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Attendance Patterns of Seniors Marginally or Not Qualified for Regular Four-Year College Admission
According to the college qualification index used in this analysis, approximately one-third of the 1992 high school graduates were not academically prepared to attend a four-year college, and they were not included in most of the analyses above. The postsecondary attendance patterns of the graduating seniors who appear to have been only marginally or not qualified to attend four-year colleges are shown in table 33.Half (48 percent) of all the marginally or unqualified seniors did not attend any postsecondary institution within two years of high school graduation. Not enrolling was directly related to family income and parental education levels. Over half (53 percent) of the low-income seniors did not enroll anywhere, compared with 43 percent of the middle- and 30 percent of the high-income unqualified seniors. Marginally and unqualified white seniors were more likely not to attend postsecondary education within two years of high school graduation than any of the marginally or unqualified seniors from minority groups. This is consistent with the earlier finding that the educational expectations of minority students, qualified or not, had not declined between the eighth grade and their senior year, but they had declined for marginally or unqualified white seniors.
Among those who were marginally or not college qualified, 30 percent enrolled in two-year public institutions; 7 percent enrolled in private for-profit or not-for-profit institutions offering programs of less than four years; and 15 percent enrolled in four-year institutions. For this group, four-year college enrollment rates were directly related to family income and parental education, a typical pattern observed throughout this report. The marginally qualified seniors whose parents had high incomes or college degrees were three times as likely to have been enrolled in four-year colleges than those whose parents had low incomes or no more than a high school education. The proportions of marginally qualified Asians, whites, and Hispanics enrolled in four-year colleges were similar (about 13 percent). The proportion of black seniors who did not meet the minimum criteria of the college qualification index who were enrolled in four-year colleges (23 percent) was greater than the proportion of comparable whites and Hispanics. Again, it is important to note that among the students who appear to be only marginally qualified, those who did enroll in four-year colleges were more likely to have data missing for the college qualification index than those who did not enroll in a four-year college, and most of the average scores for the marginally qualified who did enroll were about the same as the minimally qualified students\41\. In particular, black students who enrolled had fewer sources available for the qualification index than whites\42\.
Nearly one-third of the seniors who were marginally or not academically qualified for four-year colleges did attend two-year public community colleges. The pattern seen frequently throughout this report, that Hispanics had higher public two-year college enrollment rates than whites (39 percent compared to 28 percent), is repeated. What is not typical is that Asians also had much higher public two-year college enrollment rates than whites. Nearly half (46 percent) of the Asian seniors who were marginally or not qualified for four-year colleges attended public two-year colleges, which is consistent with the high postsecondary enrollment rates of college-qualified Asians.
In summary, even among those high school seniors who are not adequately prepared for regular admission to a four-year college, many of the same patterns which were observed among the college-qualified seniors are evident. Postsecondary enrollment in general, and four-year college enrollment in particular, is directly related to family income and education. Hispanics are more likely to go to community colleges, in contrast to blacks, who are more likely to go to four-year colleges than Hispanics.
Footnotes:
41/ See table 11 and table 12.
42/ See table 13.
