dismaying, to be sure, but it is important to put it in context. We know COVID-19 disproportionately impacted the students typically served by NCAN members (students
from low-income backgrounds, students of color, first-generation students).
This context helps to explain the steep declines we observe for the class of 2020:
Member-served students do well when receiving college access supports (hence the higher overall enrollment rate than the NSC benchmark).
However, our students still face the same challenges as their peers not served by college access programs.
Essentially, member-served students started at a higher point than their peers in the class of 2019 and consequently had further to fall in 2020, which is what we see with the steep percentage declines described above.
Comparing postsecondary outcomes by high school characteristics yields positive news for students served by NCAN members in the Benchmarking Report sample. The figure below shows the fall 2020 postsecondary enrollment rates from both the NSCRC High School
Benchmarks report and NCAN’s Benchmarking sample.
Considering postsecondary outcomes by member program, the chart below shows that most NCAN member programs in the sample had a fall enrollment rate exceeding the NSCRC benchmark.
This is especially important because of whom NCAN members serve. The chart below shows enrollment rates but augmented by the program’s percentage of first-generation students, percentage of students of color served, and percentage of students from low-income
high schools.
The specific results here aside, NCAN’s multiyear Benchmarking Project shows the organization’s commitment to measuring, analyzing, and reporting on the outcomes of the college access and success field. Conducting this research signals and emphasizes
to members and other stakeholders how important outcomes measurement is and should be.
Interested in diving deeper into the Benchmarking Project data? NCAN has an interactive data explorer available that generates custom tables and also allows for a year-by-year examination of the class of 2014's outcomes.
Throughout the rest of this week, NCAN will share blog posts, briefs, and other reports from our members under the banner of "Members’ Measures Matter." This new periodic series at the NCAN blog will highlight members who are measuring and disseminating
their program's outcomes in ways that inform other practitioners, policymakers, and the public.
Substantial work remains for our field and our country to help students. The class of 2020 saw sizable postsecondary enrollment declines, and those students will need new on-ramps back into the postsecondary system. The same goes for previous classes’
students who were already enrolled and then stopped out.
Looking forward, it is likely that the high school class of 2021 will also see enrollment declines, giving leading indicators like FAFSA completions and the number of college applications submitted.
Looking even further ahead, college and career readiness supports for students from the classes of 2022, 2023, and 2024 have all likely been disrupted across the country.
The work of providing students with additional knowledge and support to access a postsecondary pathway has never been more important or more needed. This brief demonstrates that, provided those supports and that knowledge, NCAN member-served students
can surmount the obstacles in front of them in their pursuit for a better future through postsecondary education.
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