Rationale and Methodology

It is no surprise that degree completion has moved to the heart of postsecondary reform debates today. The vast majority of students who enroll in college hope to earn a credential that will help them find a job. Unfortunately, too many fail to graduate on time—or ever. Meanwhile, employers who need workers with postsecondary training are keenly aware of how hard it can be to find new graduates to fill open positions. And taxpayers also lose out when public investments in higher education fail to yield satisfactory results, given the extensive evidence showing the broad economic benefits created by a well- educated population.

Against this backdrop, we graded the states on their success in helping students enroll in college and obtain postsecondary credentials. However, we did so with the understanding that focusing on completion rates in isolation can unleash perverse incentives, convincing institutions that the way to improve their standing is to become more selective and restrict access to those students most likely to succeed. In fact, in order to raise attainment rates—or the percentage of adults with a college degree—college leaders must also ensure that states remain committed to enrolling disadvantaged students, who have traditionally been underrepresented in higher education. The challenge is two-fold: states must increase degree completion while maintaining a commitment to access.

The measures used addressed both sets of concerns. We focused on key measures of student success and degree productivity such as retention rates, completion rates, and credentials produced per 100 full-time students. At the same time, we combined these measures with others that capture higher education access and how well schools perform even after controlling for the percentage of low-income students that they enroll.

Unless otherwise noted, we used the most recent data available from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the federal government’s largest database on U.S. colleges and universities. While we are aware of the limitations of IPEDS data, it is the only data set that is consistent and comparable across institutions and states.

Percentage of Undergraduates Receiving Pell Grants.

The percentage of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants, need-based federal scholarships, is a good proxy for an institution’s commitment to providing access to low- income students. We rated states on the percentage of undergraduates at public institutions that received Pell Grants during the two most recent academic years for which these data are available.

Retention Rates.

In order for students to finish a four- or two-year degree, they must return to school after their first year. Unfortunately, many students don’t persist from one year to the next. The first-year retention rate measures the percentage of full-time students who begin in the fall semester and then return to take classes the following fall. We measured retention using IPEDS data for full-time students.

Completion Rates.

To reap the full return of an investment in postsecondary education, students must finish a credential within a reasonable amount of time. IPEDS measures the proportion of first-time, full-time degree- or certificate-seeking students who finish their credentials within 150% of the normal time to degree (three years for a two-year degree (AA) or certificate, or six years for a bachelor’s degree (BA)).

Completions Per 100 Full-Time Equivalent Undergraduate Students.

IPEDS graduation rates have well-documented flaws: they cover only first-time, full-time undergraduate students, meaning they do not count students who transfer in and finish a degree or students who do not attend full-time. Higher education analysts have developed an alternative metric that calculates the number of completions produced per full-time student. This more comprehensive measure includes all undergraduate degrees and certificates awarded and all undergraduate students. In order to account for degrees and certificates of different lengths, we weighted degrees based on their normal time to completion compared with a reference category (AA degrees for two-year colleges, BA degrees for four-year colleges).

Risk-Adjusted Completion Rates.

We believe that colleges should be recognized and rewarded for enrolling and graduating low-income students. Raising completion rates by excluding particular students will do little to raise our overall education attainment. Therefore, we developed a metric that measures each state’s graduation-rate performance after taking into account the percentage of first-time students that receive Pell Grants. This risk- adjusted metric essentially measures how far above or below the curve a college’s graduation rate is given how many Pell students it enrolls. We rewarded states whose postsecondary institutions performed better than expected on this measure.

Membership in Complete College America.

Complete College America is a national consortium of states focused on measuring student success and degree completion more accurately, comprehensively, and systematically (see spotlight on page 19 of the report PDF). States that join Complete College America demonstrate their commitment to transparency by making public data on college participation, progression, and degree completion. We applaud this commitment and although we did not include membership in the grading of states, we reported which states participate on page 19.

Findings

At the four-year level, Washington state, California, and Florida earned the highest grades. On every metric other than the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants, Washington state and California placed in the top 10. California was in the top 15 in all categories. Three other states received top grades at the four-year level (Illinois, New Jersey, and Virginia).

At the other end of the spectrum, Alaska, Idaho, Louisiana, and Nevada lagged far behind the vast majority of other states, earning F grades at the four-year level. Outside of the percent-Pell metric, Alaska, Idaho, and Louisiana ranked in the bottom 10 on every measure.

The results at the sub-baccalaureate level are quite different. The Dakotas stood out as leaders at the two-year level. On every measure save the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants, North and South Dakota stood at the top of the national rankings. Their performance is even more striking when contrasted with their mediocre-to-poor ranking at the four-year level. Florida also emerged as a top state, making it the only state to receive an A grade at both levels. Vermont and Wisconsin rounded out the group of top states at the two-year college level.

By contrast, New Mexico, Nevada, and Alaska lagged behind their peers across the country. In each of these states, completion rates at two-year colleges were less than 20%; Nevada and New Mexico’s completion rates were below 15%. Interestingly, several states with above average performance at the four-year level look much worse at the two-year level. Delaware, Connecticut, and Maryland each ranked highly at the four-year level, receiving B grades on our criteria. At the two-year college level, though, they did not fare nearly as well, ranking near the bottom of the standings on measures of student success.

