For the first time, the federal government has published data on the outcomes of students who begin their college career studying part-time. The data are clear: American higher education needs to do a better job helping these students get through college. Just less than 25 percent of part-time students receive a degree or certificate within eight years from the college where they first enrolled.
Even though 37 percent of college students are attending on a part-time basis,* they have been ignored by federal graduation rates until now. Traditional rates only track new students who start their college careers with a full-time course load, leaving out those who start by enrolling in fewer credits, take time away from school, or transfer.
Other data sources have illustrated that part-time students face dismal odds of ever making it to graduation. But until now, we have not been able to delve into how part-time students fare at individual institutions, which has made it much more difficult to figure out what kinds of policies and supports would be most effective in helping them succeed.
The new Outcome Measures (OM) cover about 1.2 million part-time students who started college for the first time in 2008 or who entered a new institution as transfer students in the same year. Although there are limitations to these data, the OM represent a major accomplishment of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, providing additional information on a group of students that is too often invisible to decision-makers.
Read more at The Center for American Progress: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/default/news/2017/10/18/440997/new-data-highlight-higher-education-failing-part-time-students/