Measures of student persistence often fail to account for students who move between colleges, but a report released on Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center fills in this gap using student-level data. Nearly 85 percent of all students and 92.5 percent of full-time students stay enrolled or graduate, according to the report.
The report, one of three new "snapshots" from the research center, looks at students who were enrolled in higher education on October 15, 2010, and counts them as persisting if they had completed a degree or remained enrolled in any postsecondary institution within 60 days of the end of the fall- 2010 term.
Persistence varies by sector, the report says. Private, nonprofit four-year colleges had the highest rate, 91.4 percent, while public two-year colleges had the lowest rate, 74.9 percent.
Two additional snapshots show concurrent enrollment and student "mobility" from August 2010 to August 2011. About 3 percent of students attended two or more institutions at the same time during that period, while about 8 percent of students attended more than one institution, either concurrently or consecutively.
The clearinghouse's data cover 93 percent of the country's student enrollments, according to the report.