Detailed Findings

Percentage of Undergraduates Receiving Pell Grants.

In 2009–2010, 37.8% of all undergraduates at public, four-year universities received Pell Grants. Pell recipients were more common in public two-year colleges, where nearly half of all students (48.6%) received a Pell Grant in that year. The percentage of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants has increased by eight to nine percentage points at both levels since the early 2000s.

At the four-year level, New Mexico had the highest proportion of Pell Grant recipients, with about 70% of their undergraduate students receiving grants; no other state cracked 50%, though more than 45% of undergraduates in Florida, Arkansas, and Mississippi were Pell recipients. Delaware, New Hampshire, and Connecticut had the lowest number of Pell recipients, with 20% or fewer.

Among two-year colleges, southern states tended to boast the highest proportion of Pell Grant recipients. Community colleges in Georgia and Mississippi had more than 70% Pell recipients, and Kentucky, Arkansas, and South Carolina were not far behind. In contrast, western states had the lowest percent Pell at the two-year level, with less than 30% of students in Alaska, California, and Hawaii receiving a Pell Grant.

Retention, Completion, Completions Per 100 Full-Time Equivalent Undergraduates, and Risk-Adjusted Completion Rates.

According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the national retention rate for public four-year colleges in 2009 was about 79%. Sixteen states, led by Florida, Delaware, and Virginia, had three-year average retention rates of over 80%. At the other end, Idaho, Montana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma ranked at the bottom, with first-year retention rates of 71% or less.

When it comes to completion rates at public four-year colleges, the national average has remained relatively consistent over the past decade at just below 55%. The nation’s leaders on this metric—Delaware, Washington, Virginia, Iowa, and New Hampshire—all boasted six-year completion rates that were more than 10 percentage points higher than the national average. Together, Delaware’s two, four-year colleges graduated more than 70% of first-time bachelor’s degree-seeking students.

California, the state with the largest incoming class of bachelor’s degree-seeking students, graduated just below 65% of the nearly 210,000 first-time, full-time BA- seeking students that enrolled in 2002, 2003, and 2004. By comparison, four-year colleges in Alaska, Idaho, and Louisiana graduated less than 40% of first-time students within six years.

The completions per 100 full-time equivalent (FTE) measure is arguably an even better measure of degree productivity than completion rates because it covers more students and counts more credentials. It is important to remember that we weighted degrees and certificates in reference to the BA, meaning that sub- baccalaureate credentials awarded by four-year colleges were counted as a fraction of a bachelor’s. Without this weighting, a college that produced 20 BA’s would look identical to one that produced 10 BA’s and 10 AA’s, despite the fact that AA’s take only half the time of a BA. Instead, we wanted to be sure that we rewarded four-year colleges for producing four-year degrees.

Among the top states on this measure were some of the usual suspects: Washington state, California, Illinois, and Florida all produced more than 23 completions per 100 full-time undergraduates. Texas ranks much better on this measure than it does on the completion rate metric; its 22 completions per 100 FTE ranks it in the top 10. Alaska produces an abysmal 11.7 completions per 100 FTE, nearly five completions per FTE behind Idaho and South Dakota, both of which produce just over 16.5 four-year completions per FTE.

When it comes to doing better than expected given their proportion of students receiving Pell Grants, California and Washington state again emerged as leading states, along with New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Two southern states— North Carolina and Mississippi—also ranked well on the risk-adjusted metrics. Alaska, Utah, and Nevada’s four-year colleges actually performed worse than we had expected given the number of low-income students that they enroll.

National retention rates at two-year public colleges were much lower than at four-year institutions—59% in 2009. At the state level, South and North Dakota, Florida, and California had the highest retention rates across the three years analyzed here, boasting rates of about 64% or above. North and South Dakota had retention rates of 68% and 69%, respectively, in their public two-year colleges. Alaska’s lone community college—Prince William Community College—had a retention rate of 37.7%, ranking Alaska last on the list. West Virginia, Louisiana, and South Carolina all retained less than 53% of their two-year college students.

Completion rates are also notoriously low at two-year colleges. Nationally, the graduation rate at public, two-year colleges was 22.5% in 2010. In our data, South Dakota was a welcome exception, boasting a completion rate of 58%. But South Dakota was the only state with a two-year college completion rate over 40%. The next closest state, North Dakota, had a completion rate of just over 38%, and Florida, Utah, and Vermont were the only other states with a completion rate higher than 35%. On the other end of the spectrum, Rhode Island (9.4%), Delaware (10.5%), and Connecticut (10.6%) had the lowest overall completion rates, each earning the lowest rating on our grading scale. In all, 13 states had completion rates lower than 15% for their two-year institutions. Fully 33 states had completion rates lower than 25%.

On the completions per FTE measure, the Dakotas again outperformed the rest of the field, producing 30.1 (North Dakota) and 28.1 (South Dakota) two-year credentials per 100 full-time students. Louisiana and Kentucky, two states that do not perform particularly well on the retention or completion measures, both made the top 10 on this metric, largely because of their emphasis on short-term certificates. Alaska and Nevada earned the worst grades in the country. Interestingly, two states that were top performers on other indicators—Texas and California—did not perform well on this measure, producing about 12.5 (Texas) and 11.1 (California) credentials per 100 undergraduate FTEs, ranking them 47th and 48th, respectively.