98-105 / Access to Postsecondary Education for the 1992 High School Graduates / Characteristics and Postsecondary Attendance of 1992 high School Graduates

Access to Postsecondary Education for the 1992 High School Graduates

Characteristics and Postsecondary Attendance of 1992 high School Graduates

It is well established that family income, race-ethnicity, and parental education levels are related to postsecondary attendance patterns\2\. Information about these background characteristics for the 1992 high school graduates is provided in table 1. In this report, students were considered "low income" if the income reported by their parents was less than $25,000; "middle income" if it was at least $25,000 and under $75,000; and "high income" if it was $75,000 or more. Using this definition, about one-quarter (28 percent) of the 1992 high school graduates came from low-income families, somewhat more than half (57 percent) from middle-income families, and 15 percent from high-income families. Table 1 also illustrates that family income was directly related to the parents' highest education level: half (51 percent) of the families in which both parents had no more than a high school education also had incomes below $25,000, compared to 29 percent of families in which a parent had taken some college courses and 8 percent in which a parent was a college graduate. One-third (35 percent) of the families in which a parent held at least a bachelor's degree had incomes of $75,000 or more, compared to 6 percent or less of those in which no parent had completed four-year college.

Nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of all the 1992 high school graduates were white, 11 percent were black, 10 percent were Hispanic, 5 percent were Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 1 percent were American Indian/Alaskan Native\3\. More than half of the black and Hispanic students came from low-income families, compared to one-third of the Asian students and one-fifth of the white students. Although the income distribution of black and Hispanic families was similar, the parental education levels of Hispanics were lower than those of black students: nearly half (46 percent) of the Hispanic students came from families in which the parents had a high school education or less compared with 35 percent of black students\4\. Unlike black and Hispanic students, Asians were as likely as white students to come from high-income families, but their parents had achieved higher levels of education than whites. In fact, nearly half (49 percent) of the Asian students came from families in which a parent was a college graduate\5\, compared with about one-third (36 percent) of the white students. When comparing the students from minority backgrounds then, these broad differences in family income and educational levels should be kept in mind: Asian high school seniors are more likely to come from families with relatively high incomes and high levels of education, Hispanics from families with relatively low incomes and low educational levels, and blacks from families with relatively low incomes but higher levels of education than Hispanics (figure 1).

The postsecondary attendance patterns of the 1992 high school graduates by 1994 are displayed in table 2. One-quarter did not enroll in any postsecondary institution (25 percent), one-quarter enrolled in two-year public community colleges (26 percent), almost half enrolled in four-year colleges and universities (45 percent), and a small percentage enrolled in other institutions offering less than four-year programs (4 percent)\6\.

The proportion of students who enrolled in postsecondary education within two years of high school graduation was related to both family income and parental education. More than 40 percent of the students whose parents had not gone beyond high school and 37 percent of those from low-income families did not enter postsecondary education. Among black and Hispanic students, the majority of whom came from low-income families, almost 30 percent did not pursue postsecondary education. Hispanics were more likely not to enter postsecondary education than either whites (24 percent) or Asians (14 percent); the difference between blacks and whites was not statistically significant. Among high-income students and those whose parents had a college degree, about 7 percent had not entered postsecondary education within two years of graduating from high school.

The proportions of low- and middle-income students attending two-year public colleges were similar (25 to 28 percent), but high-income students were less likely to attend this type of institution (14 percent). The two-year public college enrollment rates of students whose parents had less than a four-year college degree were also similar (27 to 30 percent), while students who had a parent with a four-year college degree were less likely to enroll in two-year public institutions. One third of Hispanics (34 percent) attended two-year public colleges, compared to about one-quarter of whites (25 percent) and blacks (23 percent) (figure 2)\7\.

Unlike the community college enrollment pattern\8\, enrollment rates in four-year colleges and universities were directly related to students' family income and the level of their parents' education. The proportion of students enrolled in four-year institutions increased at every income level, with one-third of low-income students (33 percent), almost half of middle-income students (47 percent), and about three-fourths of high-income students (77 percent) attending such institutions. Similarly, the proportions of students enrolled in four-year institutions increased with the level of their parents' education. Four-year college enrollments represented 54 percent of Asian, 47 percent of white, 42 percent of black, and 31 percent of Hispanic high school graduates. (figure 2).

Footnotes:

2/ C. Manski and D. Wise, College Choice in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), remains a basic source. For a survey of the more recent literature, see T. Baker and W. Velez, "Access to and Opportunity in Postsecondary Education in the United States: A Review," Sociology of Education, extra issue (1996): 82-101. Many studies use SES instead of income and education; both are factored into the derivation of SES. Since this study focuses on college costs and financial aid, it was more appropriate to use income as a separate variable.

3/ U.S. Department of Education, , National Educational Longitudinal Study: 1988-1994 (NELS:88), Data Analysis System. Because of the small sample size, American Indians were not in-cluded as a separate category of analysis in this study. Since Hispanics can be of any race, when the terms "white" and "black" are used in the text they should always be assumed to include the qualifier "not of Hispanic origin." Similarly, the term "Asian" should always be assumed to include Pacific Islanders. These qualifiers are always indi-cated in the tables, but their repeated inclusion in the text would have made the report awkward and difficult to read.

4/ The parents of Hispanic high school graduates were also the most likely not to have finished high school (29 per-cent compared with 11 percent of Asian, 12 percent of black, and 4 percent of white students). U.S. Department of Education, , National Educational Longitudinal Study: 1988-1994 (NELS:88), Data Analysis System.

5/ The parents of Asian high school graduates were also more likely to hold graduate degrees than were parents of white graduates. U.S. Department of Education, , National Educational Lon-gitudinal Study: 1988-1994 (NELS:88), Data Analysis System.

6/ Private, for-profit vocational institutions 3.1 percent; private, not-for-profit 2-year institutions 1.0 percent; and pub-lic less-than-2-year institutions 0.2 percent. U.S. Department of Education, , National Educational Longitudinal Study: 1988-1994 (NELS:88), Data Analysis System.

7/ There was no statistically significant difference between Hispanics and Asians.

8/ The terms "two-year public institution" and "community college" are used interchangeably in this report.