Access to Postsecondary Education for the 1992 High School Graduates

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Foreword

This report examines the postsecondary enrollment patterns of 1992 high school graduates by 1994, two years after they graduated from high school. Specifically, it focuses on the access of low-income students and racialethnic minorities to postsecondary education and the degree to which the access of students with the academic qualifications to attend a four-year institution is limited by financial constraints. The analysis relies primarily on data from the second and third follow-up files of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), which began with a nationally representative sample of 1988 eighth graders who were followed up in 1990, 1992, and again in 1994. (A more complete description of the NELS:88 sample can be found in Appendix B of this report.) This was supplemented with information on college costs and financial aid for a comparable group of students in the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, 199293 (NPSAS:93).

The NELS:88 surveys contain extensive information on student and parent attitudes about college costs and financial aid, educational expectations, plans for postsecondary education, the types of institutions to which they applied, and where they enrolled. In addition to information about family income, parental levels of education, and racialethnic background, the surveys contain many indicators of academic aptitude, achievement, and coursework in high school. This makes it possible to study differences in postsecondary enrollment patterns from a variety of perspectives.

The estimates presented in this report were produced using the NELS:88/94 and NPSAS:93 Data Analysis Systems (DAS). The DAS is a microcomputer application that allows users to specify and generate their own tables from the NELS and NPSAS data. The DAS produces design-adjusted standard errors necessary for statistical testing of differences shown in the tables. Additional information about the DAS can found in appendix B of this report.

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Highlights Acknowledgments