Persistence and attainment by degree goal

Students who began their postsecondary education in 1989–90 indicated their degree objectives when they first enrolled. Table 7 shows how many had achieved that objective by 1994 and for those who did not, whether they were still working on that degree, had changed their degree objective, or had left without earning the degree. Those who had changed their degree objective may or may not have been enrolled in 1994.

• Compared with their traditional counterparts, nontraditional students seeking bachelor’s and associate’s degrees are less likely to attain their degree goal within 5 years and more likely to leave postsecondary education.

Among nontraditional students whose goal was to obtain a bachelor’s degree at any time, 31 percent had earned one by 1994, compared with 54 percent of traditional students. The attainment rate for highly nontraditional students was 11 percent. Because many nontraditional students enroll part time, one would expect them to take longer than traditional students to complete a bachelor’s degree. If time-to-degree were the only issue, one would expect to find more nontraditional than traditional students still enrolled, but there was no statistically significant difference in the percentages still enrolled after 5 years (23 and 20 percent, respectively). Compared with traditional students, nontraditional students were more likely to change their degree objective (13 versus 7 percent) or leave without a degree (33 versus 19 percent).

Similarly, nontraditional students seeking an associate’s degree were less likely than their traditional peers to earn the degree (27 versus 53 percent) and more likely to leave without the degree (47 versus 22 percent). Among nontraditional students, those seeking an associate’s degree were more likely than those seeking a bachelor’s degree to leave without a degree (47 versus 33 percent). The same was not true for traditional students, who left at approximately the same rate regardless of their degree objective. (The difference between 19 and 22 percent was not statistically significant.)

For certificate seekers, differences in persistence and attainment rates were not statistically significant except for those of highly nontraditional students. These students were more likely to leave without a certificate (43 percent) than were other nontraditional students (27 to 29 percent) or traditional students (23 percent).