The Other 85 Percent

More on Increasing Higher Education Attainment Rates

April 7, 2009 | Filed under: Capella, Capella University

In a recent post, I cited how National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data documented a need for higher education institutions in the U.S. to produce a million new degrees every year for the next sixteen years in order to remain globally competitive. Along this same line, an article on Inside Higher Ed refers to how President Obama has called for every American to attend at least one year of college:

Obama reiterated his goal of having every American attend at least one year of college and having the country reclaim its mantle as the nation with the highest proportion of college graduates. To reach that goal, which has also been a focus of groups like the Lumina Foundation for Education and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the college going rate would have to increase by significantly more than half over the next 15 years.
The article, after noting the need for considerable growth in college attendance, cites newly released NCES data, stating that the most notable growth in higher education enrollment is at for-profit colleges and universities:

Enrollment at publicly supported institutions grew by 2.4 percent from 2006 to 2007, enrollment at private nonprofit colleges increased by 1.5 percent, and enrollment at private for-profit colleges rose by 7.22 percent. For-profit institutions have maintained that pace over a three year period, and since 2004, their share of all enrollments grew to 7.9 percent of the total college population, up from 6.7 percent.

It is interesting to note that at the same time that there is a national call for increasing higher education attendance and the number of college graduates, some media articles have attacked these same for-profit colleges and universities for benefitting from the push for higher attendance and graduation rates. So, these institutions should not help address a national problem? There seems to me a major disconnect here.
I would note that the article goes on to cite NCES data on the magnitude of higher education participation by adult and part-time students – the other 85 percent:
New data published for the first time in this year’s report – which therefore cannot be compared to previous years – show that students aged 24 or under make up 69 percent of students at public four-year colleges, 61 percent of students at four-year private institutions, 59 percent of students at two-year public colleges, and 27 percent of enrollees at four-year for-profit institutions. At community colleges, however, the under-24 crowd is split evenly between full-time and part-time students, while at the other institutions, the vast majority of traditional age students attend full time.

I will close by simply noting that this data is for the fall of 2007. I suspect that the trends identified here—growth in for-profit enrollment and substantial enrollment of adult and part-time learners—continue and the numbers are larger in 2009 than they were in 2007.
Please feel free to share your thoughts and questions in a comment.
Mike

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.