• First-Year Credit Production
• Credit Thresholds
• Credit and Degree Attainment Outcomes
• Credit Production Among Bachelor's Degree Completers
• Analysis of Credit Production After Controlling for Selected Characteristics

Earned credits reported in this section exclude credits completed while in high school, credits on transcripts at the General Education Development (GED) level, credits by examination, credits earned at less-than-2-year institutions, credit equivalents for clock-hour courses, and credits completed after the bachelor's degree.

On average, students in the target population completed about 27 semester credits in their first year. Fifty-five percent of students who enrolled at private, not-for-profit institutions completed at least 30 credits, as did 39 percent of those who enrolled at public institutions.

Students' academic preparation and test scores were related to the number of credits they completed in the first year, as was their academic performance in the first year. For example, about half of those who scored in the top quartile on the High School and Beyond (HS&B) cognitive test completed at least 30 credits, compared with one-third of those with scores in the middle quartiles and one-fifth of those who scored in the bottom quartile.

The number of years students take to cross selected credit thresholds (30, 60, 90, and 120 credits) can be used to infer the minimum number of years that students may need to complete a 120-credit bachelor's degree (exclusive of other degree requirements). This information opens a window on enrolled time needed to attain a degree.

Almost all students in the analysis (95 percent) earned at least 30 credits. Forty-three percent did so in the first year, and about half (49 percent) earned their 30th credit in the second year. Relatively few (4 percent) took more than 2 years to complete 30 credits.

The percentage sustaining a 4-year pace was highest at the 30-credit threshold (43 percent), and then remained relatively stable for the subsequent thresholds at 36-38 percent. For each of the 60-, 90-, and 120-credit thresholds, attrition was at least four times more likely among students who reached the previous threshold at a 5-year or slower pace than among those who achieved the previous threshold at a 4-year pace.

Students who began at public institutions were more likely than their counterparts who began at private, not-for-profit institutions to cross each threshold at a pace implying at least 5 years for degree completion.

Three out of four students in the analysis (76 percent) completed a bachelor's degree (averaging 132 credits). The remaining students were evenly split between those who completed fewer than 60 credits (averaging 37 credits) and those who completed 60 credits or more (averaging 91 credits).

Academic performance in the first year was strongly correlated with degree completion: the higher a student's first-year GPA, the more likely that student was to have received a bachelor's degree.

First-year credit production was positively related to total credit production: students who completed fewer than 20 credits in the first year (but at least 10 credits over the period of study) averaged 86 credits overall, while those who completed at least 30 credits in the first year averaged 128 credits over the full period studied. These differences are also reflected in the proportion of students who completed a bachelor's degree--from 45 percent among those with fewer than 20 credits in the first year to 91 percent among those who completed at least 30 credits in the first year.

Students who interrupted their enrollment (defined as those whose enrollment history includes a gap of two or more semesters, 19 percent of students in the analysis) were half as likely to complete a bachelor's degree as those who were continuously enrolled. Timing of the interruption also made a difference: students who interrupted during or immediately after the first year were least likely to have completed the degree (27 percent), while those who interrupted during or after the third year were most likely to have done so (43 percent).

On average, bachelor's degree attainers completed 133 credits. Students who attended only 4-year institutions averaged 131 credits, while those who combined attendance at 4-year and less-than-4-year institutions averaged 140 credits. Students who received an associate's degree before their bachelor's degree completed an average of 148 credits, compared with 132 credits for those who did not first complete an associate's degree.

Students who majored in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics and computer science, and business completed fewer credits than average (125-130 credits). Those who majored in engineering and architecture and those who majored in health sciences and services completed more credits than average (145 and 142 credits, respectively).

Multiple regression analysis suggests that, after controlling for a list of variables used in this report, socioeconomic background, test scores, first-year grades, first-year credit production, and summer-term enrollment are all positively related to overall credit production, while initial part-time enrollment and enrollment interruptions are negatively related to credit production.

Differences in credit production between students who began at public and at private, not-for-profit institutions appear to be related to differences in student characteristics rather than inherent differences between public and private, not-for-profit institutions.

Delayed entry into higher education does not appear to be related to credit production after controlling for a range of student and enrollment characteristics.

¹ The 10-credit criterion excludes about 3 percent of students who were otherwise eligible for inclusion. A small number of included students graduated in a year other than 1982, but all were high school sophomores in 1980.

²U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, High School and Beyond Longitudinal Study, Fourth Follow-up (HS&B:80-92).

³Findings reported in this section are limited to high school graduates who expected to complete a bachelor's degree, but include students who first enrolled at less-than-4-year institutions.