A new report released by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, a nonprofit focused on unearthing and disseminating education data, found the average full-time college student does not attempt enough courses to earn a bachelor’s degree in five years. The report also found the average college student only earns credit or a passing grade in 75% of the courses they take.
Taylor Odle, assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, is the lead author of the report. Odle and his collaborators examined course enrollment and completion outcomes of over 905,000 students at more than 340 colleges and universities.
Odle said the analysis was aimed at identifying where students need support on their paths to graduation.
“Understanding how many courses students are taking, if they are passing them, and how quickly they are moving through coursework is critical to identifying not only which students are ‘on-time’ to earn a degree, but also where institutional supports can be targeted to make sure that inequalities in these early progression metrics do not translate to inequalities in students’ graduation outcomes,” he said.
Other key findings in the report included:
- In the first year of study, the average full-time student attempted fewer than 27 credits and earned fewer than 22. At this rate, it would take five and a half years to earn a 120-credit bachelor’s degree.
- Only 51% of full-time students earned 24 or more credit hours in their first year. Less than a third (28%) earned 30 or more hours of credit, putting them “on-time” to complete a bachelor’s degree in four years.
- Students’ course pass rates and credit accumulation vary widely by race/ethnicity, enrollment intensity, college readiness, and institutional type. For example, Black males earned the equivalent of one 3-credit hour course less than their White and Asian peers in their first year. Among women, the percentage of Asian students who earned 30 or more credits was more than double the share of their Black/African American and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander peers.
Odle said the findings show there is a long way to go to support students’ coursetaking and completion.
“Students deserve strong advising on what courses to take and how many to take,” he said.
Odle recommends colleges seek to first understand why students may not attempt enough courses to stay on-time and work to reduce those barriers. He says they must then seek to identify the sources of inequalities that put many students—and particularly students of color—behind in their first year of study.
To learn more, read coverage of the report in The Hill, Forbes, Yahoo, and Inside Higher Ed. A podcast covering the work is also available via Apple and Spotify.